When he was one day old, Paul Offet's feet were put in casts.

He'd been born with club feet.

The treatment healed his left foot, but not his right.

So when Paul was five, he had surgery, but at the time in the 1950s the

procedure hadn't been perfected. So I had a failed operation on my right foot

which landed me in Kernan's hospitals for crippled children.

Because that was back in the days when children's hospitals would often have names like

crippled and feeble-minded in them.

So I was there for six weeks.

Paul found the hospital to be a lonely scary place.

There was one visiting hour a week.

The nurses were pretty rough.

You were pretty much there in your bed by yourself.

One of the most distressing parts of his day was listening to the agony of the 20 other children

in the ward.

Every one of them was infected with polio.

And I remember that disease.

I remember the iron lungs, and I remember something

called the sister Kenny Hot Pack treatments where they would take these

scaldingly hot rags put them on withered muscles of the arms or legs and I

remember children screaming out in pain. It was hell.

That image of those children who were vulnerable and helpless and alone

...