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The war and its precarious peace-time has again focused attention on a problem which is not only of the war but even more so of the peace,—that of the physically and mentally handicapped and their rehabilitation.
The author has been connected with the work of rehabilitating the handicapped for some twenty-eight years. He joined the first government service for the rehabilitating of the handicapped as Assistant Director to the New Jersey Rehabilitation Clinic in 1919. He was its Medical Director up to 1941, when he was called into the Navy, to do this same type of work. He gave the lecture to the Hunterian Society in 1935, and was consulted by the British Government on the problem in 1939. He enjoys an international reputation in his field. Thus he is eminently qualified to review the whole of this tremendous problem in a survey which he presents to us in this volume. In 1934, he had already discussed it in a book entitled, “The Crippled and Disabled”. In this volume he again brings up to date and re-studies the whole field in the light of our experiences and accomplishments of the past war.
The large numbers of men refused by the army for military service shocked the whole nation. But the problem was already more than alive to those working in the field. On the basis of the 1940 census, there were a half million crippled children in the United States, and two million disabled or crippled adults. The 1929 estimates of five million unemployed included these 2 1/2 million disabled, as unemployables. Thus at all times, we have with us an irreducible minimum of 2 1/2 million unemployed, (due to age and physical incapacity). Some idea of the loss of earning power involved may be suggested by a study made by the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation in the year 1946. In that year 36,000 handicapped were rehabilitated. The total earnings before rehabilitation