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War Memorial
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Controversy aroused interest in polio
Service to mankind by Elizabeth Kenny

SISTER Elizabeth Kenny, who died at her Toowoomba home, Struan, yesterday afternoon, became world famous for her revolutionary claims on poliomyelitis treatment.

And because ot the controversy the methods stirred she did a service to mankind— by attracting attention to the disease and to methods of treating it. Argument on the merits of her work will long survive her passing, but none will deny that she had the courage to challenge all opposition. Few women in modern times have lived so turbulent a life. Much of the battle was of her own making. She was fanatically sure of the right of her claims, and brooked no argument from doctors or anyone else. That sense of mission brought her out of the Queensland bush to become an international figure to have Hollywood make a film of her in her lifetime, to be acclaimed in American polls as an outstanding woman, to get honorary doctorates from universities, and a liberal showering of city keys; to have Congress pass a Bill giving her a permanent visa to the United States, and to have luncheon at the White House with a President.

Born in NSW she was not a native of Queensland. Her birthplace was Warialda, in northern New South Wales. She came up to the Darling Downs with her farming family as a child, the second youngest in a family of nine. The film of her life gave the impression that she was trained at the Toowoomba Hospital, she was not. She claimed to have been trained at the Scotia Private Hospital in Sydney.

In the First World War, she served on Army hospital ships, making 15 round trips between Australia and Great Britain. In the years after 1918, she lived quietly as a Queensland country nurse. It was onlywhen she put forward her claim of 'a new concept of the symptoms and treatment of the disease, infantile paralysis' that she became locked in a long quarrel with doctors. Her work among stricken children at Townsville in 1933-34 brought her to the notice of the Queensland Government. It brought her to Brisbane and financed the establishment of Kenny Clinics at Brisbane and other centres. Sister Kenny was in conflict with doctors from the start. At a time when the text books were for immobilisation and splinting, she was discarding splints and practising the early and frequent movement of paralysed limbs. She installed baths in her clinic and applied hydro-therapy — the reducating of patients to the use of their muscles while the limb was in water. Later to ease pain in acute stage of the disease, she introduced the use of foments. Her severest medical critic said that what was good in her method was not new and what was new could be harmful.

State inquiry The Queensland Government appointed a Royal Commission of doctors to investigate her claims in 1935. They reported against her in 1938, by which time she had visited England in an effort to have her claims recognised there. Argument was still strong in 1940 when she was invited to America. The Queensland Government voted £300 to assist her passage, and furnished her with introductions. Until then, Sister Kenny had not accepted any payment for her services. She had been given travelling facilities through the State, and board and lodging at her Brisbane clinic. Her chief source of revenue was understood to be from royalties on a stretcher she had patented years before.

U.S. acclaim In America she attracted eminent medical support and also strong opposition. The American people, however, put her on a pedestal as one of the great women of the age. She won a recognition that few women apart from the President's wife could have commanded . In 1942, a year and nine months after she had left Brisbane, the New York Sun named her the outstanding woman of the vear. It was only one of the many distinctions conferred on her by Americans. Her method was given full opportunity at the University of Minnesota. Kenny clinics were opened in several American cities. Kenny Foundations sprang up with the support of notable American figures. And with the Impetus of what was going on in the United States, the Kenny treatment spread to South America, Canada, Eire, Belgium, Russia, Czecho-Slovakla, Spain, India, and other countries. She was world-famous.

Back to home She returned to Australia five times, but received little acclaim. She came early last year to spend her last days at Toowoomba, not far from the farm at Nobby where she had grown up. She leased a home in Toowoomba and Australian admirers started a movement to bring trained American nurses to Australia to teach her method — she had claimed that Australian 'so-called Kenny clinics' had departed from her way of treatment. Age and illness were telling but she was restless. Six months later she was back in New York on her way to Copenhagen. She was reported then to have described herself to interviews as a woman dying from Parkinson's Disease. She was back in Australia in October, 1951, left again for America last March, returned in September, to announce: 'My victory is won. The polio virus has been isolated. Scientists will now be able to develop an effective vaccine. Columbia University has dedicated the virus discovery to me in recognition of my work. 'There are doctors in Australia today who denounce her views and methods most strongly. There are others—some of whom were associated with her in her Queensland work — who say she should get credit for her whole approach to the treatment of polio.

Reject theory But even among those who are ready to give her this credit, there is a refusal to accept her theory about the origin of the disease. Most doctors hold that the polio virus strikes at the central nervous system. The Kenny theory was that it could directly attack muscles and other parts of the body, and could invade the bloodstream. Sister Kenny maintained that it was impossible to administer her treatment without accepting her theory. Doctors say her theory has not been proved.

Final notes Her last months were spent in preparing notes in further exposition of her claims; in meeting every challenge that came to notice. And she kept a sharp watch on the exchanges. Photostatic copies of articles from oversea Journals regularly reached her desk in the home on Toowoomba Range. On November 12, a week before she suffered the stroke that caused her death, she wrote to the Editor of The Courier-Mail contesting an opinion contrary to her beliefs, which had been made by an American doctor in a cabled interview, published that day. 'A statement could be supplied, signed by the Assistant Professor of Pediatrics of the University of Minnesota Medical School, giving the names of seven scientists who have proven the Kenny concept to be correct.' she wrote.

No bitterness England has formed a Kenny Foundation International (United Kingdom branch). By forming an Australian branch of the Foundation, Australia could get the help of two orthopaedic surgeons— members of the World Health Organisation—to explain to the medical profession the theory upon which the Kenny treatment is based.'

In these sustained controversies, she professed to have no bitterness towards those who had opposed her down the years. But she lost none of her zeal, none of the conviction that hers was an apostolate role in life, and that she was right. She was still fighting for her cause when death came to her.

The Courier Mail Monday 01 December 1952 page 3

Honoured Overseas

SISTER ELIZABETH KENNY, who is expected to retire from active work at her infantile paralysis clinic at Minneapolis, U.S.A., is a strange case of the prophet without honour in his own country." A Royal Commission of Queensland
doctors rejected the Kenny method of treatment in 1935. In 1941 after thorough investigation her methods of treatment were accepted by the U. S. Medical Association and the Council of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralyois. Sister Kennywas born at Warialda, N.S.W., in 1886 and educated at Guyra. She graduated as a nurse in 1911 and worked in the bush. Then she served with the A.I.F. from 1914 to 1918. She devoted herself to research into the treatment of infantile paralysis, as a result of which clinics were established in Queensland and other States and one at St. Mary's Hospital., Surrey,England. She visited Newcastle in March, 1940, just before she left for the United States and would, no doubt, have fulfilled her promise to act as consultant to Newcastle Hospital had her methods not been accepted in America. She was appointed guest instructor to the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1942. The American Congress of Physical Therapy, Chicago, presented her with the Distinguished Service Gold Key. Her many books include her life story, "And They Shall Walk."

Newcastle Morning Herald & Miner's Advocate Saturday 15 February 1947 page 2