Sister Kenney

Polio Pioneer: Sister Kenny
by
Henry D. Holland MD

With more and more polio survivors beginning to recall their own personal histories concerning their respective experiences with polio, there is also more interest in some of the polio pioneers who labored before the discovery of the vaccines by Salk and Sabin. One of these pioneers was Sister Elizabeth Kenny. I have always remembered her name and decided to determine if she ever wrote anything. To my surprise, she wrote an autobiography in 1943 entitled, "And They Shall Walk." The Richmond Library had one copy, and I checked it out and read the book. Based on the book, a Hollywood movie was produced in 1943. Actress Rosalind Russell portrayed Sister Kenny. I have not seen the movie; but maybe some of you have.

Sister Kenny was not a Catholic sister or nun. The title of Sister was bestowed as a military rank for nurses in the Australian medical corps. She was trained to be a vocational or practical nurse. She served in the Australian medical corps during World War 1, made numerous voyages between Europe and Australia on hospital ships in dangerous waters, and actually was wounded with shrapnel in one leg while serving on the front. She also had some type of heart condition which almost shortened her life. The condition was never clearly diagnosed. All of this happened before she began a long crusade to help children attacked by polio.

Her exact birthday was not revealed in her autobiography, but it seemed she was born around 1886 in New South Wales, Australia. She never married, although she allegedly had one serious love involvement. Her first exposure to polio occurred in trying to help aborigine children in the Australian bush country. Here she observed that the aborigines used hot cloths on the involved extremities. She became inspired to learn more about polio, especially in the acute phase, and developed her own ideas about the disease and its treatment.

Sister Kenny's invention of a special stretcher for the transportation of patients in shock provided her with the flinds to start her own clinic for the treatment of polio victims. The stretcher was named the 'Sylvia Stretcher' in honor of the child named Sylvia for whom the special stretcher was created. A patent was obtained and Sister Kenny earned royalties for many years.

She started her first polio clinic in 1933 in Townsville Queensland, Australia in the yard of a home under an awning cover. She started with seventeen patients. From the start, her methods and her authoritarian personality created opposition from the medical establishment in Australia and later in England and in much of the USA. The main controversy involved her view that the most significant problem in the acute phase of polio was the spasm of the involved muscles. She advocated applying heat (hot packs) and physical therapy; whereas the medical establishment at that time advocated immobilization with splinting and casting to prevent deformities.

Most medical experts at that time felt that the stronger muscles pulled on the weakened or paralyzed muscles, and this process caused deformities. One of the American doctors who opposed her methods was Dr. Robert Lovett, a polio specialist who had treated Mranl~n Roosevelt in 1921. However, Sister Kenny found a warmer reception in the US medical community than in any other country. Her opinion of the American doctor speaks for itself

"The American doctor, in my opinion' possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science - that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about, in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it. This eagerness, however, does not persuade him to abandon caution."

She found acceptance at the University of Minnesota medical center and became a guest faculty member. On one occasion' this Australian bush nurse who held no formal degree, lectured to an esteemed audience of physicians and other health professionals.

With her patients and with the families of her patients, she found almost universal acceptance. At the bedside, she was an imposing and caring figure. She had a therapeutic presence. Her confidence in her methods was so convincing that

many of her patients felt so inspired that they knew that they 'had heifer get better'.

She was 5 ft. 8 in. tall, weighed 154 pounds; but apparently seemed larger to children. She wore characteristic large feathered hats which some said made her look like Admiral Nelson, and she had her own therapeutic charisma. She did not seem to be deterred by opposition' and most medical authorities admitted that most patients had better outcomes with the Kenny approach to treatment that those who did not.

Her treatment involved no use of splints or casts, the application of heat with wool clothes, and treating the spasms of the muscles with physical therapy and not immobilization. She did not use muscle testing because she did not view this as therapeutic. Her hands-on therapy involved the retraining and reeducation of the involved muscles; and she apparently had near miraculous results which she did not hesitate to proclaim to anyone who would listen. Apparently her methods were never subjected to true scientific mvestigation.

One of her uncompromising views that tended to get her into conflict with many in the medical community was her strong opinion that polio was a muscle disease and was not a disease of the central nervous system. She discouraged the use of the iron lung, but did accept the temporary necessity for the iron lung in cases of bulbar polio. Medical experts who valued her treatment methods were able to overlook her unscientific conclusions about the disease of polio and offered more acceptance and appreciation for her efforts on behalf of polio victims.

She eventually met President Roosevelt in the white House in June, 1943. Her methods were never frilly endorsed by The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, but she received some support from this organization because her patients believed in her and she got good results. The National Foundation financially supported the training for Kenny therapies at the University of Minnesota. However, the Foundation refused to support The Kenny Institute.

Sister Kenny died in 1952 before the announcement of the Salk vaccine in 1955. The Kenny Institute survived; and in the late 1950's, the Kenny Institute and the World Health Organization were the major supporters of continued polio research. These two groups financed polio conferences in 1959 and 1960 in which Albert Sabin announced the amazing results around the world in using his live virus vaccine which could be administered so easily. The Kenny Institute survives to this day as a part of the Abbott Northwestern Hospital complex in Minneapolis.


Personal note: One thing we all remember as Post Polio Survivors is that there is always someone worse off then we are. From the late 40’s early 50’s, those Polio victums in lung machines, did not survive to this date.