Inventing Polio Care at the Colonie de Saint-Fargeau: Disability, Rehabilitation, and the Welfare State in Interwar France.

This article focuses on the Colonie de Saint-Fargeau, France’s first residential rehabilitation facility for children and adolescents paralyzed by polio, founded in 1919 by Ellen Poidatz, a polio survivor and Red Cross nurse. It examines how Poidatz framed her work within maternalist politics to secure private donations and public funding, embedding the Colonie within France’s mixed economy of social welfare. The article analyzes the Colonie’s rehabilitation methods, combining physiotherapy, education, and a familial environment, while highlighting the tensions in delivering polio care amid interwar social, medical, and political contexts. It also situates the Colonie as a national model that influenced the development of rehabilitation medicine and the welfare state in twentieth-century France, despite challenges related to funding, social attitudes toward disability, and the limits of vocational retraining.