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puttering about at the water’s edge where an occasional wave would; the incoming tide

 
      Then the doctor suggested swimming, and to everybody’s delight Marjorie took to the water like a proverbial duck. At first going swimming merely meant puttering about at the water’s edge where an occasional wave would float her feet and legs while most of her weight was borne on hands planted firmly in the sand, but later when she learned the “doggy paddle” she would ride on her father’s shoulders out to the calm water beyond the breakers and paddle about for several minutes like an enthusiastic puppy before she first started to walk again; the incident has become family annal. The incoming tide had come nearer and nearer the spot where Marjorie was constructing a fort in the wet sand, until a wave, lapping the shore a little farther than the others, started off with her beautiful new red bathing cap. Desperately clutching the sagging rope of the life line, Marjorie managed several steps, enough to rescue her cap from where it had been deposited against a post. Of course the next wave knocked her flat and tumbled her about, but she came up smiling, for she had walked, far enough and well enough to to rescue a beloved possession, and nothing could dim that moment of triumph.
      After that the walking lessons were resumed cheerfully and there were exercises to be done at night and new braces as Marjorie’s leg began to grow, for it did begin to grow and the flabby muscles to become firm. And so on for several years, games in winter, swimming in the summer, and finally a simple, very minor operation, then more swimming and outdoor games always preferably in company with other children. In short, Marjorie’s regimen was much like a normal child’s except that she swam more and played less tag, than most children and swam with a definite purpose other than the mere pleasure of the sport — although I have no doubt that the purpose was often forgotten with the hampering braces left on the beach when she entered the water. Today she is a straight, strong-limbed, healthy young woman who feels that she owes her strength and health to the swimming that first restored her self-confidence and re-educated her affected muscles.

ex Mollie Amos Polk, “The Curative Power of Swimming,” in The Forecast 32:4 (October 1926) : 214-216 (216)
Cornell copy/scan (via google books) : link
table of contents, this issue : link

same (Cornell) copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
NYPL copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link

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The article is devoted to the use of swimming in therapeutic settings : convalescent soldiers, orthopedics, treatment of various types of paralysis, scoliosis, etc. The words “polio” and “poliomyelitis” do not appear in the article, which is illustrated with three photographs.
 

Mollie Amos Polk was a much-published writer specializing in nutrition and topics falling under that broad umbrella, “home economics.”

She also wrote (or co-wrote) fiction, an example being “The Affair at Deep Valley; A First-Run Story” by Elinor Maxwell and Mollie Amos Polk, in the Evening Star (Washington, D.C.; August 7, 1932)
LoC’s Chronicling America : link

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The Forecast — “America’s Leading Food Magazine” — was founded and published by C. Houston Goudiss (1881-1945), an authority and author of several books on nutrition, who earlier had been associated with Dr. Harvey W. Wiley’s efforts leading to passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906.
      Obituaries are found in :
the Bronxville Review-Press (1 November 1945) : link; and
The New York Times (October 30, 1945) : link (paywalled)
 

22 September 2025