Sister Elizabeth Kenny - Medical Pioneer
Sister Elizabeth Kenny (20 September 1880 – 30 November 1952) was a self-trained Australian bush nurse who developed a new approach for treating victims of poliomyelitis, which was controversial at the time.
Her method, which she promoted internationally while working in Australia, Europe and the United States, differed from the then conventional medical practice which called for placing affected limbs in plaster casts. Instead Kenny applied hot compresses to affected parts of patients' bodies followed by passive movement of those areas to reduce what she called "Spasm".
Kenny's principles of muscle rehabilitation became the foundation of physical therapy, or physiotherapy.
•••Early life
Elizabeth Kenny was born in Warialda, New South Wales, in 1880,[3] the daughter of Australian-born Mary Kenny, née Moore, and Michael Kenny, a farmer from Ireland.
She was called "Lisa" by her family and was home-schooled by her mother before attending schools in Guyra, New South Wales, and Nobby, Queensland.
At age 17, she broke her wrist in a fall from a horse. Her father took her to Aeneas McDonnell, a medical doctor in Toowoomba, where she remained during her convalescence. While there, Kenny studied McDonnell's anatomy books and model skeleton.
This began a lifelong association with McDonnell, who became her mentor and advisor. Kenny later asserted that she became interested in how muscles worked while convalescing from her accident.
Instead of using a model skeleton, since they were available for medical students only, she made her own.
Having become a self-taught and good pianist she listed herself as "Teacher of Music" and taught music a few hours a week.
In 1907, Kenny returned to Guyra, New South Wales, first living with her grandmother and then with her cousin Minnie Bell.
She soon became a successful broker of agricultural sales between Guyra farmers and northern markets in Brisbane. Following that she worked in the kitchen in "Scotia", local midwife's cottage hospital and local Dr. Harris gave her a letter of recommendation.
With part of her savings from her brokerage work she paid a local seamstress to make her a nurse's uniform.
With that, and the observations she had at Scotia and from her time with Dr. Harris she returned to Nobby to offer her services as a Bush Nurse.
At that time she was known as Nurse Kenny; she earned the title "Sister" while nursing on cargo ships which carried soldiers to and from Australia and England during WW I.
In Britain and Commonwealth countries, "Sister" as a title of courtesy applies not only to members of a religious order but also to a more highly qualified nurse, one grade below "Matron".
Instead of settling down at home as a spinster caring for her mother, Kenny continued to work as a nurse from their home.
Her neighbor Stan Kuhn took her to her patients in his motorcycle sidecar or automobile.
When his younger sister Sylvia fell into the path of his horse-drawn plow, he carried her home and called Kenny.
She quickly improvised a stretcher from a cupboard door for badly injured Sylvia, carefully secured her to it and rode with her in the local ambulance 26 miles to Dr McDonnell's office.
He helped Sylvia recover, and credited Kenny for her stretcher and her careful care.
She improved the stretcher for use by local ambulance services and, for the next three years, marketed it as the "Sylvia Stretcher" in Australia, Europe and the United States.
She turned the profits over to the Country Women's Association, which administered its sales and manufacturing.
At that time Kenny, because she would be traveling selling the Stretcher, adopted eight year old Mary Stewart to be a companion for Mother Kenny. Mary later became one of Sister Kenny's best "technicians".
•••Polio treatment
When sales of the Sylvia Stretcher declined, Kenny returned to Nobby to again work as a nurse.
During one of her sales journeys she met the Rollinson family who owned a Station west of Townsville. In 1931, during a trip to visit her brother Will, Kenny telephoned them.
They promptly asked her to care for their niece Maude, who was disabled by polio.
After 18 months under Kenny's care Maude was able to walk, return to Townsville, marry and conceive a child.
The newspapers in Townsville took up the story, referring to it as a cure. In 1932, Queensland suffered its highest number of polio cases in 30 years; the following year, several local people helped Kenny set up a rudimentary polio-treatment facility under canopies behind the Queens Hotel in Townsville.
In a few months (after further success with local children), she moved into the bottom floor of the hotel.
The first official evaluation of Sister Kenny's work took place in Townsville in 1934, under the auspices of the Queensland Health Department.
Her success working with polio victims led to the establishment of Kenny clinics in several cities in Australia.
The Sister Kenny Clinic in the Outpatients Building of the Rockhampton Base Hospital is now listed on the Queensland Heritage Register.
During these years, Kenny developed her clinical method and gained recognition in Australia.
She was adamantly opposed to immobilising children's bodies with plaster casts or braces. At this time, Kenny requested that she be permitted to treat children during the acute stage of the disease with hot compresses (as she claimed to have done in Clifton before the war).
However, doctors would not allow her to treat patients until after the acute stage of the disease, or until "tightness" (Kenny used the word "spasm" much later) subsided.
She instituted a carefully designed regimen of passive "exercises" designed to recall function in unaffected neural pathways (much as she had done with Maude).
On her own, she began treatment of a patient in the acute stage in her George Street Clinic in Brisbane, afterwards transferring her to the Ward 7 Polio Clinic in Brisbane General Hospital.
That child (and others) recovered with fewer aftereffects than those placed in braces. In 1937, she published an introductory book about her work and began another,
The Treatment of Infantile Paralysis in The Acute Stage, known as The Green Book which was later published in the United States.
The most comprehensive appraisal of her methods, "The Kenny Concept of Infantile Paralyses And Its Treatment," was published in collaboration with Dr. John Pohl in 1943, and was known as "The Red Book.".
•••In the U.S
In 1940, the New South Wales government sent Kenny (and her adopted daughter Mary, who had become an expert in Kenny's method) to America to present her clinical method for treating polio victims to American doctors.
After a sea journey from Sydney to Los Angeles and by railway to San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, back to Chicago and to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, she was given a chance to demonstrate her work in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Doctors Miland Knapp and John Pohl (who headed polio treatment centres there) were impressed, and told her that she should stay.
They found an apartment for Kenny and Mary; several years later, the city of Minneapolis gave them a house.
The city was Kenny's base in America for 11 years. In a 1943 letter to the British Medical Journal, Kenny noted that "there have been upwards of 300 doctors attending the classes at the University of Minnesota".
During this time several Kenny treatment centers were opened throughout America; the best-known were the Sister Kenny Institute in Minneapolis (opened 17 December 1942;
now Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute), a facility in the New Jersey Medical Center and her favorite, the Ruth Home in El Monte, California.
She received honorary degrees from Rutgers University and the University of Rochester. She joined U.S. President Roosevelt (whose paralytic illness was believed to be polio) for lunch, discussing his treatment at Warm Springs.
In 1951, Kenny topped Gallup's most admired man and woman poll as the only woman in the first 10 years of the annual list to displace Eleanor Roosevelt for the #1 spot
The Sister Kenny Foundation was established in Minneapolis to support her and her work throughout the United States.
Some doctors changed their initial professional skepticism when they saw the effects Kenny's method had on her patients (both children and adults).
Many American magazines covered her work. In 1975 Victor Cohn wrote the first detailed biography of her life and work.
During her first year in Minneapolis, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) paid her personal expenses and financed trials of her work.
That support ceased, however, after a series of disagreements with the NFIP Director. Kenny was a determined and outspoken woman, which harmed her relationship with the medical profession.
Nevertheless, her method continued to be used and helped hundreds of people suffering from polio.
In recognition of her work, in February 1950 President Harry Truman signed a Congressional bill giving Kenny the right to enter and leave the US as she wished without a visa.
This honour had only been granted once before, to French marquis Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, who was a leader in the American War of Independence.
•••Final years
Kenny filled her final years with extensive journeys in America, to Europe and Australia in an effort to gain further acceptance of her method.
She tried, unsuccessfully, to have medical researchers agree with her that Polio was a systemic disease.
She attended the second International Congress about polio in Copenhagen.
There she was shunned and unable to participate.
Suffering from Parkinson's disease, on her way home she stopped in Melbourne to meet privately with internationally respected virologist Sir Macfarlane Burnet.
He wrote about the visit in his autobiography.
In a desperate attempt to save her life, Dr Irving Innerfield of New York sent his new experimental drug, Trypsin by air mail to Brisbane. It was then rushed by car to Toowoomba.
Although the drug was administered on 29 November 1952, her doctor believed Kenny was too close to death to benefit from it, and she died the following day.
Kenny's funeral was held on 1 December 1952 at the Neil Street Methodist Church in Toowoomba, and was recorded for transmission in other parts of Australia and in the United States of America.
The funeral cortege from the church to Nobby Cemetery was one of the largest seen in Toowoomba. Kenny was buried beside her mother in Nobby Cemetery.
•••Polio patients treated with the Sister Kenny method
Joy McKean, singer, was recovered from polio after being treated by Sister Kenny.
Below are famous people whose polio was treated with the method developed by Kenny, but not by Kenny herself.
Alan Alda, American actor
Peg Kehret (née Schulze), American author
Marjorie Lawrence, Australian opera singer, who regained only partial use of her legs
Rosalind Russell's American nephew
Martin Sheen, American actor
Dinah Shore, American singer
Robert Anton Wilson, American writer
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