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The greatest advantage of special care lies in the fact that trained nurses and skilled orthopedic doctors are constantly at hand to reduce the child's handicap to a minimum, and possibly, in course of time, to cure it. Braces, frames, and casts must be properly adjusted to achieve their full effect, and too often the parent at home destroys their value through lack of skill. More will be said on this subject in a later section.

This movement has a tremendous economic value. Thousands of men and women who otherwise, through no fault of their own, would become social dependents are being transformed into useful and constructive citizens of the community. As will be shown later, a majority of the institutions are teaching occupational therapy, and assisting their graduates with vocational guidance. It has been found that, except for those patients suffering from congenital disease, the intelligence of the crippled child is at least average. Some authorities maintain that it is above average, and it is certainly true that the handicapped youth, under proper guidance, will be particularly anxious to overcome his disability by greater excellence of mental accomplishment.-1-

-1- "Physical inferiority creates a mind on the defensive and desiring to attain success by other means than that which a poor physique renders impossible." Alexander Horwitz, M. D., The Cripple's Place in Society, Thru the Ages. The Nation's Health, Vol. V, No. 8, p. 511.

There are six divisions of action which complete this movement. The first is to decrease, as far as possible, those causative influences and environmental conditions which are favorable to the creation of crippled children; the second, to locate and bring to the clinic or dispensary crippled children whom neighbors and ignorant or destitute parents are neglecting; and the third, to distribute these children, making surgical operation and acute hospital care available for those who are in need of treatment, and convalescent care available for those whose general physical condition should be improved preliminary to operation, or whom proper conditions of environment and treatment during an extended period of time will improve or cure.

The fourth step in this work is to insure crippled children the general and fundamental education which physical handicaps have for so long made impossible. In addition, they should be given the benefits of occupational therapy, vocational training, and vocational guidance and assistance. Fifth, it should be ascertained definitely that children leaving special institutions do not return to the unfortunate environmental conditions in which their affliction originally developed. Last, it should be the duty of every interested individual to arouse public sentiment which will support legislation and make available funds to make possible the fulfillment of the five steps named above. Public co-operation should accompany all of this social machinery, and in addition there must be the all-important personal contact with the unfortunate little ones. The latter is a blessing to all those who participate, and is the most natural curative and cheering influence which can be afforded to the patients.

In the course of this book we shall first step back and examine those darker ages when physical imperfection was a horrible stigma. We shall examine in a cursory manner those physical conditions which cause children to be handicapped. We shall then follow the little cripple as he is carried to the modem clinic, subjected to modern miracles of surgery, brought to the cheerful convalescent home, where he perhaps stands erect for the first time in his life, and where he is brought from the darkness of ignorance and introduced to the delights of education; and we shall finally gaze upon him and his fellows as they step forth into life and find themselves fully able to cope with their problems as if they had never been prostrate.

CHAPTER II.

HISTORY

There was a great holiday in Babylon. Well might the Babylonians rejoice, for had not their valiant warriors conquered those Israelite dogs, those worshipers of the hated Jehovah! The great Nebuchadnezzar rose from his throne and, crossing the spacious imperial chamber, stepped upon the balcony, that he might gaze upon the returning hosts. From the narrow street below, shone the lately burnished spears of his victorious soldiers. Column after column marched past their royal master, driving before them their reluctant Hebrew prisoners. Men, women, and children, thousands of new slaves to build the empire to new grandeur. Then came a group which caused Nebuchadnezzar to glare with anger, and shudder with fear. These crippled children, what demons had his soldiers brought with them!

"Bring me the prisoners," he said, "that I may pick my slaves from among them. But bring me 'children in whom there is no blemish.'"-1-

-1- See Daniel I, 4.

The Babylonians were not alone in their fear of cripples. Today we know that a child is crippled because disease has checked the natural development of a part of his physical organism, or because he has been maimed by some unnatural environmental condition. But organic evolution did not enter the popular consciousness until Darwin's Origin of Species and Descent of Man had extended the theory to animal and human life. Today the sociologist defines the cripple as "a person whose (muscular) movements are so far restricted by accident or disease as to affect his capacity for self support,"-2- but for generations the cripple has suffered from popular superstition resulting in fear and contempt.