The Washington herald., 1913-08-29
STRONG APPEAL OF
r L NEWSPAPER PICTURE
Practically All Crippled Children, if
Treated Early Enough in Life,
Nav Be Cured.
BY FRANCES sHAFFER.

1t was Just a newspaper picture of five
little children, but they were cripples
each one with a deformity to set hin
apart from the normal child with health
bounding through every inch Of hi
sound little body.
Some were club-footed, some with
short or mIsshapen legs, one with badly
curved spine, another wee, fair-faceo
chap hobbiing about on crutches, the
tiniest ever made. And they were pic
tured for the simple purpose Of serving
as silent pleaders for their own cause
and for the sake of others with deform-
tiles perhaps worse than theirs.
For down in Georgia there is no spe-
cial hospital where the crippled little
folk in the State may be sent for treat
ment, where the kinks may be taken
out of their crooked little bodies, and
where they may be started on the
high road to health and usefulness
later on.
They have started a movement TO
build a hospital and to gather in~all
the boys and girls whose legs hang limp
and useless, whose spines are weak or
who are otherwise deformed, and the pic
ture, with a story attached. is part of
the plan to arouse the big-hearted folk
os Georgia to open their purses and let
generous contributions pour in for those
handicapped little souls.
Ought to Be Mighty Enough.
And as the message was carried from
those twisted little bodies to the folk who
might respond it seems that II ought 10
have beer pathetic enough and mighty
enough TO meet a ready response from
men and women who count their dollars
away I'D in the millions and whose names
adorn many big buildings.
The leaders in the movement are not
asking a great deal By raising a main
tenance fund Of $4,000 a year, they say,
a tbirty-bed hospital could be equipped
and operated, and something like 40 boys
and girls, deformed in as many different
ways, could be treated in the course of a
year quite free of charge. There is moth
ing novel about the effort. New YORK
State and others have several such hos
pitals. But as the appeal is made. and
as one remembers the occasional little
cripples seen hopping about on crutches,
the wonderment comes that very wealthy
folk who say they are seeking useful out
lets for their spare millions do not Of
tener think of the cripples.
Because the great point Of the problem
is the declaration of physicians that prac-
tically every crippled child, If treated
early enough in life. might be cured But
a bed in a hospital comes high. and un-
less the word free" is attached to 1t
there are fathers and mothers a-plenty
in Georgia and in every other State in
the land who could not do one thing to
give their children an opportunity to
shake off the blights that must hold
them back through all the years to come.
Help the Little Folk.
And it seems that if wealthy folk gave
long thoughts to memorials to perpetuate
their names, more of their great con-
tributions would turn into channels to
help little folk grow well and strong and
straight of limb.
For it is rather a shock to look at the
crippled men and women one sees on the
streets, with their best usefulness gone
and many times wholly dependent upon
others, and still 10 remember that If
skilled surgeons and careful nurses had
gotten in their healing work before the
muscles were stiffened and the bones
hardened, they might have been straight
and sound like others.
Perhaps one of the things that start
ed the Georgia movement was the story
of a little fellow in the State, crippled
when a baby through the ravages of
iRfantle paralysis. His legs were shriv-
eIed and useless, and when he was nine
years old his father took him TO Atlanta
To learn if anything could be done. He
was told that surgery and scientific mas
sage applied to the paralytiC legs and
muscles would work a revolution and
tEat six months of treatment in a hos
ptal would turn him out cured. And
one of the physicians who examined
him offered his services free in order to
send him home cured and happy, but the
f. ther had others to support and there
vas no way opened for a bed in the
hospital, so there was nothing to do but
go back home. the disappointed father
and the little fellow who could not take
one step.
Not the Way Story Should End.
The writer of the story said he would
like TO relate that a sweet-faced woman
ma de possible a grand climax by offer
ing the money for full treatment
But the sweet-faced woman was OF
10 the seaside with her own
a little king. Maybe II she had
known, or had thought, she would have
been so glad and proud of her own little
son, so grateful for his sturdy, healthy
body, that she would have made that
story end as if worked out by a clever
novelist.
And it is because the folk who are
working for that hospital for crippled
children are trying TO bring their need
to the attention of men and women who
have the means, but who do not know
or think, that the pictures were taken
Of boys and girls with deformed bodies
and appealing faces.
For there are many who need only
TO be aroused.