Originally, the Shriners Hospitals were for crippled children. The first patient to be admitted in 1922 was a little girl from the red clay country south of Shreveport., LA, a tot with a club foot who had learned to walk on the top of her foot rather than the sole. The first child to be admitted in Minneapolis was a Blackfoot Indian boy suffering from the deformities of polio. Since that time, more than 550,000 children have been treated at the 22 Shriners Hospitals. Surgical techniques developed in Shriners Hospitals have become standard in the orthopedic world. Thousands of children have been fitted with arm and leg braces and artificial limbs, most of them made in special labs in the hospitals by expert technicians.

By 1962 the Shriners had donated enough money that it now became feasible to expand the treatments offered to children beyond orthopedic care. A special committee was established to explore areas of need and found that burn treatment was a field of service that was being bypassed. In the early '60s, the only burn treatment center in the United States was a part of a military complex. Reliable medical surveys disclosed that each year thousands of children were rendered actually or potentially crippled by burns. The facilities in North America for research, treatment and care of such burns were inadequate and limited.

In light of the evidence presented regarding burn victims, Shriners established hospitals for the care and treatment of curable crippled children afflicted with acutely dangerous burns. The Shriners went to work immediately on their new project. Interim centers for the care of sever burns in children were immediately set up at various established hospitals affiliated with universities. In the meantime construction was started on 3 Shriners hospitals to serve the specific needs of these children. The hospitals were established near the universities so the affiliation between the hospitals and the Shriners could carry out the Shriners three fold programs of treatment, research and teaching. By 1968 the hospitals were complete and children were receiving treatment.

Since the Shriners opened their burn hospitals in the 1960s, a burned child's chance of survival has more than doubled. They have saved children burned over 90 percent of their bodies. The techniques they have pioneered to prevent the crippling effects of sever burns have made a normal life possible for thousands of burn victims.

During the 1980s, Shriners Hospitals initiated a number of new programs in their efforts to continue providing high-quality pediatric orthopedic and burn care. One of the most significant was the 1980 opening of the spinal cord injury rehabilitation unit at the Shriners Hospital in Philadelphia - the first spinal cord injury unit in the United States designed specifically for children and teenagers who suffer from these injuries.

At the Shrines SCI units, children receive long-term rehabilitative care and physical and occupational therapy to help them relearn the basic skills of everyday life. Patients may enter an SCI unit apprehensive about the future, but after months of encouragement and support. they often leave with a sense of hope and optimism.

Once again, the Shriners took action for disabled children by adopting the West Coast Child Amputee Prosthetic Project in 1987. This project provides prostheses and rehabilitation for limb-deficient children and also conducts research and development into prosthetic design and fabrication.

Through the efforts of Shriners in the United States, Canada, and Mexico thousands of children have been given a new chance to live a normal and productive life. Thousands of children have been treated at no expense because of the generosity of one group of men who believe giving children an opportunity to have a normal life is worth the sacrifice; The Shriners.