Therapool Treatments and Polio

The polio epidemic in the 1940s and 1950s prompted changes at the Pump Rooms. Rehabilitation in water was necessary to help children and adults recover their strength. The Pump Rooms divided The Ladies Swimming Pool in two, filling in half to create treatment areas and retaining the deep end of the pool for a therapeutic pool.

Saline therapeutic pools were first recommended for installation in the Pump Rooms in September 1947, largely in response to the polio epidemic. The therapeutic pool was formed out of the deep end of the Ladies Pool, and provided with a ramp for entry into the pool. Benches and metal frames were put into the pool as supports and rails to hold onto while patients were exercising. Initially a frame with slings and pulleys could be lowered into the water to support a patient, though by the late 1960s this was being replaced by rubber rings to support different parts of the body in the water. The natural buoyancy of water enabled people with wasted or mending limbs to exercise without their limbs bearing weight.

A girl’s wasted limbs are treated in the therapool (M3535.42.2)

A report in October 1957 records that ‘patients from the recent Poliomyelitis epidemic are being referred to us in ever increasing numbers. We are at the moment treating 37 patients; 16 adults and 21 children. Six of the adult patients, and one of the children are conveyed, and treated on stretchers. These patients are so incapacitated that they are treated as individual cases, as distinct from those who can help themselves: Removal of calipers, undressing, as well as treatment in the therapool is carried out by individual members of the staff.’ This called for re-deployment of staff from other treatments such as physiotherapy.

In the pool, buoyancy counteracted gravity, provided support and relief for weight bearing pressure on joints. The warmth of the water reduced pain and relaxed muscle spasm. Muscles strengthened by working progressively against graded resistance from buoyancy or turbulence of the water.

A report in Illustrated Magazine in 1953 described how 'one boy who suffers from polio is carried into the Royal Pump Room so much strapped up that a screwdriver is used to take off his various braces and callipers. But as soon as he is put into the therapeutic pool, which is a converted part of a swimming bath, he becomes as lively as a monkey'

By the 1970s treatment in the therapeutic pool was increasingly used to treat road accident victims.

Children being helped with remedial exercise in the therapeutic pool in 1953. (M3535. 1990.32. copyright Illustrated Magazine)

Chair used for wheeling patients into the Therapool. This was made in the workshops at the Pump Rooms. (M4641.2004)

Vortex Bath

The Vortex Bath was a specialist form of therapeutic bath. It was used to rehabilitate polio victims or to stimulate poor circulation. These were developed in the 1940s and treatments were carried out in individual cubicles in the pool department. The bath was a circular aluminium tub of forty gallon capacity. While other hydrotherapy departments had whirlpool baths, the Leamington vortex effect had been designed at Leamington

and fitted by the Pump Room Engineer and Matron in about 1949. For treatment the patient sat on a stool, bathed in water at a pre-heated temperature of 97°F. The water was then whirled around. Treatment was sometimes combined with exercises in water. After the bath, which lasted twenty minutes, patients were wrapped in warm towels.

Vortex bath ready for use. Patient could sit on the side to have feet and legs massaged, or sit in the bath for a whole or upper body treatment. (M4481.24.2)

History - later medical treatments
Hydrotherapy and Bath Treatments
Therapool Treatments and Polio
Heat and Light Treatments
Electrotherapy
Physiotherapy Treatments