It is difficult but I think crucial to explore the experience of polio in an era before the polio vaccines. Kenny’s successes and failures tell us much about what was supposed to constitute good science and medical expertise in the 1940s and 1950s. The touching of bodies, the healing of pain, and the softening of twisted limbs were all elements in a familiar picture: a female clinician whose special nurturing skills enable her to devise methods to rehabilitate a suffering patient. But Kenny claimed professional authority in a distinctive vision of medical science where clinical observation could lead to scientific insight. Thus, she said she could look inside the paralyzed body and recognize the path of a deadly virus. No virologist considered these claims scientific. Yet in unclear and unacknowledged ways her claim that polio was not a neurotropic but a “systemic” disease became part of a complicated new picture of polio that emerged in the early 1950s and provided the foundation for the production of safe and effective polio vaccines. With the polio virus now understood as traveling through the bloodstream and lingering in the intestines, other versions of polio science have faded and with them the memory of the fierce battles over how this disease had been understood and why it had mattered.
Before the 1950s the care of disabled patients was seen as extraneous to the daily workings of most health facilities, other than “crippled children’s homes.” Children and adults with disabling conditions were often neglected or given orthopedic operations and then returned home to domestic supervision or sometimes to alternative healers. If their condition worsened it was usually blamed on careless or apathetic parents or on meddling therapists who practiced outside the orthodox profession. Kenny’s attack on elite professionals and harmful medical therapies resonated with patients and families long suspicious of the standard care of polio and other disabling conditions, especially the sometimes horrific results of orthopedic surgery. Her refusal to fear what was considered the “infectious” acute stage or to avoid touching and trying to heal polio patients helped to ease the stigma of people with the disease. For children with birth injuries or cerebral palsy her work offered a source of hope, one that disappeared as she faded from American memory.
Finally, the story of Sister Kenny illustrates the fragility of memory. Forgetting is sometimes seen as a passive process rather than as an active one, but both remembering and forgetting are responses to the present. Recent studies of memorials have shown that communities were convinced that the choice of the moment to be memorialized must be informed by a moral message. The continuing popularity of documentaries, memoirs, and truth commissions evidences an unabated public interest in the production of memorials. Yet Kenny’s legacy in many ways has been one of forgetting rather than memorializing. The scattered memorials to Kenny in Australia appear in small rural towns: Toowoomba, Townsville, and Nobby, not in Brisbane or Melbourne. In North America there are a few signs in Minneapolis, but not in Winnipeg, Los Angeles, New York City, or Washington, D.C. There was never a federal Kenny clinic, directed by a board of Kenny-inspired professionals and former patients, as Senator William Langer had envisioned.
Polio is an old person’s disease now in North America; only in parts of the developing world, in countries with inadequate or disrupted vaccine programs, are children paralyzed today. How they are treated for their paralysis is simply not news. The eradication of polio in the Western world has served to make Kenny’s contributions largely irrelevant to modern practitioners.
Exploring the history of clinical care has meant addressing the tricky issue of efficacy. I have often been asked if Kenny was right or wrong.142 The many ways in which her story was continually reinvented by herself and others make it impossible to answer this question. In the story I tell here I emphasize the ways clinical practice has been pushed to the side, especially in histories of polio; the vaccine story has rendered disabled polio survivors and clinical therapy almost invisible. Clinical practices and clinical research, especially during the twentieth century, have not attracted many historians.143 Without a comfortable niche and with the help of her many enemies Kenny has slipped out of public memory.
It was perhaps in response to his sense that this was happening that in October 1953 at a Congressional hearing on “causes, control, and remedies of the principal diseases of mankind,” Charles Wolverton, still the powerful chair of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, returned to the issue of Kenny and her work. Wolverton assumed that most other Congressmen would remember her as he did from her appearance before his committee in 1948 where she had “made an indelible impression on all who were present … both as to her sincerity and her conviction and her ability.” She was, Wolverton added, “a great character [who deserved] … all the honors that have been paid to her.”144
Others, including epidemiologist Gaylord Anderson who was the dean of the University of Minnesota’s recently established School of Public Health, were more critical. Anderson made clear in his testimony before Wolverton’s committee that he did not “accept her explanation as to why it worked and [did] … not think many people today accept her explanation.” And he brought up all the old arguments that nothing about her technique was really new. But, in conclusion, he spoke as a father, not a doctor: “If my daughter had polio, she would have the Kenny treatment.”145 It was the kind of conclusion Kenny would have liked.
NOTES
1. Mavis Kenny “The Children’s Hospital,” June 1 1960, [enclosed in] Joseph E. Shaner to Dear Board Member [1960], George E. Bennett Papers, #503122, Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
2. Richard Carter The Gentle Legions (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), 92, 96.
3. “I Knew Sister Kenny: The Story of a Great Lady and Little People by Herbert J. Levine, M.D.” [announcement] Christopher Publishing House, Cohn Papers, MHS-K; Herbert J. Levine I Knew Sister Kenny: The Story of a Great Lady and Little People (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1954).
4. Jacob von Heine, Oskar Medin, Ivar Wickman, Karl Landsteiner, Jonas Salk, Thomas Rivers, Charles Armstrong, John Paul, Albert Sabin, Thomas Francis, Joseph Melnick, Isabel Morgan, Howard Howe, David Bodian, John Enders, Franklin Roosevelt, Basil O’Connor; “Leaders in Campaign Against Polio Are Honored at Warm Springs” New York Times January 3 1958.
5. Dorothy and Philip Sterling Polio Pioneers: The Story of the Fight Against Polio (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), 47, 76.
6. Richard Carter Breakthrough: The Saga of Jonas Salk (New York: Pocket Books, 1967); John Rowland The Polio Man: The Story of Dr. Jonas Salk (New York: Roy Publishers, 1961); John Rowan Wilson Margin of Safety: The Story of the Poliomyelitis Vaccine (London: Collins, 1963); Greer Williams Virus Hunters (New York: Knopf, 1959); Robert Coughlan The Coming Victory over Polio (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954).
7. “Polio Fund Plans Arthritis Drive” New York Times July 13 1958; “March of Dimes Picks Poster Child” New York Times November 5 1959; David Rose “March of Dimes Poster Children/National Ambassadors Personal Medical Conditions” October 4, 2005, MOD.
8. Vivian R. Humphrey “Your Journal and Mine” California Journal of Physical Therapy (September 1948) 4: 3; see also Humanitarian, letter to editor, Toowoomba Chronicle December 2 1952.
9. “Sister Kenny Dies; Fought Polio 43 Years” Chicago Daily Tribune November 30 1952.
10. “Sister Kenny” New York Times December 1 1952.
11. Jungeblut to Dear Mr. Kline, December 2 1952, Box 2, Ke-Kn, Jungeblut Papers, NLM.
12. Jungeblut to Dear Sir [Editor, New York Times], December 2 1952, Box 2, N, Jungeblut Papers, NLM.
13. Waldemar Kaempffert to Dear Dr. Jungeblut, December 4 1952, Box 2, Ka, Jungeblut Papers, NLM.
14. Jungeblut to Dear Mr. Kaempffert, December 19 1952, Box 2, Ka, Jungeblut Papers, NLM. On KF funding of Jungeblut’s research at Columbia see Marvin Kline in Health Inquiry (Poliomyelitis): Hearings before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce House of Representatives Eight-Third Congress F
irst Session on The Causes, Control, and Remedies of the Principal Disease on Mankind [Part 3 October 6 1953] (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1953), 609–610.
15. Claus Jungeblut to Dear Mr. Kline, December 2 1953, Box 2, Se-Sm, Jungeblut Papers, NLM; Franz J. Kallmann to Dear Claus [Jungeblut], June 21 1954, Box 2, Ka, Jungeblut Papers, NLM.
16. Fred R. Klenner to Dear Dr. Jungeblut, June 1 1954, Box 2, Ke-Kn, Jungeblut Papers, NLM.
17. Claus Jungeblut in Health Inquiry (Poliomyelitis) [Part 3 October 6 1953], 634–638; see also Claus W. Jungeblut and Gonzalo Bautista Jr. “Further Experiments on the Selective Susceptibility of Spider Monkeys to Poliomyelitis Infection” Journal of Infectious Diseases (1956) 99: 103–107.
18. “Claus Jungeblut, Bacteriologist, 78” New York Times February 2 1976. In the early twenty-first century his 1930s research on polio and vitamin C was rediscovered by a new group of alternative healers who claimed him as a forgotten heroic nutrition researcher; see A. W. Saul “Taking the Cure: Claus Washington Jungeblut, M.D.: Polio Pioneers, Ascorbate Advocate” Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine (2006) 21: 102–106.
19. “Death of Sister Kenny” JAMA (January 3 1953) 151: 53; Miland E. Knapp, Lewis Sher and Theodore S. Smith “Results of Kenny Treatment of Acute Poliomyelitis: Present Status of Three Hundred Ninety-One Patients Treatment Between 1940 an d 1945” JAMA (January 10 1953) 151: 117–120; “Subject Index: Poliomyelitis” JAMA (April 25 1953) 151: 1570–1571.
20. “Sister Kenny” British Medical Journal (December 6 1952) 2: 1262.
21. “Sister Kenny: H. J. Seddon” British Medical Journal (December 6 1952) 2: 1262–1263.
22. H. J. Seddon [review of] “[Kenny] And They Shall Walk” British Medical Journal (April 12 1952) 1: 802–803.
23. “Sister Kenny” Lancet (December 6 1952) 260: 1123.
24. Jean Macnamara “Elizabeth Kenny” Medical Journal of Australia (February 17 1953) 1: 85. Macnamara herself was moving away from the field of polio care. While she remained an orthopedic consultant at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, by the late 1940s she was caught up in a heated newspaper exchange about the use of the myxoma virus to control Australian rabbits. The debate led to further testing in Victoria and success when the virus became epizootic in 1951, leading to significant savings for initially skeptical wool-growers and Macnamara’s renewed reputation as a virus expert; Ann G. Smith “Macnamara, Dame Annie Jean (1899–1968)” Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 10 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1986), 345–347; Brian Coman Tooth and Nail: The Story of the Rabbit in Australia (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1999), 128–135.
25. “The Passing of Sister Elizabeth Kenny” British Journal of Nursing (January 1953) 101: 3.
26. [Mildred Elson, Editorial] “Sister Elizabeth Kenny” Physical Therapy Review (February 1953) 33: 81.
27. Marilyn Moffat “The History of Physical Therapy Practice in the United States” Journal of Physical Therapy Education (2003) 17: 15–25.
28. Gregory D. Black The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, 1940–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 67–71.
29. [Cohn interview with] Mary McCarthy, April 4 1953, Cohn Papers, MHS-K. On McCarthyism see Ellen Schrecker Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1998); David M. Oshinsky A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York: The Free Press, 1983); David K. Johnson The Lavender Menace: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
30. “Sister Kenny Awards Presented to Hospital” Los Angeles Times January 19 1956; “Rosalind Russell Gives Tiny Patient Welcome” Los Angeles Times January 29 1956; see also Hedda Hopper “Betrothal Party for Bette Davis’ Daughter” Chicago Tribune June 28 1963. In the early 1950s Russell toured with the comedy “Bell, Book and Candle” and then began a successful Broadway career, earning a Tony Award in 1953 for her portrayal of Ruth in the Broadway show “Wonderful Town,” a musical based on her 1942 film My Sister Eileen. Russell’s great success was the lead role in “Auntie Mame” for which she received a Tony nomination in 1957 and an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe award as the star in the 1958 movie version. During the 1960s Russell’s movie career expanded with roles as an older still feisty woman in films such as Gypsy (1962) and The Trouble with Angels (1966); Bernard F. Dick Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), 224–230.
31. Rosalind Russell and Chris Chase Life Is a Banquet (New York: Random House, 1977), 143–144.
32. Henry Thomas Lives to Remember: Sister Kenny (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1958), 95. Other Lives to Remember volumes included Oliver Cromwell, Louis Pasteur, Helen Keller, Isaac Newton, and Elizabeth Garret Anderson.
33. Alan Jenkins “Adventure in Perseverance: The Nurse from Australia” in Alan Jenkins ed. The Girl Book of Modern Adventures (London: Hulton Press, 1952), 81.
34. Adele de Leeuw and Cateau de Leeuw Nurses Who Led the Way (Racine, WI: Whitman Publishing Co., 1957).
35. Frances Wilkins Six Great Nurses: Louise de Marillac, Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Dorothy Patterson, Edith Cavell, Elizabeth Kenny (London: Hamilton, 1962); Robin McKown Heroic Nurses (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1966).
36. James Stacey “Victor Cohn, Dean of Science Writers, Dies at 80,” www.medscape.com/viewarticle/408047, accessed on 7/15/2011; “Science Writer Victor Cohn Dies” Minneapolis Star-Tribune February 15 2000; see also Lucy Y. Her “Victor Cohn, 80, Science, Medicine Writer” Minneapolis Star-Tribune February 14 2000, www.startribune.com/templates/11598646, 7/15/2011; Cohn “Angry Angel” Minneapolis Tribune October 29–November 18, 1953.
37. Cohn Four Billion Dimes (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Star and Tribune, 1955).
38. Morris [Fishbein] to Dear Basil [O’Connor], January 26 1953, Public History, MOD.
39. [Cohn interview with] Morris Fishbein, November 16 1953, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
40. [Cohn interview with] Basil O’Connor, June 20 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
41. Cohn to Mrs. Julia Farquarson, June 8 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K. He was arriving entrusted with a new task: the Minnesota Historical Society had asked him to “secure her files and papers now in Toowoomba” and authorized him “to make an offer.”
42. [Cohn interview with] Robert Bingham, May 19 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
43. [Cohn phone interview with] John Enders, March 28 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS.
44. [Cohn interview with] John Pohl and Betty Pohl, May 12 1953, Cohn Papers, MHS-K; [Cohn second interview with] John Pohl, October 2 1953, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
45. Cohn to Dear Stuart and Mary [McCracken], July 22 1955, Kenny Collection, Box 2, Fryer Library.
46. Julia Farquarson to Cohn, October 10 1954, Cohn Papers, MHS-K. She had especially disliked his assumption that Kenny had considered Mary Kenny McCracken as her “adopted daughter.” Kenny, Farquarson told Cohn, had seen Mary only as her adopted ward, and Mary had called her by “Sister” not “Mother,” which “surely … speaks for itself.”
47. Cohn to Mrs. Julia Farquarson, June 16 1953, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
48. Julia Farquarson to Cohn, May 23 1953, Cohn Papers, MHS-K; Julia Farquarson to Cohn, October 10 1954, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
49. Cohn to Harry Summers, January 24 1956, Cohn Papers, MHS-K. He met physicians, friends, and relatives, one of Chuter’s former assistants, a Women’s Weekly reporter, and looked at files in government archives and at Queensland and Sydney newspapers.
50. Duhig to Cohn, November 16 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K. Duhig pointed out that her belief “that a hot pack could alter the lesion in the spinal cord” would be analogous “to treating the headache of a brain tumor with aspirin.”
51. [Cohn interview with] J. V. Duhig, November 14 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
52. [Cohn interview with] Sir Raphael Cilento, November 16 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K; Cohn to Summers, January 24 1956; see also Dou
glas Gordon “Sir Raphael West Cilento” Medical Journal of Australia (1985) 143: 259–260.
53. Cohn to Summers, January 24 1956.
54. [Cohn interview with] James Guinane, November 23 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
55. Howard A. Rusk “Kenny Fund Expansion” New York Times August 24 1958; “$735,459 Awarded As Research Grants” Washington Post and Times Herald May 15 1958.
56. Marvin L. Kline “The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met” Reader’s Digest (August 1959) 75: 203–208; see also Rusk “Kenny Fund Expansion.” The KF had funded trials of the Lederle oral vaccine in the late 1950s, under Dr. Martins da Silva, a University of Minnesota pediatrician from Brazil; Paul A History, 344–345.
57. Cohn Sister Kenny, 240–247; “Challenges Expenses of Kenny Fund” Chicago Tribune April 2 1960.
58. Larry Fitzmaurice “Mayo Doctor to Head Kenny” Minneapolis Star September 9 1960. See also a rumor that an El Monte board member had pocketed funds; Alexander Maverick, 204.
59. “Kline Resigns as Director of Kenny Group” Minneapolis Tribune March 29 1960.
60. D.W. Frear, “The Good Name of Sister Kenny” letter to editor, Minneapolis Star July 7 1960; “Irregularities Are Charged In Sister Kenny Fund Drive” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin June 27 1960; “Challenges Expenses of Kenny Fund.”
Polio Wars Page 83