Stockholm

The Polio Years

Also

Fisio

The institutional history of physical therapy: its schools, societies, wards and apparatus, 1813 onward.

Five sections
Franklin Roosevelt in the pool at Warm Springs, Georgia, adult figures in the water around him, the colonnade visible behind — landscape, full-bleed homepage lead
The Polio Years

The 1952 season put 57,600 reported cases through American wards, and the trade that met them had existed for a century.

Poliomyelitis figures are those published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New York City counted roughly 9,000 reported cases in the summer of 1916, by the returns of its own Department of Health. The 1952 season in figures

Roosevelt swam at Warm Springs from 1924; he bought the property in 1926 and chartered the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation the year after.Photo: Franklin Delano Roosevelt Swimming in a Pool at Warm Springs, Georgia - DPLA - 3702e75a16f97c41be1b361459c1a452 · Wikimedia Commons
Apparatus

Drinker built the machine. Emerson built the one a city hospital could afford.

Philip Drinker's cabinet respirator of 1928 worked, and cost more than most hospitals could carry.

John Haven Emerson's revision of 1931 did the same work at roughly a third of the price, and the respirator ward became something a public hospital could actually stock.

Drinker's machine and Emerson's revision→
1 2 3 4 5 1931 · EMERSON PATTERN · TANK RESPIRATOR · CUTAWAY
Tank respirator, Emerson pattern: head collar and gasket at the left, hinged dome and portholes along the tank, bellows and motor at the right, pressure gauge at centre.Drawing · Fisio
  1. 1Head collar and gasket, the only opening in the shell
  2. 2Dome portholes, hinged for access
  3. 3Sliding carriage, drawn out on rails
  4. 4Pressure gauge on the tank crown
  5. 5Bellows, belt and motor
An Emerson iron lung on display in a museum setting, the riveted steel cylinder at full length, no person inside — landscape
Emerson's 1931 tank sold at roughly a third of the price of the Drinker–Shaw cabinet of 1928.Photo: Model SC Iron Lung (NCP 3684), National Museum of Health and Medicine · Wikimedia Commons
Adult hands holding a brass goniometer over a desk, the degree scale legible — close crop, upright format
Read in degrees.Photo: Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels
Period engraving of Ling's Royal Gymnastic Central Institute in Stockholm — archival reproduction, landscape
Baron Nils Posse, a graduate of Ling's institute, carried the Swedish system to Boston in the 1880s.Photo: Baron Nils Posse, Swedish Army officer and gymnastics instructor · Wikimedia Commons
Stockholm1813Royal Gymnastic Central Institute

Per Henrik Ling, a fencing master, opened the Royal Gymnastic Central Institute in Stockholm and taught instructors from a fixed syllabus. Certificates followed, and with them a licensable trade.

Ling and the Stockholm curriculum

Also on the record

Three more the archive keeps sending people back to

01 StockholmFour Nurses and a Register: 1894 A profession draws its own boundary→ 02 PeopleThe Kenny Method Was an Argument, Not a Settlement When a Nurse Arrived With a Theory→ 03 StockholmThe World Confederation Meets for the First Time, 1951 A Meeting with a Specific Agenda→

Sections

01

Stockholm

The Royal Gymnastic Central Institute, Ling's curriculum, and the institutional line that runs from 1813 to the first professional charters.

02

The Polio Years

The 1916 and 1949–52 epidemics in dated figures, the wards they filled, and the vaccines that ended them.

03

Apparatus

The machines, instruments, and objects that defined clinical practice — documented as historical objects, not as equipment recommendations.

04

People

Named practitioners whose documented work — and the arguments around it — shaped the profession's direction.

05

Buildings

The wards, institutes, and foundations built around the profession — from Ling's Stockholm hall to the post-war rehabilitation hospitals.

Buildings

Seven places the record keeps returning to

Stockholm and London made the credential; Oswestry built for it. Boston, New York, Warm Springs and Los Angeles met the epidemics.

IStockholmOswestryLondon
IIBostonNew YorkWarm SpringsLos Angeles
I

Northern Europe

The credential was written in Stockholm in 1813 and chartered in London in 1920. Oswestry built the wards it staffed.

II

United States

Boston trained the aides, New York met the 1916 season, Warm Springs was chartered in 1927, and Los Angeles held the largest respirator bank.

Geometry · supplied map kit