Doctors at the time seemed unsure about how to treat Mrs Harford's polio, which was then known as infantile paralysis.

BBC: The lifelong fight against polio

In 1938, Roosevelt founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, an organization known today as the March of Dimes Foundation, to fight polio.

CNN: Why polio hasn't gone away yet

Leopoldville engages in an all-out fight against infantile paralysis, crowding every clinic with mothers and their children, the latter to receive orally administered shots of a new vaccine against the scourge of childhood.

NPR: Origin of AIDS Linked to Colonial Practices in Africa