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Editor's Note
Mrs. Donnelly has certainly caught and recorded in a word picture "The Spirit of Warm Springs." Perhaps the explanation of her ability to do this so readily is that she belongs to the Polio fraternity, having suffered Infantile Paralysis several years ago.

MOST of the things worth doing in this world have to be done, steadily, for a long time. . . . Some six hundred people, during the last five years, have found this out as members of the Colony at the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation.

To the stranger riding up from the 7:12 train after dark, Meriwether Inn at the Springs might be any old-time hostelry in any quiet mountain resort of the Eastern States. There is a quick impression of cottages, of porch lights, laughter and singing -- the sort of thing to be found all summer long in the Adirondacks, the Berkshires, the Catskills, the White Mountains, wherever an old hotel has welcomed country -- loving folk for fifty years and more. There are the broad, vine-hung verandas, the porch chairs, a great lighted dining room with colored waiters scurrying about and a captain drawing chairs; a row of parked automobiles with state licenses from far and near, and, impertinently modern under the ancient trees, a midget golf course.

All this you glimpse and find familiar.

Then you see the wheel chairs, a whole fleet of them, pushed by friendly hands or sent spinning along by the occupants themselves. Wheel chairs for the most part filled with Youth -- children, girls in their 'teens and their twenties; stalwart chaps who might be -- and have been -- college athletes. There are older people, too, both men and women, shoving the chairs which make getting about the hotel and its grounds a simple matter for those who cannot walk. You see crutches in use, and canes, and braces. But not for a moment do you find anything which seems like a sanitarium or a hospital. There is, when you come and when you go, and all the while you've stayed, the spirit of a country club or a hotel at some popular resort. Serious as is the work carried on -- strictly scientific as is every part of the procedure, there is, someway, nothing institutional, nothing oppressively "organized." The machinery of routine is kept almost incredibly human. There seems only a simple, common-sense schedule for the day's hard work-out, then every chance for rest and recreation in the grove of pines and oaks where the Foundation family, has its habitation.

There are two usual words in constant use about the Inn and cottages which hit the ear at once. They are "Polio" and "Physio."

Polio is a contraction of the jaw-breaking Anterior Poliomyelitis, the scientific term for the disease of Infantile Paralysis, which no lay person is sure about spelling or pronouncing correctly. There is something jolly about the brief Polio. It sounds like a game, and it is played like a game at Warm Springs. With every rule of the true sportsman.

Polio is the reason for the Warm Springs Foundation and its swimming pools. The story of this development is widely known. It has to do with the illness, ten years ago, of Franklin D. Roosevelt, now Governor of New York. At a summer camp in Maine, Poliomyelitis, as the doctors wrote it in their records, struck him down as it strikes down thousands of persons in the United States each year. True to its grim form it left him unable to walk. In his search for exercise which would bring back power of locomotion he learned of benefit received by a fellow sufferer from the same disease who had kept up swimming and exercising in the waters of Warm Springs. Mr. Roosevelt tried the experiment. He noticed real improvement. Eager to discover the effects in a number of people, he brought to Warm Springs an orthopedic specialist, a physiotherapist, trained in the most scientific form of exercise in use for this form of paralysis, and twenty-six persons who were victims of the disease. Each individual showed improvement after treatment in the water.

Convinced that benefit was there, Mr. Roosevelt set out to raise funds to develop the present fine plant which is the objective of many motor trips by visitors from all over the South. After more than a year of experimental work there was incorporated the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation designed as a center for the study and after-treatment of Infantile Paralysis. A number of prominent men consented to act as Trustees and the Foundation is conducted as a public trust entirely without profit.

The spring water gushes down from the hills at a warm temperature the year round and to insure swimming and exercising with comfort during the winter months a glass-enclosed swimming pool has been installed and the temperature of the air made as comfortable as that of the water.

It is at the pools the "Physios" preside. In the terminology of the MDs they are physiotherapists, people who administer physiotherapy. Therapy for the Greek word meaning healing. Physio -- physical. There you have it. At Warm Springs it is hydro therapy, or water therapy.

To the capable hands of the Physios, under the supervision of the Surgeon-in-Chief, Dr. Michael Hoke, and their enthusiastic Director, Miss Alice Lou Plastridge, is intrusted the work with legs and arms and backs damaged by Polio, the carefully charted exercises which have in every case produced improvement. The Physios are an important part of life at the Colony. They are very pleasant to watch -- a squad of lean, brown, alert young women on the job at the pools each day in bathing suits, back at the Inn for luncheon in sports clothes that match their tan, watching the walking exercises in the afternoon, giving out the charm of their abundant vitality when the day's work is done and the members of the Colony group themselves about for relaxation. Their relationship to the people they treat is peculiarly close.

"That's my Physio," the children point out with proprietorship, "That tall one with black hair."

As it is for daily exercise in the waters of Warm Springs that the members of the Foundation colony have come, to the pool they go each day but Sunday. Busses or private cars take them the short distance down the hill. One of the surprises to the stranger on the Foundation grounds is the ease with which people who can walk only with difficulty, drive cars. Again the example of the Governor of New York has been followed -- in equipping automobiles with hand controls which substitute hand work for foot work and make driving possible.

Surrounded by individual dressing booths opening upon cement walks along which wheel chairs are easily pushed about, the pools are filled with water so beautiful in color and clearness that to see it for the first time is to exclaim. Above -- a smooth white cement bottom it ripples, tropically blue and caressing to the touch. There are three pools, one enclosed and two open. The exercise and treatment given by the Physios under water are made more valuable because this water permits immersion for long periods without becoming enervated. Buoyancy gives aid.

I saw a woman hanging on to one of the iron bars at the side of the pool, lift a badly paralyzed leg upward while floating on her chest.

"I can barely move it while lying in bed," she declared, "but here, look, how fair I can bring it up!"

Reclining on tables built in the pools, the patients receive the treatment which has been prescribed by the medical staff.

"You see down here in the water we've gotten rid of Old Man Gravity," a man who was exercising told me "That helps like heck. And the Physios know their stuff. There's got to be co-ordination -- exact work by the Physios -- all the help the patient can give himself -- with the favorable condition of working under water."

Being unable to walk does not mean being unable to swim. Almost every Warm Springs patient learns to swim. Many a newcomer has never been in deeper water than a full bath tub.

"Just relax," the Physio tells the novice. "Keep your hips up. Just like you were lying on a bed. Put your head back. Now bring your arms up to your chest. Throw them straight out and bring them back against your sides. Push! That's it!"

Bright-hued bathing caps bob about, tanned arms flash out and churn the water. At the inner pool, a tall, lithe girl, who is a Physio, keeps vigil under one of the orange umbrellas which stand colorfully about. There are stalwart young men, ready to lift the more helpless when their aid is needed, sun-browned to the color of the Indians who once lived at Warm Springs. One of these youths comes from Martha Berry's famous school.

An institution of the pools is Sarah. To the Northerner she is a most diverting person. Here, there, and everywhere, pouring olive oil on skins that have not known the sun, adjusting bathing suits, fetching towels, wheeling chairs.

"Yas'm," she informs, "I was born right here in Warm Springs. Six years I've been with the Foundation. Befo' that, too -- when there was jes' bo'ders up at the hotel."

Tall, gaunt, black, old, with her sun hat and bony hands, Sarah is everybody's friend. Kindliness, solicitude, encouragement slip away from her.

"Cose yo' can learn to swim. Come to yo' all at once. Fust thing yo' knows yo'll be going right across the pool by yo'self. Yas, ma'am!"

Work at the pools, with physical examinations, take up Warm Springs mornings. When the ravenous appetites induced by exercise are satisfied by luncheon, a well-earned period of rest follows. Complete physical relaxation is urged.

To the afternoons is assigned, walking exercises. Aided and encouraged by the Physios, walking is practised and stairs which have been purposely erected out under the trees are tackled. Hand railings furnish support and patiently, eagerly, steps are taken, and little by little gain is registered. Not a day is missed unless illness intervenes.

The daily life at the Colony is so lively and spirited that a lay man might almost miss the stern, relentless routine of treatment which must be undergone if the maximum of good is to be gained. It is not an easy routine and it is under the closest sort of medical direction, for the program represents the most advanced knowledge available on the subject. During the year many doctors from this country and from abroad visit the Foundation and all patients come to Warm Springs through their own physicians.

The population of the Colony varies. People come and go -- and those who go often come back again. Optimism and normality and enjoyment of country living and outdoor exercise consistently prevail. Many come long distances. There's a brown-eyed girl from Seattle and a youth with broad shoulders from Vancouver. California and Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kansas -- state after state is represented. A woman has registered from the province of New Brunswick. Two very small people win a smile from everyone who looks their way -- a little boy of three or so with his pretty nurse in her uniform and white cap, a brown-haired young lady not yet four whose mother has come with her. There is a youngster of eight with a brace on one leg who does a hop, skip and a jump every once in a while, telling the world he is getting better. A large delegation between ten and fifteen are just plain boy, roguish and sizzling with energy.

Polio does not come to childhood alone. There is a record of a man of seventy being made helpless by its devastating scourge. Men and women in the fifties are victims of the disease and often much more severely disabled than young folk. No part of the country is exempt from invasion. Foreign countries suffer in the same way. One of the members of the Colony is a physician, a specialist in children's diseases, who became ill in Rome and came back to the United States unable to walk. Another of the patients who is taking treatment this summer had Infantile Paralysis in Paris.

The Inn and cottages and pools are a stairless Eden for the residents. One of the things a person deprived of the customary use of his limbs comes to realize is how full of stairs the world is. Steps up and steps down, so many beautiful stone stairways without a sign of a hand railing to give friendly aid. Going up stairs normally means putting all the weight of the body on one foot when a step up or step down is taken. Even people with perfectly good legs are prone to puff a bit before the top is reached and it is generally known that stair climbing puts a strain on the heart. Yet stairs everywhere prevail.

"Architects make things hard when they design public buildings, theoretically for the use of all the people," a woman at Warm Springs declared. "Look at the postoffices, courthouses, railroad stations, churches and the Federal edifices in Washington! All of them with smooth slippery staircases up to their doors. The approach to the library of Columbia University in New York City is a solid mass of railless steps. To save me I can't get into the New York Postoffice on Eighth Avenue -- neither can the great majority of Polio cases in Manhattan. Beauty of design in entrances seems to sacrifice ease of access."

At Warm Springs everything is on the level. Ramps give convenience to the hotel, not a step or a threshold may be seen in any of the cottages.

"I live in one of those towns built on a hillside where everybody has terraces," one of the Warm Springs family who walks on crutches told me, "almost everyone I know lives in a house with two or three flights of steps up to the front door. Not a hand railing in sight. Getting about here is so easy I dread going home."

Most people who have had Polio find it difficult to indulge in play at beaches and mountain resorts. Walking in sand is out of the question. Mountain pathways are likely to be slippery with pine needles and uneven with tree roots. Wheeled chairs can't be wheeled. Braces and crutches are inadequate for getting about. If it offered nothing else, life at Warm Springs would give a victim of Polio a healthful holiday -- under the most favorable conditions.

As the work has gone on each year, the special needs of the residents have been met in many ways. In any group of people living together for a given time, illness is likely to occur and a modern infirmary has been built where hospital care is immediately available. A physician who is a general practitioner visits the Colony three times a week. There is a library full of worn books, a recreational building where movies, church services and class work have a roof to shelter them. Many children are of school age -- a teacher gives them regular instruction. Craft work is popular. On the main floor of the hotel is a gift shop as versatile as an old-fashioned country store, where wheel-chair shopping is constantly going on. There is traffic in magazines, camera supplies, tooth paste, talcum powder, bathing caps, post cards, stamps and what not.

At times boarding school life is suggested. When tables are put together for a farewell party for some lad leaving for home the next day. Tin horns and clownish caps. Hilarity. Ice cream. Or when a bus load goes on a picnic and takes a watermelon along.

All the patients share the comfort and sociability of the hotel lounge. Beneath the old beamed ceilings every night after dinner there is a group about the piano and crooners rival the voices which may be heard over the radio from far away broadcasting stations. A pool table is surrounded by partisans of the game. Bridge and chess playing become popular before the blazing logs which are kindled in the great fire places when evenings grow chilly.

A spirit of camaraderie prevails throughout the reserve which makes the newcomer feel at home. First names are used in greeting -- and nicknames. Cosmopolitan interests make contacts as pleasant as aboard ship. And because Southern skies are what they are at night, and the Georgia moon, is what it is, and magnolias bloom in the spring and Youth is Youth, Romance has its innings now and then. Wedding announcements have more than once appeared on the Bulletin Board.

During the year many relatives and friends visit Warm Springs. A fine golf course is available for them, tennis courts, a Drive Yourself Car arrangement, a public pool, filled with the same warm spring water. And always the invigorating hill air, the fragrance of the Pines, the flood of sunshine, the delight of wild life. Red-headed woodpeckers climb about the trees, blue jays wrangle, tame squirrels live the life of Reilly all over the grounds, thrushes and mocking birds and whippoorwills tell of their presence in the woodlands. One of the joys of Warm Springs is the almost human saddle horses, sleek and shining, which may be rented for a nominal sum. For very young people there is a pony cart and a colored man who knows all there is to be known about horses.

Something of the spirit of the Warm Springs Colony was evinced last spring when a number of patients contributed their blood, to be used by the Rockefeller Institute in making a serum with which to combat Infantile Paralysis. None know better than they themselves the malignity of this Common Enemy. They recognize that efforts at defense are still feeble and are eager to help in any way that those who come after may benefit.

Inspired by the appeal of Governor Roosevelt that a Crusade against Polio be started at once, there was organized this summer, a National Patients' Committee with the purpose of entering upon a crusade as earnest as those of other Ages. The members and officers of this committee know from their own experience what it means to "have Infantile Paralysis" and are giving themselves heart and soul to an effort to control and alleviate one of the most devastating diseases which menaces mankind.

To a certain extent the work in Georgia is pioneer work. History is in the making. A record of this is being written into the pages of the Polio Chronicle, a monthly publication which made its first appearance during the past summer.

There have been no miraculous cures in the swimming pools of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. Yet blighted muscles and paralyzed nerve cells have responded to the system of treatment and careful examinations show gain -- and more gain. Steps nearer normality are taken than have been taken before. Each patient is given a periodical report with markings that read like a rating in school.

"Look," I heard one red-haired girl who had Polio only last fall cry out as she examined her card, "There's nineteen muscles come up!"

Only in rare instances is there complete recovery from Polio. But those who have experienced it know the significance and thrill of even a little progress.

Through the interest in the Foundation which has been aroused throughout the country, proof is constantly coming in that hundreds of bright people who have had Infantile Paralysis are doing important things. The periodical visits of Governor Roosevelt, the adventurous hour when each member of the Colony is presented to him, have peculiar inspiration. He has been through the mill, too. And is still persisting in the same form of exercise. Above all, he has an arduous job, a job which demands tremendous vitality and long hours of very hard work. Every newspaper in the country daily records his unceasing activity.

What he does -- can be done!

I have said that when you come up the hill from the depot the Warm Springs Colony seems like a country club or a hotel resort. When you go back down the hill to take the train after a sojourn of weeks, it seems like something more -- like a huge family of two or three generations which has come together for a reunion, and stayed on, happily, in a kinship of a common interest, strong as the ties of blood.