Therapy with baby ducks has many advantages.
It was the cute little ducklings that caught our attention at first, but the little girl lying on her back in this photo represents something very special: the treatment methods used during the polio pandemic. Hospitals use animal-assisted therapy all the time now, but back in the 1950s, it was a novel concept.
Animals provided a welcome distraction for children who were confined to the hospital for long periods of time with infantile paralysis, as polio was known. The ‘negative pressure’ ventilator known as a ‘cuirass’ was found to be more effective for children with polio than the iron lungs that were commonly used on adults.