When he was one day old, Paul off its 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 hospital 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 and you're 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 Hotpack 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 really drove me to do

...