A disabled pensioner has detailed the shocking medical treatments she underwent as a child, including having her legs repeatedly broken at the age of four.
Ann Macfarlane was born in Norfolk in 1939 and at a young age developed a rare form of inflammatory arthritis called Still s disease, which causes her joints to swell and stiffen.
The daughter of a company director and a hardworking housewife , Ann was hospitalised for the first time at the age of four before being readmitted at the age of nine, when she spent several years in hospital.
Appearing on BBC2 documentary Silenced: The Hidden Story of Disabled Britain, she told how was forced into a plaster bed , where she was unable to move and doctors threatened to pour buckets of water over her head if she didn t stop screaming .