OF ALL war casualties, the hope of none has received a greater boost than that of the paraplegic patient. What was once blank invalidism is now self sufficiency and independence. No longer need the paraplegic patient be an economic liability, a charge on society, sapped of self respect and initiative, confronted only by an empty horizon. His is a new perspective, a broader horizon, crystallized in the rehabilitation accomplishments of the recent war.
The attainments and advancements of the war were doubtless primarily the consequence of the large number of cases of traumatic transverse myelitis, which posed so urgent a problem that it became necessary to establish centers (nineteen in the Army, one in the Navy) for the specialized treatment of these injuries. The segregation thus in large numbers afforded the opportunity, the facilities and the personnel for mass observation, evaluation and standardization of treatment procedures. In one Navy hospital,