A WORLD TO CARE FOR

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 2, 1972

Chairman of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the distinguished New York University Medical Center, Dr. Rusk has devoted most of his 40 years of professional practice to convincing the AMA, the philanthropists and the public at large of the urgent need to establish rehabilitation as a full-fledged specialty in medicine. Tiffs account of his unremitting labors on behalf of paraplegics, quadraplegics, amputees, and polio and cerebral palsy victims is as modest as it is exhilarating. The tragic situation of the physically disabled first struck him during World War II -- the maimed veteran was consigned to a limbo of the living dead, written off by doctors as a useless piece of protoplasm. Almost single-handedly Rusk began to dun the military brass for rehabilitation and retraining facilities which would ""treat the whole man"" including psychological adjustment and vocational training. His successes in the Air Force and after the war in New York's Bellevue Hospital were often near miraculous. One quadraplegic became a professor of neuropathology, another took up painting and became a successful artist. To date the Rusk Institute has restored some 200,000 persons to self-sufficiency as well as preparing doctors from 85 countries for orthopedic medicine. How this was accomplished, with the help of Bernard Baruch, President Truman, Arthur Sulzberger and others whom Rusk lobbied or coaxed or bamboozled for funds, is the subject of this quietly heroic book. And amazingly enough the doctor makes it sound as though it's all in a day's work.

Pub Date: Oct. 2, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION