Library Collections: Document: Full Text

FOREWARD

By FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

FOLLOWING is the Annual Report of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation for the fiscal year ended September 30, 1940, and a description, necessarily brief, of its activities during the last thirteen years.

In my opinion it would be a mistake to think of the Foundation as just a hospital. It is all of that and more. During a pioneering period it has conducted many activities and dealt with many problems that do not confront a hospital in its customary routine.

The conception of the Foundation at Warm Springs was an experiment in treating by hydrotherapy individuals who had been handicapped as a result of infantile paralysis, and in caring for them under certain psychological, climatic and geographical conditions not always present in the usual hospitalization of such patients. Such an institution really required building from the very base and necessitated at the same time maintaining a flexibility that would enable it to conform to any changes in the scientific care of the after-effects of infantile paralysis.

The Foundation has unquestionably done much good for individual cases, but it has been working to the end that it might also be able to discover something of value for those thousands of cases which, of course, it cannot care for. Needless to say, such a hope takes time and unlimited patience, but with the new facilities recently installed at the Foundation, it will be enabled, while caring for the individual cases to the limit of its capacity, to devote more of its time to the broader aspects of the after-effects of this disease for the benefit of all afflicted by it.

Apart from the purely medical phase of the work of the Foundation, its very existence during the last thirteen years has aroused to an unbelievable extent in this country, and even abroad, a public recognition of the havoc caused by this disease and the necessity of making every effort to bring it under control. As set forth in this Report, all of this imposed upon the Foundation at Warm Springs obligations and activities throughout the whole country which it had to assume and which, to the extent possible, it was glad to undertake.

With the creation of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1938, the purpose of which is to unify, direct and coordinate the fight against this disease in all its phases, the Foundation at Warm Springs was able to concentrate its efforts directly on the medical problems involved in the after-effects of the disease.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

"The Spirit of Warm Springs"

THE GEORGIA WARM SPRINGS FOUNDATION is essentially a medical institution for the treatment of the after-effects of infantile paralysis. For this reason, medical care and treatment is paramount and takes precedence over all other factors. The Foundation, however, does recognize that the medical regimen is most effective when supplemented by high morale.

The Foundation is unusually fortunate in providing a physical environment totally different from that usually associated with an institution of this kind. With these geographical advantages, the Foundation has stressed and fostered the building of as normal a social life as is possible.

That this has been accomplished to a great extent is witnessed by the spirit of cheer, optimism and good fellowship among the patients, whether they be on stretchers, in hospital beds, in wheel chairs, or on crutches. The average visitor finds it difficult to understand how the patients can achieve and maintain such a splendid mental attitude of encouragement. If it were not for the braces, crutches and wheel chairs, one would not think from observing the happy faces and listening to the good-natured conversation and laughter that these were any but able-bodied people indulging in a rest cure. Such an accomplishment could not succeed were it not encouraged by the entire personnel of the Foundation.

Table of Contents

OFFICERS

President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Vice-President KEITH MORGAN
Vice-President and Treasurer BASIL O'CONNOR
Vice-President HENRY POPE
Vice-President and Secretary RAYMOND H. TALOR
Assistant Treasurer LOUIS C. HAUGHEY
Assistant Treasurer J. BRUCE WILLIAMS
Assistant Secretary FRED BOTTS
Assistant Secretary WILLIAM F. SNYDER