269. “Sister Kenny Arrives Here, Plans to Rest” Los Angeles Times July 16 1952.
270. [Cohn interview with] Ivar Anderson, May 19 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
271. Kenny Poliomyelitis A Systemic Disease: Paper Read to the Advisory Medical Committee of the Sister Elizabeth Kenny Foundation at the Sister Kenny Treatment Center Buffalo, New York, July 14, 1952, Box 1, Minneapolis-Hospitals, 1944–1961, Judd Papers, MHS, 2–6, 9–14.
272. Gil Fates What’s My Line? The Inside Story of TV’s Most Famous Panel Show (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978), 221. Kenny was the mystery guest on June 29 1952, Episode #109.
273. Jungeblut to Dear Miss Kenny, July 5 1952, Box 2, Ke-Kn, Jungeblut Papers, NLM; and see Kenny Poliomyelitis A Systemic Disease, 6–7.
274. Kenny to Mesdames I. J. Fox and Albert Rosen, July 7 1952, General Correspondence-F, MHS-K; Kenny to Dear Friends [Mrs. I. J. Fox and Albert Rosen], July 9 1952, General Correspondence-F, MHS-K.
275. G. P. Mitchell “Early Treatment of Poliomyelitis” British Medical Journal (March 22 1952) 1: 649–650.
276. Ethel Byrne and Alan T. Roberts “The Poliomyelitis Epidemic of 1950–1951 in the Newcastle Area” Medical Journal of Australia (July 5 1952) 2: 10–13; see also H.J. Seddon “Treatment in the Convalescent Stage” Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (August 1951) 33: 458; John M. Duggan and Peter I. A. Hendry “Royal Newcastle Hospital: The Passing of an Icon” Medical Journal of Australia (2005) 183: 642–645; R. G. Evans “A Professor ‘Honorarius’: An Australian Experiment in Medical Administration 1939–1964” Health & History (2003) 5: 115–138.
277. Jean Macnamara “The Prevention of Crippling Following Poliomyelitis” Medical Journal of Australia (July 5 1952) 2: 4–8.
278. H. J. Seddon [review of] “[Kenny] And They Shall Walk” British Medical Journal (April 12 1952) 1: 802–803.
279. J. R. S. Lahz, letter to editor, British Medical Journal (November 8 1952) 2: 1047.
280. Lancelot H.F. Walton, letter to editor, British Medical Journal (May 17 1952) 1: 1082.
281. Kenny My Battle and Victory, 11, 89.
282. Kenny “Report to the Board of the Directors of the Sister Elizabeth Kenny Foundation, Minneapolis, Minnesota,” February 27 1950, Board of Directors, MHS-K; Kenny to Dear Mr. Dayton, March 14 1950, James Henry, 1943–1951, MHS-K.
283. Alexander Maverick, 186–187.
284. “Sister Kenny Sees Polio Beaten” New York Times September 9 1952.
285. “Move on Kenny Training Centre For Australia.”
286. Extract of Page speech, in response to question from Mr. C. Morgan, October 16 1951, #707/9/A, Series A462, Australian Archives, AA-ACT; Kenny to Dear Mr. [Charles] Morgan, November 7 1951, Cohn Papers, MHS-K; “Move on Kenny Training Centre For Australia”; Kenny to Dear Mr. Kline, October 19 1951. Page had visited Europe and North America from July to September 1951. He was made Minister for Health in 1949 and held this post until 1956 when he retired to the backbench; see Carl Bridge “Page, Sir Earle Christmas Grafton (1880–1961),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/page-sir-earle-christmas-grafton-7941/text13821, accessed July 29 2012.
287. “Move on Kenny Training Centre For Australia”; A. J. Metcalfe to Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department [A. S. Brown] Memorandum Re: ‘Sister’ Kenny and Poliomyelitis, October 27 1952, #707/9/A, Series A462, AA-ACT; see also Mrs. R. G. Baldock to Sir [Prime Minister], October 6 1952, #707/9/A, Series A462, AA-ACT; Mrs. R. G. Baldock to Dear Sir [Prime Minister], September 15 1952, #707/9/A, Series A462, AA-ACT.
288. A. S. Brown to Dear Mrs. Baldock, November 7 1952, #707/9/A, Series A462, AA-ACT. Baldock “will not accept any evidence that in any way contradicts the Kenny concept of poliomyelitis and the value of her methods of treatment” so that “any further evidence supplied would in all probability provoke further denial”; A. J. Metcalfe to Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department [A. S. Brown] Memorandum Re: ‘Sister’ Kenny and Poliomyelitis, December 3 1952, #707/9/A, Series A462, AA-ACT. Note that Page also wrote to Sterne asking that his name not be associated with any of the “controversy” around Kenny; Page to Sterne, October 7 1952, cited in Alexander Maverick, 188.
289. Kenny to Dear Friend [George Crosby], September 29 1952, Henry Papers, MHS.
290. Kenny to Gentlemen [Nye, Arden, Pye, Lee, Wilkinson, and Fryberg], [September 1952], Wilson Collection; Kenny, letter to editor, Toowoomba Chronicle October 30 1952, Wilson Collection; Minutes, Executive Committee of the International Organisation for Combating Poliomyelitis, Held October 15 1952.
291. Kenny to Dear Doctor Judd, August 12 1952, Minnesota-Hospitals, 1944–1961, Sister Kenny Institute, Judd Papers, MHS; Judd to Dear Sister Kenny, August 15 1952, Box 2, Ke-Kn, Jungeblut Papers, NLM; Kenny to Dear Mr. Kline, October 19 1951; Kenny to Dear Dr. Payne, September 10 1952, Minnesota-Hospitals, 1944–1961, Sister Kenny Institute, Judd Papers, MHS; Payne to Dear Miss Kenny, September 30 1952, Minnesota-Hospitals, 1944–1961, Sister Kenny Institute, Judd Papers, MHS.
292. Kenny to Dear Friend [James Henry], November 13 1952, Henry Papers, MHS.
293. Ibid.
294. “Sister Kenney [sic] Fights For Life” Atlanta Daily World November 25 1952; “Sister Kenny’s Condition Takes Turn for Worse” Los Angeles Times November 29 1952. Some of her first polio patients waited outside her house for the final bulletin announcing the death; “Sister Kenny Dies In Her Sleep at 66” New York Times November 30 1952.
295. “Sister Kenny Musters a Smile for America” Minneapolis Star November 25 1952; “Sister Kenney [sic] Fights For Life”; “Sister Kenny Resigned to Die Before She Lapsed Into Coma” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin November 30 1952; “Sister Kenny’s Life Had Peaceful Close” Toowoomba Chronicle December 1 1952.
296. “Doctor Wires Advice To Help Sister Kenny” Hartford Courant November 27 1952; “Sister Kenny Resigned to Die Before She Lapsed Into Coma”; “Sister Kenny Dies In Her Sleep at 66”; “Sister Kenny’s Life Had Peaceful Close”; “Sister Kenny Treated From N.Y. By Phone” Chicago Daily Tribune November 26 1952; “Sister Kenny Unconscious; Heart Weakens” Chicago Daily Tribune November 29 1952; Waldemar Kaempffert “Science in Review: Trypsin, Like That Flown to Australia for Sister Kenny, Dissolves Some Blood Clots” New York Times December 7 1952; “Sister Kenny’s Condition Takes Turn for Worse”; “Sister Kenny, Polio Fighter, Critically Ill” Washington Post November 24 1952.
297. “Sister Kenny Resigned to Die Before She Lapsed Into Coma”; “Pneumonia Hastens Death of Polio Nurse” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune November 30 1952; “Sister Kenny’s Life Had Peaceful Close.”
298. “Sister Kenny’s Life Had Peaceful Close”; “Sister Kenny’s Services Held: Church Packed” Chicago Daily Tribune December 1 1952; “Sister Kenny Dies: Fought Polio 43 Years” Chicago Daily Tribune November 30 1952; “Sister Kenny, 66, Dies at Home in Australia” Los Angeles Times November 30 1952; Walter Johnson “Sister Kenny Fought Doctors to Win Battle Against Polio” Minneapolis Star December 1 1952.
299. “Sister Kenny Rites Held in Australia” New York Times December 1 1952; “Last Honor Paid to Sister Kenny” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin December 1 1952; “Sister Kenny’s Services Held; Church Packed” Chicago Daily Tribune December 1 1952; “Town Will Watch Over Her Grave” Brisbane Courier Mail [1952], Kenny Collection, Box 18, Fryer Library; “Sister Kenny Rites To Be Held Today” Hartford Courant December 1 1952.
300. “Town Will Watch Over Her Grave”; “At Rest: Under the Gums” Brisbane Courier-Mail December 2 1952; “Last Honor Paid To Sister Kenny”; “Sister Kenny Rites Held in Australia.”
301. “Last Honor Paid To Sister Kenny”; “Sister Kenny Rites Held in Australia”; “At Rest: Under the Gums”; “Town Will Watch Over Her Grave.”
302. “Last Honor Paid To Sister Kenny”; “Sister Kenny Rites Held in Australia”; “At Rest: Under the Gums.”
303. “At Rest: Under the Gums.”
; 304. “Transition: Sister Elizabeth Kenny” Newsweek (December 8 1952) 40: 67.
305. “Sister Kenny Dies In Her Sleep at 66.”
306. “Sister Kenny” Lancet (December 6 1952) 260: 1123; “Elizabeth Kenny” Medical Journal of Australia (January 17 1953) 1: 85; “Sister Kenny” British Medical Journal (December 6 1952) 2: 1262; “Sister Kenny: H. J. Seddon” British Medical Journal (December 6 1952) 2: 1262–1263; “Death of Sister Kenny” JAMA (January 3 1953) 151: 53.
307. “Sister Kenny Is Dead” Sydney Morning Herald December 2 1952, Wilson Collection.
308. “Many Pay Tribute to a ‘Great Australian’ ” Toowoomba Chronicle December 1 1952; “Sister Kenny Is Dead.”
309. “Many Pay Tribute to a ‘Great Australian.’ ”
310. “Was A Great Influence” Brisbane Courier-Mail December 1 1952.
311. “Many Pay Tribute to a ‘Great Australian.’ ”
312. “Actress Praises Sister Kenny” [unnamed newspaper], [December 1952], Clippings, MHS-K.
313. Johnson “Australian Nurse Is Dead”; Victor Cohn “Revolutionary Polio Treatment Sister Kenny Gift to U.S. Medicine” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune November 30 1952.
314. “Sister Kenny Honored” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin December 17 1952.
315. “Sister Kenny Memorial Conducted” Los Angeles Times December 3 1952; “History of the Sister Elizabeth Kenny Foundation of Southern California, Inc.” [1955], Kenny Collection, Box 1, Fryer Library.
316. “Sister Kenny Awards Presented to Hospital” Los Angeles Times January 19 1956; “Rosalind Russell Gives Tiny Patient Welcome” Los Angeles Times January 29 1956.
FURTHER READING
On medicine, race and the Cold War see Mary L. Dudziak Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Stephan E. Mawdsley “ ‘Dancing on Eggs’: Charles H. Bynum, Racial Politics, and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, 1938–1954” Bulletin of the History of Medicine (2010) 84: 217–247; David M. Oshinsky Polio: An American Story (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Robert N. Proctor The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Naomi Rogers “Race and the Politics of Polio: Warm Springs, Tuskegee and the March of Dimes” American Journal of Public Health (2007) 97: 2–13; Kevin Starr Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Jessica Wang American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism, and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
On gender and the Cold War see Mary C. Brennan Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace: Conservative Women and the Crusade Against Community (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2008); Linda Eisenmann Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Helen Laville Cold War Women: The International Activities of American Women’s Organisations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002); Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Lisa McGirr Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Joanne Meyerowitz ed. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).
9
I Knew Sister Kenny
IN 1954 THE National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) sponsored the world’s largest clinical trial and in 1955 the Salk polio vaccine became available to the public. With the widespread use of the vaccine during the late 1950s the clinical care of polio no longer seemed important. Fewer children were contracting polio and those who were had shorter hospital stays. Reflecting these changes the Baltimore Children’s Hospital-School, where Florence and Henry Kendall still worked, was renamed the Children’s Hospital in 1958; its NFIP-funded iron lung center had already closed a few years earlier.1
The Salk vaccine’s victory over polio excited people across the globe, and Americans felt special pride as “it was their vaccine, ordered and paid for by them.”2 Elizabeth Kenny, a central character in the polio wars, was quickly—and, I think, not accidentally—forgotten. The story of how polio had been conquered was well crafted by the NFIP’s publicity department and erased almost all previous debates in polio history, especially those around therapy. When, for example, Herbert Levine, a little known Illinois physician, tried to memorialize Kenny and the Centralia Kenny clinic, the NFIP quietly discouraged leading science reporters from reviewing his 1954 book I Knew Sister Kenny: The Story of a Great Lady and Little People. Kenny had been, Levine reminded readers, “a world-wide controversial figure [who had]… re-awakened and re-stimulated medical science to continue its research against this dreaded disease.” Although the book was reviewed in regional papers like the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph and received blurbs from Ed Sullivan and Hedda Hopper, it disappeared from sight. It was not enough, Levine discovered, to have known Kenny.3 By comparison, in 1958 the NFIP used all of its media resources to highlight its organization of a special ceremony at Warm Springs to honor 17 polio heroes in a new Polio Hall of Fame. The NFIP chose to feature twentieth-century scientists whose NFIP-funded work had led to the polio vaccine, along with Roosevelt, O’Connor, and 3 nineteenth-century physicians.4 There were no modern orthopedists or physical medicine experts, much less any physical therapists or nurses.
These maneuvers helped to refocus the picture of polio away from the bedside to the laboratory. Boosted by NFIP publicity, a new symbol of the defeat of polio was emerging: not a woman surrounded by grateful child patients but a man in a white coat holding a test tube. During the 1950s and early 1960s polio’s history was remade into the story of virus hunters; physical therapists, nurses, and even doctors, when they appeared, were portrayed as grateful for the insights of scientists who knew, as the authors of Polio Pioneers argued, “how to hunt a germ.”5 The forgetting of Sister Kenny reflected a wider cultural neglect of the pioneers of clinical care compared to the designers of preventive and curative techniques.
The NFIP encouraged science writers to see polio as a triumphant story of medical science, even when a batch of the Salk vaccine produced by the Cutter laboratory proved deadly and the federal government had to step in to monitor vaccine production more closely. By the late 1950s the making of a new vaccine by Albert Sabin similarly captured public attention, especially the purported rivalry between Sabin and Salk. The 2 polio vaccines, indeed, became the exemplar of Americans’ ability to control disease, a high tech solution to a messy, frightening plague now gone forever. They were another emblem, like penicillin, of American medicine’s Golden Age.6 While the NFIP’s publicity department continued to remind the public of the importance of making sure children received 3 separate injections of the Salk vaccine, the NFIP began to expand its mission beyond polio, focusing on “crippling” diseases such as arthritis before finally settling on birth defects. The term “infantile paralysis” had already lost its meaning; the organization renamed itself first the National Foundation (1958) and then the March of Dimes. In 1960 its poster child had spina bifida.7
SETTLING SCORES: GENDER, THEORY, AND CHARACTER
During her lifetime, admirers had placed Kenny in a pantheon of great scientists like Louis Pasteur, Paul Ehrlich, and Marie Curie—all subjects of Hollywood movies, which had depicted them as scientific figures who had battled conservative antagonists and had “shared their secrets with all mankind.”8 But most physicians were unwilling to go as far to put Kenny in the same category as double-Nobel-Prize-winner Marie Curie or another great contributor to medical science.
Kenny’s gender, training, and claims to discovery were made central in the numerous obituaries published after her death where the act of memorializing offered an opportunity to settle scores. Kenny’s story—bush nurse becomes medical celebrity—was too good not to retell. Indeed, the Chicago Tribune phrased her life much as the Sister Kenny movie had done, praising her �
��zeal” and arguing that it had prevented her from attaining a husband and family. Making it clear to readers that Kenny—a single woman and a crusading professional—had once had a sweetheart was especially important in an era in which American women were expected to embrace a life of marriage and domesticity.9
In a long unsympathetic obituary, the New York Times noted “the extraordinary character of Sister Kenny” whose “stubbornness” had allowed her “to revolutionize the methods of treating poliomyelitis” and to rise “from the status of an obscure Australian nurse to a personage of international importance in the medical world.” Her personal characteristics were, however, “the primary cause of a deplorable conflict with physicians who disagreed with her concept of poliomyelitis.” “Medical opinion has been against Sister Kenny for years” but physicians did acknowledge “her great service in introducing methods of treatment that are now standard.” When her theories were “repudiated” she had lost the support of the NFIP, although it continued to fund the teaching of her techniques. Ignoring Kenny’s argument that her work showed that the polio virus affected nonnervous tissues, the Times oversimplified her theory and said that Kenny saw polio not as a nervous disorder but as “an affliction of the muscles and skin,” ideas that were the unsurprising result of one whose medical knowledge and grasp of anatomy “were those acquired by a nurse.” By contrast, physicians who “had studied the damaged brains of monkeys that had been infected with polio and of fatal human cases … saw plainly that the nerves were affected, for all Sister Kenny’s denials.” “The technical arguments, the personal recriminations … are at an end,” the Times concluded with relief, adding with an insincere-sounding reference to her patients, “there remains the figure of a strong-minded woman whose name will invoke blessings from thousands who would have been crippled for life had it not been for her courage, her forthrightness.”10
Polio Wars Page 78