Polio Wars

by Rogers, Naomi

  Kenny’s work at Station K, her ward at the Minneapolis General Hospital, was not easy. During her first 6 months she and Mary struggled to overcome the resistance of members of the hospital staff who saw her methods as dangerous and irrational. Kenny argued that traditional ways of testing muscles exacerbated muscle spasm, but physical therapists ignored this argument and during the night while she was away from the hospital would test the muscles of her patients.126 In other instances individual physicians paid no attention to Kenny’s claim to clinical authority. One of her patients recalled that his physician prescribed arm and leg splints saying “you’re my patient, so I’m going to do what I think is right.” When Kenny came back she cut off the splints and threw them on the floor. To horrified patients and nurses she said reassuringly “he’s just a young doctor; I’ll have a talk with him.”127 In a single ward she could hope to counteract such actions, but how would her work manage to transform institutional practice and professional resistance across the country?

  MONEY AND POLIO

  Money was always central in Kenny’s American career, partly because she made much of presenting her work as a “gift.” In Australia she had been paid as a private duty nurse, supplemented by her Army war pension and royalties from the Sylvia stretcher she had designed and patented.128 She had expected to be able to draw on some of her Australian savings in America, but during the war Australia had followed Britain’s lead by restricting the amount of currency that could leave the country.129 Increasingly anxious that the NFIP was not fulfilling its promise to pay her expenses Kenny wrote a number of times to O’Connor reminding him that the NFIP had agreed to “be responsible for my expenses during this demonstration.” She was also becoming annoyed with the NFIP’s funding arrangement, whereby she had to request money from Cole who then contacted the NFIP’s head office in New York before giving her a check.130

  It is at this point that Mary became a more central figure. After Kenny’s mother had died in 1937 Mary continued her training as a Kenny technician by moving to Brisbane to work at the outpatient clinic.131 By the time she and Kenny arrived in America, Mary was crucial in Kenny’s life, providing emotional ballast and balancing Kenny’s pride and temper with a softer, more pragmatic approach. Kenny had brought her to America partly as a companion and clinical assistant and partly as a servant. In Kenny’s 1943 autobiography Mary appears as a wide-eyed child, amazed at America’s scenic beauty and technological marvels like automats, but it is clear that Mary’s less combative attitude helped Kenny to achieve her goals. Thus, when their funds were dwindling after 3 months in the United States, Kenny phoned Henry Haverstock’s parents and told them that she had to return to Australia. Haverstock’s father immediately contacted Kenny at home and offered her money, which Kenny refused to accept. It was Mary to whom the father then addressed an envelope containing $40 that he left in their mail box. And, according to Kenny, it was Mary who “pleaded with me to stay.”132 Kenny does not mention whether she allowed Mary to keep this money, but she certainly encouraged the Haverstock family to pressure physicians at the medical school and Minnesota’s Republican Senator Henrik Shipstead, a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, to contact the Australian ambassador.133 Not long after this encounter Cole phoned Kenny to say that the NFIP had sent $400 for her expenses.134

  Minnesota’s local NFIP officials had been initially skeptical of the New York office’s decision to fund Kenny’s work. In September 1940 Arthur Reynolds, a prominent Democrat and the chairman of the state chapter, warned the NFIP’s New York office about divisions among local physicians “as to her worth and her proper place.” To Reynolds Kenny seemed “more or less of a publicity hound” and he wondered whether O’Connor wanted local officials “to treat her nice and send her on her way as quickly as possible?”135 O’Connor explained that in 6 months, after a full report from Minneapolis physicians at the medical school, the NFIP would be able “to appraise the value of Miss Elizabeth Kenny’s methods of treatment.”136 A few months later Reynolds’ attitude had softened and he told O’Connor that among most “medical people” the “consensus of opinion is favorable” about the value of Kenny’s work. The state chapter began to pay for 16 patients under her care at the city hospital. The money question continued to fester, however, and Reynolds was outraged to hear that Kenny had said during a talk at a women’s club in Minneapolis that she “was paying her own personal expenses.”137 The question of who deserved credit for funding Kenny’s work later became a publicized and politicized issue.

  Nor did Kenny consider that her needs should be in any way secondary, even to the concerns of the nation’s President. In September 1940 she wrote to Roosevelt, explaining that she was an “official visitor” with an “official visa” who for the past 3 months had “given lectures and demonstration to a class of medical men and physiotherapists and nurses.” Despite assurances to “defray her personal expenses” the NFIP had not yet done so, and “owing to war conditions, it is impossible for me to receive sufficient money from my own Country.”138 After Cole paid her with NFIP funds, Kenny wrote to Roosevelt again, reminding him that almost a third of the cases of crippling in the United States were caused by polio. Since “this enemy knows no frontiers,” she wrote, “I consider the question is of national importance to your country.” Without explicitly asking for money, she complained that the NFIP funds did not cover her expenses, which she estimated at $180 a month to cover rent, telephone, gas, electric light, food, and transportation to and from the hospitals she visited.139

  All letters from the public about the NFIP and polio, whether directed to Roosevelt, his wife, or other prominent figures, were forwarded to O’Connor and his staff. Annoyed at Kenny’s audacity at approaching Roosevelt directly, O’Connor contacted Cole, whom he saw as her formal supervisor. Her second long letter, O’Connor reported, which described “somewhat in detail the remarkable cures she has been effecting [sic] in your area” without NFIP funding was incorrect, for the NFIP had already sent her funds. Thus, “one could hardly say that Sister Kenny’s statement to President Roosevelt was playing cricket.”140 Cole apologized to Kenny, explaining that he had been away for a month before all the necessary forms were filled in and argued that the NFIP was not “in any way… to blame in this matter and if there has been any delay it should be placed only at my door.”141 Later Kenny praised “the great, humane and unbiased attitude of men” like Cole, Knapp, and Pohl, but in day-to-day affairs she clearly saw such delays as slights.142 Going to the top and using local and national political connections were techniques she had developed during her years in Australia when she sought to gain government support for clinics despite opposition from Brisbane specialists.

  Kenny then sent what she called a “brief report” to Cole and O’Connor “to place before you the evidence I have produced during the past three months.” In 9 typed pages she compared the Minneapolis physicians to the Queensland Royal Commission and the London County Council, arguing that their “unbiased attitude” had led them to provide “the material I so much desired to demonstrate and prove my ideas to be correct, although so much opposed to orthodoxy.” She also praised “the open mindedness of the members of the American medical profession who have listened and granted me the privilege of demonstrating my ideas under their personal observation” and the NFIP for its “financial assistance.”143 In a letter to Chuter she boasted of her successes at a university that was “the largest in the U.S.A. in one campus” and described with delight a formal dinner at the University Club during the Northwestern Pediatric Conference where she had been seated between the president of the pediatric society and the chief orthopedic surgeon of the General Hospital.144

  1940 was not an epidemic year for polio in Minnesota, and between June and December Kenny treated only 24 acute patients. The Minneapolis physicians knew that this number of cases was not sufficient for a convincing conclusion about her work, as improvement might also have resulted from spontaneous
recovery. Kenny had initially been asked to stay only for 6 months, but Cole and Knapp wanted to retain her as both teacher and clinician. They therefore asked the NFIP to allow her to stay during another polio season so that doctors, nurses, and physical therapists could become better acquainted with her methods.145

  Most crucially, these physicians began to publish clinical reports that linked their careers with Kenny and her work. Cole and Knapp wrote a preliminary study of her first patients that was presented at a NFIP meeting in New York that December. Their report, cautious but positive, convinced O’Connor and the NFIP’s advisory committee to continue funding Kenny at the University of Minnesota, and when she announced that she would have to return to Australia for a few months, the NFIP agreed to pay her travel expenses.146 Kenny was going to Australia ostensibly to help her Brisbane staff deal with a polio outbreak but she intended to return to Minnesota with 2 Australian technicians. The NFIP agreed to pay their expenses as well. Kenny later recalled that she had suggested to Mary that she also return to Australia but that Mary wanted to stay with the Minneapolis patients and continue training local physical therapists and therefore “begged to remain and for me to return.” Mary stayed behind not only to supervise the work in Minneapolis but also as a quiet symbol of the power of the work without its most vocal and at times refractory proponent.147

  By the time Kenny returned the dynamics of the relationship among the Australian nurse, NFIP officials, and University of Minnesota physicians had become established. It was an uneasy relationship in which Kenny refused to be easily slotted into the role of subservient nurse. She appeared neither grateful nor amenable; she was difficult, ambitious, easily irritated, and defensive. Yet she was also good company, telling stories of her war experiences and her bush nursing in an era when social graces of participants before and after professional meetings were crucial parts of a medical professional’s reputation. NFIP officials and Kenny’s medical supervisors hoped that they could extract what was good about her methods and then send her back to Australia. They would be disappointed.

  NOTES

  1. Elizabeth Kenny with Martha Ostenso And They Shall Walk: The Life Story of Sister Elizabeth Kenny (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1943), 201, 206; “For Poliomyelitis Test: Australian Nurse Leaves Coast to Discuss New Treatment Here” New York Times April 18 1940; William Forgan Smith to Dear Sir [Basil O’Connor], March 11 1940, Series A981/1, United States 148, Australian Archives, ACT Regional Office, Canberra, ACT, Australia (hereafter AA-ACT).

  2. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 206.

  3. Kristian Gosta Hansson “After-Treatment of Poliomyelitis” JAMA (July 1939) 113: 32–35. For a reference to this article “where it admitted, that nowhere in the world is there a treatment for this disease in the acute stage,” see Kenny to Sir [Charles Chuter], January 19 1940, Home Secretary’s Office, Special Batches, Kenny Clinics, 1941–1949, A/31753, Queensland State Archives, Brisbane (hereafter QSA).

  4. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 207.

  5. Richard Casey to John McEwen, June 5 1940, cited in W. J. Hudson Casey (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1986), 116–117.

  6. Marvin L. Kline “The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met” Reader’s Digest (August 1959), 75: 204.

  7. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 17.

  8. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 12–13, 62; Wade Alexander Sister Elizabeth Kenny: Maverick Heroine of the Polio Treatment Controversy (Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 2002), 17–30. For examples of efforts to assess how much nursing training Kenny had, see Alexander Maverick, 23–24; Victor Cohn Sister Kenny: The Woman Who Challenged the Doctors (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975), 37. McDonnell (1864–1939), the son of Irish immigrants and a graduate of Sydney’s medical school, became a general surgeon after traveling to Japan, England, and the United States, and set up practice in Toowoomba in the 1890s; by the 1930s he was a member of the state medical society, the Australian Trained Nurses Association Council, and a medical examiner for Toowoomba’s Nurses Board; see Alexander Maverick, 20–21; Cohn Sister Kenny, 27–29, 43–45.

  9. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 23–24.

  10. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, ix, 32, 38–40; see Alexander Maverick, 29–39. Wilson states that she was discharged from the Nursing Service in 1919; John R. Wilson Through Kenny’s Eyes: An Exploration of Sister Elizabeth Kenny’s Views about Nursing (Townsville: Royal College of Nursing Australia, 1995), 37.

  11. Alexander Maverick, 46–47; [Cohn interview with] Mary and Stuart McCracken, April 14 1953, Victor Cohn Papers in Elizabeth Kenny Papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St Paul (hereafter MHS-K); Cohn Sister Kenny, 69–70. Lucy Lily Stewart was born on October 31 1916, and was officially adopted May 4 1926.

  12. Kenny And They Shall Walk, 76–77, 119; Alexander Maverick, 45–50.

  13. George Draper “Infantile Paralysis” Harper’s Monthly Magazine (February 1930) 160: 368.

  14. John R. Paul A History of Poliomyelitis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 190–199.

  15. [Editorial] “Poliomyelitis and Its Early Treatment” Medical Journal of Australia (September 21 1935) 2: 385–386; J. Steigrad “The Early Treatment of Poliomyelitis” Medical Journal of Australia (May 7 1938) 1: 801–804.

  16. “Queensland Nurse’s Generous Action! Sister Kenny’s Treatment for Paralysis a Gift for the Sick Poor” Australian Women’s Weekly February 23 1935, 4.

  17. See Cohn Sister Kenny, 97; “Sister Kenny” [Sydney] People Magazine June 20 1951, 3.

  18. See Wendy Selby “Motherhood and the Golden Casket: An Odd Couple” Journal of the Royal History Society of Queensland (1992) 24: 406–413. Queensland was the first Australian state to own and operate a lottery. It was established during the Great War to raise money for veterans and war widows, and in 1919 was used to raise money for Children’s Hospital repairs, and in 1920 its revenue was part of a special fund for maternal and infant welfare and then to finance public hospitals, possibly as a result of the actions of Charles Chuter who was then managing the finances of the Brisbane Hospital and by 1924 was president of the Golden Casket Committee; this lottery was not formalized legally until 1931.

  19. See John H. Tyrer History of the Brisbane Hospital and Its Affiliates: A Pilgrim’s Progress (Brisbane: Boolarong Publication, 1993); Anne Crichton Slowly Taking Control: Australian Government and Health Care Provision 1788–1988 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990).

  20. On Chuter see Alexander Maverick, 52; Aubrey Pye, interview by Douglas Gordon and Ralph Doherty, November 8 1980 [transcript of sound recording], Fryer Library and Special Collections, University of Queensland, St. Lucia (hereafter Fryer Library); see also James A. Gillespie The Price of Health: Australian Governments and Medical Politics 1910–1960 (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1988); Ross Patrick A History of Health and Medicine in Queensland (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1987).

  21. See Alexander Maverick, 57–58; and see “Appendix A: Report by Dr. Harold Crawford, Brisbane (President, Queensland Branch, A.M.A.) on a Demonstration on 5th September, 1933, by Sister E. Kenny” in R. W. Cilento “Report on Sister E. Kenny’s After-Treatment of Cases of Paralysis Following Poliomyelitis,” Ms. 44/109, Fryer Library, [18].

  22. Cohn Sister Kenny, 85–86; Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 94. See also “Appendix A: Report by Dr. Harold Crawford” in Cilento “Report on Sister E. Kenny’s After-Treatment,” [18]; S. F. McDonald to Dear Mr. Dickson, March 30 1946 [enclosed in] C. H. Dickson to Dear Professor Myers, May 3 1946, Box 19, Sister Kenny Institute, 1938–1946, Jay Arthur Myers Papers, University of Minnesota Archives and Special Collections, Minneapolis (hereafter UMN-ASC).

  23. “Appendix A: Report by Dr. Harold Crawford” in Cilento “Report on Sister E. Kenny’s After-Treatments,” [19]; see also Pye, interview 1980, Fryer Library.

  24. Philippa Martyr “ ‘A Small Price to Pay for Peace’: The Elizabeth Ken
ny Controversy Reexamined” Australian Historical Studies (1997) 27: 47–65; “Sister Kenny Visits Bendigo Hospital and Tells Her Experiences” Bendigo Advertiser January 10 1938.

  25. For the claim that Kenny’s mother had contacted Sir Littleton Groome, their local representative, to pressure Hanlon, see Cohn Sister Kenny, 86–87.

  26. Elizabeth Kenny, Infantile Paralysis and Cerebral Diplegia: Methods Used for the Restoration of Function (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1937), 4.

  27. See Alexander Maverick, 55–61; Kenny to Dear Mr. Nichols, September 18 1944, Cohn Papers, MHS-K; Cohn Sister Kenny, 82–92.

  28. [Cohn interview with] James Guinane, November 23 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K; see also Cohn Sister Kenny, 82–92; [Cohn second interview with] Dr. Philip L. K. Addison, October 25 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.

  29. Kenny, Infantile Paralysis and Cerebral Diplegia, 19, 11, 64; see also “Reviews: Muscle Reeducation” Medical Journal of Australia (May 8 1937) 1: 713–714; J. V. Guinane “Introductory Notes” Kenny, Infantile Paralysis and Cerebral Diplegia, xvii–xxxiii.

  30. See Alexander Maverick, 58–59, 63–65.

  31. R. W. Cilento “Report on The Muscle Re-Education Clinic, Townsville (Sister E. Kenny), and its Work” [August 9 1934] Box 13, Elizabeth Kenny Collection, Fryer Library, 4–5.

  32. On Cilento see Fedora Gould Fisher Raphael Cilento: A Biography (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1994); Milton J. Lewis The People’s Health: Public Health in Australia, 1788–1950 (London: Praeger Publishers, 2003); Warwick Anderson The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002); Douglas Gordon “Sir Raphael West Cilento” Medical Journal of Australia (September 16 1985) 143: 259–260; Alexander Maverick, 62–66.