259. Mrs. Mary Cavallaro [Brooklyn] to Sister Kenny, January 16 1947, General Correspondence, March 15–31 1947, MHS-K.
260. [Lewin] “Preamble to the Proposal for the Establishment of a Polio Unit at Michael Reese Hospital” [1946], Public Relations, Lewin, MOD; Kenny to My Dear Mr. O’Connor [form letter], January 18 1946 [1947], Public Relations, MOD-K.
261. Kenny to Dear Doctor Stimson, October 8 1945, Public Relations, MOD-K.
262. “New Controversy Forecast as Result of Kenny Movie” Minneapolis Morning Tribune September 13 1946.
263. Stimson to Kenny, September 19 1946, in Stimson, [Scrapbook] “Sister Elizabeth Kenny and Her Treatment of Acute Poliomyelitis in The United States as Experienced and Taught by Philip M. Stimson, M.D.” [1969], Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, New York Academy of Medicine, New York City.
264. Excerpts from minutes of the staff meeting [Public Relations], September 10 1946, Public Relations, MOD-K. “If you have not already seen it, I would like to call your attention to the statement by Dr. Philip Stimson in Life Magazine for September 16, relative to the Sister Kenny movie”; “Dear Mr.____” September 19 1946, Public Relations, MOD-K.
265. Kenny to Philip M. Stimson, October 2 1946, in Stimson [Scrapbook].
266. Kenny to Dear Mr. Hearn, December 2 1946, Richard J. Hearn 1946, MHS-K.
267. E. B. Radcliffe “Show Mirror” Enquirer [1946], Public Relations, MOD-K.
268. [Cohn interview with] Al Baum and Mrs. Baum, June 14 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
269. Philip Stimson in “Conferences on Therapy: Treatment of Poliomyelitis” New York State Journal of Medicine (April 1 1945) 45: 1–6.
270. Hazel Macdonald “Doctors, Discuss Polio, Sister Kenny” [unnamed newspaper] May 2 1947, Clippings 1945–1947, MHS-K; see also “Conferences on Therapy: Treatment of Poliomyelitis” New York State Journal of Medicine (April 1 1945) 45: 3.
271. Kenny, Report to Board of Directors of the Sister Elizabeth Kenny Foundation; Kenny to Mr. President, Mrs. Webber and Gentlemen, May 24 1948, Board of Directors, MHS-K.
272. Stimson, [Scrapbook].
273. Minister for Health and Home Affairs to Dear Mr. Pike [Agent General for Queensland, London] July 23 1946, Home Secretary’s Office, Special Batches, Kenny Clinics, 1941–1949, A/31753, QSA; [Cohn interview with] Abe Fryberg, [c. 1953], Cohn Papers, MHS-K; “Doctors For U.S. To See Kenny Style” Brisbane Courier-Mail May 22 1946.
274. “Report on Concepts and Treatment of Poliomyelitis by Thomas Victor Stubbs Brown, M.B., B.S., F.R.C.S. Ed., Senior Orthopaedic Surgeon, Brisbane Hospital and Abraham Fryberg, M.B., D.P.H., D.T.M., Deputy Director-General of Health and Medical Services, Brisbane, 6th December, 1946,” OM 65-7, 2/5, Chuter Papers, Oxley-SLQ.
275. J. A. Myers to Dear Maurice [Visscher], March 31 1947, Box 19, Folder 1, Myers Papers, UMN-ASC; Myers to Dear Dr. Visscher, June 13 1946, Box 1, Minnesota Poliomyelitis Research Committee Collection, UMN-ASC.
276. [handwritten] Maurice [Visscher] to Myers, n.d., on Myers to Dear Maurice, March 31 1947, Box 19, Folder 1, Myers Papers, UMN-ASC.
277. [Chuter] to Dear Abe [Fryberg] December 24 [19]46, Wilson Collection; Kenny to Dear Doctor Diehl, February 7 1946, Dr. Harold S. Diehl, 1941–1944 [sic], MHS-K; Chuter to Dear Mr. Kelly, May 27 1946, Box 3, Folder 12, OM 65-17, Chuter Papers, Oxley-SLQ. Mary Kenny was married in May 1946.
278. H. J. Summers “Sister Kenny Says It’s Goodbye This Time” Brisbane Courier Mail November 18 1947; “Sister Kenny Scorns ‘Modern’ Polio Methods” Brisbane Courier Mail November 11 1947.
279. “Sister Kenny to End U.S. Work, Aide Says,” New York Times February 14 1947; “Says Sister Kenny Retires Friday” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin February 13 1947.
280. Chuter to Dear Sister Kenny, August 19 1947, Box 1, Folder 6, OM 65-17, Chuter Papers, Oxley-SLQ; Chuter to Dear Sister Kenny, April 21 1947, Box 1, Folder 1, OM 65-17, Chuter Papers, Oxley-SLQ.
281. Hoyts Regent [advertisement] “Sister Kenny” Brisbane Telegraph October 16 1947. See also [advertisement] “Sister Kenny” [unnamed Brisbane newspaper] December 31 1947, OM 65-17, Box 3, Folder 19, Chuter Papers, Oxley-SLQ.
282. Lon Jones “Bitter Storm Likely Over Kenny Film” Brisbane Telegraph November 21 1945; “Kenny Film Hits At Doctors Here” Brisbane Telegraph July 12 1946.
283. “Will Attack Kenny Film” Brisbane Sunday Mail December 9 1945; “Sister Kenny Prepares For Her Hardest Battle” Brisbane Telegraph September 25 1947; “Sister Kenny” [Sydney] People Magazine June 20 1951, 6–7.
284. “Sister Kenny: Life Story in Film” Toowoomba Chronicle [October] 1947, Box 3, Folder 19, OM 65-17, Chuter Papers, Oxley-SLQ.
285. Kenny “My First Experience with the Disease … [Report of European Trip 1947]” [1947], Biographical Data, MHS-K.
FURTHER READING
On the history of medicine and film see Bruce Babbington “‘To Catch a Star on Your Fingertips’: Diagnosing the Medical Biopic from The Story of Louis Pasteur to Freud” in Graeme Harper and Andrew Moor eds. Signs of Life: Medicine and Cinema (London: Wallflower, 2005), 120–131; Timothy M. Boon Films of Fact: A History of Science in Documentary Films and Television (London: Wallflower Press, 2008); David Cantor “Uncertain Enthusiasm: The American Cancer Society, Public Education, and the Problems of the Movie, 1921–1960” Bulletin of the History of Medicine (2007) 81: 39–69; T. Hugh Crawford “Glowing Dishes: Radium, Marie Curie, and Hollywood” Biography (2000) 23: 71–89; George F. Custen Bio/Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992); Peter E. Dans Doctors in the Movies: Boil the Water and Just Say Ahh (Bloomington, IL: Medi-Ed Press, 2000); Thomas Doherty Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture and World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Marianne Fedunkiw “Malaria Films: Motion Pictures as a Public Health Tool” American Journal of Public Health (2003) 93: 1046–1057; Lester D. Friedman ed. Cultural Sutures: Medicine and Media (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004); Bert Hansen Picturing Medical Progress from Pasteur to Polio: A History of Mass Media Images and Popular Attitudes in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009); Graeme Harper and Andrew Moor eds. Signs of Life: Cinema and Medicine (London: Wallflower Press, 2005); Philip A. Kalisch and Beatrice J. Kalisch “The Image of the Nurse in Motion Pictures” American Journal of Nursing (1982) 82: 605–611; Anne Karpf Doctoring the Media: The Reporting of Health and Medicine (London: Routledge, 1988); Susan E. Lederer Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002); Susan E. Lederer “Repellent Subjects: Hollywood Censorship and Surgical Images in the 1930s” Literature and Medicine (1998) 17: 91–113; Susan E. Lederer and John Parascandola “Screening Syphilis: Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet Meets the Public Health Service” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (1998) 53: 345–370; Susan E. Lederer and Naomi Rogers “Media” in Roger Cooter and John Pickstone eds. Medicine in the Twentieth Century (London: Harwood, 2000), 487–502; Gregg Mitman “Cinematic Nature: Hollywood Technology, Popular Culture, and the American Museum of Natural History” Isis (1993) 84: 637–661; Martin F. Norden The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994); Kristin Ostherr Cinematic Prophylaxis: Globalization and Contagion in the Discourse of World Health (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005); John Parascandola Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008); Martin S. Pernick The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of ‘Defective’ Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Leslie J. Reagan, Nancy Tomes, and Paula A. Treichler eds. Medicine’s Moving Pictures: Medicine, Health, and Bodies in American Film and Television (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007); Miriam Posner “Depth Perception: Filmmaking and Narrative in American Medicine” Ph.D. dissertation in Film Studies and American Studies, Yale University, 2011; Naomi Rogers “ ‘Sister Kenny’ ” Isis (1993) 84
: 772–774; Eric Schaefer “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!:” A History of Exploitation Films, 1919–1959 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999); David Serlin ed. Imaging Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Kay Sloan The Loud Silents: Origins of the Social Problem Film (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Christopher R. Smit and Anthony Enns eds. Screening Disability: Essays on Cinema and Disability (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001); Ken Smith Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films, 1945–1970 (New York: Blast Books, 1999).
PART THREE
7
Kenny Goes to Washington
IN MAY 1948 Kenny went to Washington to speak as an expert witness before the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce investigating whether and how the government should fund medical research. Wearing a corsage, a circle pin, strands of pearls, and a plumed hat, the white haired nurse praised a proposed Medical Research Foundation that would study polio as well as cancer and other “degenerative diseases.” “Mobilization of forces and pooling of knowledge concerning this disease are imperative,” Kenny told the committee. As the cameras clicked in a room packed with Congressmen and their aides, Kenny admitted that friends had advised her “not to interfere in any way with American politics” but she was nonetheless certain that the federal government should support medical research and “should undertake to see that every avenue is explored to wipe out this disease.”1
Kenny was invited to testify as a healer and medical celebrity, but most of all she was welcomed as a medical populist. Her presence transformed the Washington hearings into a platform to attack organized medicine, especially the policies of the nation’s largest polio philanthropy, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP). The NFIP, Kenny complained, used its power as a polio monopoly to deny her scientific respect. NFIP officials were organizing an international conference on polio to be held in July, but Kenny had heard that “my appearance at this meeting would mean that they would have to close the door.”2 A new government research agency run by unbiased officials could, she was sure, challenge the NFIP’s power and, in this era of global tensions, demonstrate to other nations America’s commitment to providing children with the best polio care based on the most modern knowledge of the disease.
Many members of the House committee agreed that the NFIP was an elitist medical monopoly, “a sort of medical closed shop, run for the benefit of certain doctors and certain politicians, perhaps more than for the benefit of the patients,” as a Republican Congressman from Missouri noted.3 Although Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 had left the NFIP without a political patron in the White House, Basil O’Connor, Roosevelt’s former friend and advisor, had strong ties to America’s social and scientific elite, especially the conservative leadership of the American Medical Association (AMA) through his friendship with Morris Fishbein. Fishbein’s antipathy to alternative medicine and any government incursion into traditional medicine was reflected in the NFIP as well. Over the previous decade the NFIP had come to play a significant if somewhat hidden role in shaping American medical politics. O’Connor had moved the professional weight of the NFIP behind some of the more conservative forces in medicine, including the provivisection National Society for Medical Research and Fishbein’s campaign against government health insurance. The NFIP was growing away from its early Democratic affiliations and closer to the Republican Party, the political affiliation of most American physicians in the 1940s and 1950s.
Scientific research and health care were crucial elements of national politics between 1945 and 1950. The experience of World War II had reinforced the notion that a government agency could effectively direct research priorities and that such research, based on widely shared goals, would provide concrete solutions. The American public, already impressed with the scientific achievements made during the war—penicillin, radar, the atomic bomb—saw research as having the potential to improve the world and everyday lives. World War II, as historian Victoria Harden described it, “enhanced public belief that scientific research offered an endless frontier on which a happier, healthier life could be built.”4 Not surprisingly, many witnesses at congressional hearings framed the debate on research policy within a broader project by liberal Truman Democrats to centralize and restructure American health care.
The federal government was becoming a major player in shaping the confusing quilt of medical research programs in peacetime. The Cold War now provided a new urgency for Congress to take a more active role in funding research. Against this cultural attitude and opponents like Kenny the NFIP had to defend its control of polio research funding in terms of democratic, responsive, health care management and to convince Congress and the public that private philanthropies should retain a respected place in the unsettled world of health policy.
Kenny came to Washington in the midst of a raucous debate over the National Science Foundation (NSF). In August 1947, President Truman had vetoed an NSF bill giving scientists significant control, explaining he was not willing to “vest the determination of vital national policies … in a group of individuals who would essentially be private citizens … [and] would be divorced from control by the people to an extent that implies … the state’s lack of faith in the democratic process.”5 Immersed in postwar politics, the NSF bill became a powerful symbol of the changing relationship between government and the research community. Scientists feared rigid government bureaucrats; federal officials distrusted ivory-tower researchers; politicians wanted research that would lead to innovative technologies as dramatic as penicillin and the atomic bomb; and the public sought a fair, democratic, and representative science research policy. Privately Truman told science advisor Vannevar Bush that a science foundation run by a board of scientists outside government would become “simply a log-rolling affair to make grants to things that its members were interested in.”6
The story of the battle between Kenny and the NFIP allows us a new, rather unexpected look at the ways medical populism shaped postwar science policy. Populism in medicine is difficult to analyze and even harder to categorize. The version of medical populism, spurred by Kenny and her allies, challenged orthodox medicine’s claims to authority, yet demanded access to medical science so that the people’s health could be protected through scientific research. What Kenny and her allies promoted was a vision of populist science that idealized science and its products but attacked representatives of professional authority. A focus on such critics of medical orthodoxy thus complicates the accepted picture of postwar America as the era of organized medicine’s Golden Age, when public respect for medical science was unrivaled and doctors in film and radio were always the good guys.7
The stream of populism that Kenny drew on was composed of elements from both the left and the right. These dissidents were against the medical establishment; they feared elitism and corporate conspiracy but idealized the tools and products of science. The people’s health was threatened, according to Kenny and her supporters, by narrow-minded medical professionals unwilling to consider ideas promoted by anyone outside elite medical institutions. Yet truth could be gained not only by the work of mainstream scientists but also when scientific tools became resources available to all.
The struggle between Kenny and the NFIP that played out publicly at the 1948 hearings was part of a wider battle over the direction of research policy, especially over whether Congress should mandate lay representatives on the boards of its new research agencies to provide alternative views to the scientific and medical establishment. Kenny’s testimony in Washington blasting medical elitism and parochial, inaccurate science exemplified the debate among politicians, philanthropic officials, the public, and even a few scientists in postwar America over the relationship between research and democracy.
POPULISM AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN MEDICINE
Leaders of organized medicine tended to lump all medical populists together as quacks and cultists, and fought them with the help of state
legislatures, the courts, and the media. To fight back, populists spoke of medical freedom—sometimes as an antigovernmental ideology, and sometimes as a resource to battle elitist professionals. Across American history medical populists have simultaneously pushed away and reached for government resources in their efforts to challenge medical trusts. Discoverers of anticancer tonics and rejuvenating operations, naturopaths, chiropractors, and others on the margins of the medical profession developed a populist ideology that drew on the public sympathy for outsiders fighting elitism. When these struggles entered the political arena they tended to find allies among right-wing politicians. Kenny was a newcomer to American politics but her claim that as an outsider she deserved scientific respectability and needed to be defended against Big Medicine and Big Science (as represented by the AMA and the NFIP) had deep political resonance.
Despite a lingering faith in the Thomas Edison-type lone inventor, the prospect of massive government investment into medical research grabbed the public imagination. But there was no consensus on how the government would ensure that its resources would be provided to researchers who would make the most important medical breakthroughs. At the time of the Congressional hearings, most medical research remained diffuse and unregulated, relying on donations from large and small private organizations, often known as foundations, which were frequently single-disease charities that also paid for patient care.8 After the war this patchwork system of research funding seemed old fashioned and inefficient, but what model should replace it was less clear.
Elite scientists argued that research funding should be based on a “best science” model, but politicians in postwar America recognized the competing popular appeal for a “geographic” model, a kind of science democracy in which government money was distributed state by state, available not just for privileged academic researchers but for ordinary investigators. In what historian Harry Marks has called the “highly pluralist postwar system of medical research” Congress divided over whether the development of such research should be left in the hands of universities, private research institutes, and philanthropies or should be overseen by a government agency.9
Polio Wars Page 59