Ambulatory Case

Plucky Betsey Barton's account of her triumph over a broken back, And Now to Live Again (TIME, Oct. 30, 1944), has helped many a bedridden cripple stand again on his own feet. Last week, before the American Congress of Physical Medicine in Manhattan, one of them gave a noteworthy demonstration.

David Hall, 28, is a chubby, drawling Tarheel who used to play football. Thirteen years ago osteomyelitis (bone infetion) cut his spinal cord and paralyzed him from the waist down. That put him on his back, but not out of circulation. He got through high school and the University of North Carolina in a wheel chair, went on to law school, two years ago married his nurse.

Three months ago he arrived at Manhattan's Institute for the Crippled and Disabled (which he had read about in Betsey Barton's book), announced firmly that he meant to walk by summer's end. The institute's walking course normally takes nine months. Said Medical Director George G. Deaver: "Certainly."

The training of a paraplegic starts almost from scratch. David could not dress himself or put on braces without help, could barely sit erect. But after six weeks of push-ups and other exercises to strengthen arms, shoulders and abdominal muscles, he was ready to begin crutch work. To walk, he had to learn to swing his body by gravity, like a pendulum. But learning to walk is only part of it. For a paraplegic, getting in & out of a chair or opening a door is a major undertaking, made up of many intricate, precisely timed movements which take weeks to learn.

The institute's goal: to make its patients almost completely independent, able to go anywhere under their own power. Par scores: 15 minutes to dress; 7 1/2 minutes to put on a brace; one minute to get out of bed or rise from a chair; 30 seconds to open and close a door. To graduate, institute patients must also be able to go up or down three steps in one minute, enter a bus in ten seconds, cross a 48-ft. street in 20 seconds (before the traffic light changes).

David bettered par on every course. In his show for the Congress of Physical Medicine, he hopped briskly onto a platform 18 inches high, dropped to the floor and, by strategic use of his crutches, got up again in less than 30 seconds. Said David to the doctors: "Anybody with good arms and shoulders can learn to walk." None contradicted him.

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