A newly discovered film shows Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had polio, walking

For those here who've never encountered polio or know survivors of it, it's one of the scariest diseases imaginable. My father's generation was one of the last to commonly grow up with it, and medicine was entirely unable to provide much support to sufferers of the virus. I know he grew up in a large family, and I also know that 2 or maybe 3 uncles and aunts of mine were killed in childhood from it.

One of my uncles also had it and survived, but was crippled for the rest of his life. He was able to get around okay with braces and a cane until his mid-50s. And then the trauma from the disease finally caught up to him and he spent the rest of his life as a paraplegic with breathing troubles that finally killed him in his early 70s.

My father may have caught it, but was able to fight it off. He also has Guillain-Barré syndrome and attributes it to that period.

Medicine was so unable to cope with the volume and severity of the patients during the 30s and 40s that "alternative" remedies came into full fashion. In 1949, a researcher named Fred R. Klenner claimed to have found that high doses of vitamin-C could ward off the virus. As a result households stricken with polio often found themselves stuffed to the gills with donations of fruits, vegetables and strangely goats as it was believed that goat milk had high doses of the vitamin.

Salk's discovery of the vaccine, the trials around it and the mass global uptake afterwards have almost rendered the virus extinct. But it could almost never happen today.

He was able walk for short distances, but only with difficulty and a lot of pain. He often used a cane to help him out.

Winston Churchill records seeing Roosevelt slowly walk over to greet him, and knew how difficult it was for Roosevelt to do that.

Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYN1apQHPx0&feature=youtu.be

> Roosevelt was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down. He was diagnosed with poliomyelitis at the time, but his symptoms are more consistent with Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS) – an autoimmune neuropathy which Roosevelt's doctors failed to consider as a diagnostic possibility.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt%27s_pa...

The footage was less surprising to me than the fact that Photographers and cameraman had the upmost respect and empathy back then to not video or photograph him walking or getting out of a car or such.

In this day n age there is absolutely 0 respect because negative news sells.

Ok, I have to ask, what kind of camera was that? Did we really have film cameras small enough that could be casually carried by tourists in 1935?

FDR often leaned on people's arms to get support so he could appear to be walking or standing. In this video he does it too.

If you saw Ken Burns' series on The Roosevelts, there was plenty of film of this.

FDR had developed a way of moving stiff legged in his braces. It was painful and difficult.

Url changed from http://time.com/5325424/video-president-roosevelt-walking/, which points to this.