Full circle at 2012 Paralympic Games

London (CNN) -- In 1948, a hospital outside London witnessed the birth of the Paralympic movement, as a Jewish doctor who had fled Nazi Germany sought to change the lives of patients with spinal injuries -- and inspire new hope in them through sport.

The first "Stoke Mandeville Games" were organized in 1948 to coincide with the London Olympics, the second to be held in Britain.

Named for the hospital in Buckinghamshire where Prof. Ludwig Guttmann's pioneering spinal injuries unit was based, the competitors in those initial Games -- 14 men and two women -- took part in a wheelchair archery contest....

Four years later, inspired by Guttmann's vision, the first official Paralympic Games were held in Rome in tandem with the Olympics....