Paralytic illness of Franklin D. Roosevelt

This article is part of a series about Franklin D. Roosevelt
Early life Family Paralysis State Senator Secretary of the Navy 1920 Cox–Roosevelt campaign 44th Governor of New York Governorship 32nd President of the United States First & second terms, 1933–1941 Third & fourth terms, 1941–1945 Timeline Transition Inaugurations first second third fourth First term First 100 days New Deal Glass-Steagall Act WPA Social Security SEC Fireside Chats Second term Supreme Court Packing National Recovery Act 1937 recession March of Dimes Third term World War II Attack on Pearl Harbor Infamy Speech Atlantic Charter Japanese Internment Tehran Conference United Nations D-Day Second Bill of Rights G.I. Bill Harlan F. Stone Supreme Court nomination Wiley Rutledge Supreme Court nomination Fourth term Yalta Conference Declining health Death and state funeral Presidential campaigns 1932 primaries convention campaign election 1936 primaries convention campaign election 1940 primaries convention campaign election 1944 primaries convention campaign election Electoral history Legacy Criticism Foreign policy New Deal critics Civil rights record Presidential Library Memorial Depictions
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Franklin D. Roosevelt, later the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 to 1945, began experiencing symptoms of a paralytic illness in 1921 when he was 39 years old. His main symptoms were fevers; symmetric, ascending paralysis; facial paralysis; bowel and bladder dysfunction; numbness and hyperesthesia; and a descending pattern of recovery. He was diagnosed with poliomyelitis and underwent years of therapy, including hydrotherapy at Warm Springs, Georgia. Roosevelt remained paralyzed from the waist down and relied on a wheelchair and leg braces for mobility, which he took efforts to conceal in public. In 1938, he founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, leading to the development of polio vaccines. Although historical accounts continue to refer to Roosevelt's case as polio, the diagnosis has been questioned in the context of modern medical science, with a competing diagnosis of Guillain–Barré syndrome proposed by some authors.