Video: 'FDR Recovery'

(Wednesday, August 10, 1921, evening local time) — After a day of strenuous activity, 1920 Democratic vice presidential nominee (and future four-term president of the United States) Franklin D. Roosevelt, 39, complained of chills, nausea and pain in his lower back, skipped dinner and went to bed tonight while visiting his summer home on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada.

Roosevelt would develop acute symptoms of poliomyelitis, including fever; symmetric, ascending paralysis; facial paralysis; bowel and bladder dysfunction; numbness and hyperesthesia; and a descending pattern of recovery.

Video: 'Unit 5: FDR and Polio'

Roosevelt came close to death from the illness. He faced many life-threatening medical problems including the possibility of respiratory failure, urinary tract infection, injury to the urethra or bladder, decubitus ulcers, clots in the leg veins and malnutrition.

Most of the symptoms resolved themselves, but Roosevelt was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down. He would never walk again without leg braces, crutches or canes and the support of his son or an aide.

Video: 'PBS American Experience - FDR (1994) 2of5' (Roosevelt is stricken at 0:12)

At the time, Roosevelt was diagnosed with poliomyelitis. But a 2003 peer-reviewed study of Roosevelt’s paralytic illness favored a diagnosis of Guillain–Barré syndrome, a rapid-onset muscle weakness caused by the immune system damaging the peripheral nervous system, over poliomyelitis.

Although the cause of GBS is unknown, the underlying mechanism involves an autoimmune disorder in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the peripheral nerves and damages their myelin insulation.