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THE IRON CRADLE by

THE IRON CRADLE

By

Pub Date: Sept. 16th, 1954
Publisher: Crowell

A first person account not only of the physical recovery from a severely crippling case of polio, but also the adaptation to the restrictive life it left him to lead, is candid, to the point of intimacy, and thoroughly unselfconscious. At 27, Larry Alexander, a fairly new husband and father, was hospitalized with a severe attack which left him in an iron lung- and without any sensory capacity in his arms or legs. The pain of the first few weeks was followed by a rather truculent discouragement which was not eased in the months to follow. He was moved to the Kenny Institute where certain therapies took him out of the respirator for lengthening periods, but as a year passed, the total paralysis of other muscles was unchanged, and another move to the Mary McArthur (Helen Hayes') unit in Wellesley provided a rocking bed and other special equipment. His return home- with a rocking bed, a portable respirator, and a wheel chair brought other disappointments- particularly in Norma, his wife- until his participation in a community campaign restored his interests in the world outside and an incentive to resume his work- with now an acknowledgement and acceptance of the limitations in the life ahead..... Not as distinctive as the Marugg book, Beyond Endurance, but direct and unsparing.