Polio Wars (38 page)

Kenny recognized that Moldaver had tried to use physiological techniques to undermine her theory while leaving the evidence of her clinical results untouched. Indeed he had told reporters that “his criticisms were in no way concerned with the Kenny treatment methods.”
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“According to Dr. Moldaver, my concept is wrong, but my treatment, which is based on that concept, works,” she commented to a friend. “Are we to infer that medicine must reject good treatments because doctors disagree with the theory? If so, the practice of medicine is a farce.”
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Moldaver, Kenny assured reporters, “didn't know what he was talking about” and was “clinging to old, obsolete theories despite the fact [that] clever neurologists have proved the new theory correct.”
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Moldaver's attack made it easier for other antagonists to dismiss Kenny as a theorist. “No one now denies that Sister Kenny is good with her hands,” remarked
Time
, “but her critics insist that she does not really know how she does it.”
²⁸¹
Her allies saw such criticisms as additional evidence that physicians and scientists were jealous of her impressive clinical results. In his popular weekly radio program “Confidentially Yours,” Arthur Hale announced that Moldaver's study demonstrated the “undercover opposition to Nurse Kenny.” Moldaver had not questioned “the nature of Nurse Kenny's treatment, nor their [her] results” but had claimed that because Kenny was not a doctor she did not understand polio from a medical standpoint and therefore “her concepts of the disease are unsound.”
²⁸²
The issue of whether clinical results could be judged irrespective of pathological theory continued to be raised by physicians with much heat but no resolution. One orthopedist, who praised her “excellent method of muscle re-education” and “great gift in the healing art” in the
Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery
, noted that she had reported results “which we have not yet been able to duplicate.” Like Gill, he wondered how much of the Kenny concept would remain intact in the future, adding that “many of her ideas
of kinesiology are still difficult to accept. Others are so simple and apparent that it seems incomprehensible that they were not recognized long ago.”
²⁸³

Clinical and laboratory investigations had shown that the principal tenets of Kenny's concepts “were found wanting,” Richard Kovacs noted as he summed up advances in physical medicine at the end of 1943; thus physicians' “reluctance to accept Miss Kenny's explanation for the success of her method appears to be justified.” Still “her path-finding and enthusiastic work” had led to a more effective use of physical treatment in polio's early stage.
²⁸⁴
Here was a narrowed sense of Kenny's contribution: her enthusiastic work had inspired research and led other professionals to reassess polio therapy and to engage in measured research.

These kinds of reports left the NFIP in a difficult position. Critics were complaining about inappropriate propaganda while supporters said that her method was not being expanded quickly enough. Although NFIP officials had effectively sidestepped many disputes within the American medical profession, the Kenny controversy was one they could not avoid. Relations between the NFIP and orthopedists began to deteriorate as reports surfaced that “physicians are being pushed into the position of having to accept the skills of nurses in this field about which they know nothing” and that the NFIP had encouraged “the use of the Kenny method by nurses without appropriate supervision by doctors.”
²⁸⁵

To be seen as both responsive and balanced, NFIP officials decided to tighten the standards and content of the Kenny courses offered in Minneapolis. Although physicians who came usually for only a week had praised the institutional setting whether at the university's hospital, the city hospital, or the Institute, many of the nursing and physical therapy students who stayed for 3 weeks or longer were less enthusiastic, complaining that they felt “disappointed, confused, and dissatisfied” in a poorly organized program with “inadequate supervision of experience with patients.”
²⁸⁶
At the end of 1943, pressured by the NFIP, the University of Minnesota's medical school reorganized the Kenny courses it continued to direct. Therapists and nurses now took separate courses that included lectures on the basic nature of polio followed by clinical instruction and supervised experience in the application of Kenny's methods. To be sure that graduate technicians had the character as well as professional background to become “qualified teachers,” the university introduced new entrance requirements, including a physical examination and a series of tests “concerned primarily with intelligence, manual dexterity and personal adjustments” conducted by the university's testing bureau.
²⁸⁷

Although physicians had not formally complained about their course, the dean reorganized it as well, renaming it “The Management of Infantile Paralysis.” The course now covered the etiology, epidemiology, pathology, and physiology of polio, followed by a presentation of the Kenny technique along with a report of investigations on its value, and finally a broader discussion of the treatment of the disease.
²⁸⁸
Demonstrating its approval of these changes, the NFIP's national office agreed to continue its teaching grant to the university's medical school and to keep paying the living and travel expenses of Kenny and her associates.
²⁸⁹

These curricula changes reflected a shift in professional thinking whereby Kenny's work was categorized as a technological innovation rather than as a contribution to medical science. Kenny, however, had a different vision of her work. She continued to demand recognition for her concept of polio and envisioned a far more thorough training for the nurses and physical therapists who would then call themselves Kenny-trained.
She reminded Diehl that she had consistently asked for the teaching courses to be longer and that her medical supporters had said that “the details of this method of treatment cannot be learned quickly.”
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Gradually Kenny began to envision Kenny technicians as graduates of a 2-year course who would be qualified both to teach her work and to train others to become technicians. Such a course would be directed not by a physician from the university's medical school but by one of her medical allies at the Institute.

Even as medical journals were beginning to attack her concepts a few universities began to recognize Kenny as an appropriate subject for an honorary degree. In 1943 she received 2: a doctorate of humane letters from New York University and a doctorate of science from the University of Rochester.
²⁹¹
New York University's vice president praised her as a “heroic daughter of the Australia bush” whose “revolutionary treatment” had “proved amazingly successful.” After she had “patiently, persistently and triumphantly labored against untold opposition … today the foremost medical scientists of many lands acclaim it incomparably effective.”
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In Rochester the nursing school dean lauded Kenny as an altruistic humanitarian who had accepted no money for her work and “looked for no reward” other than as a nurse. Now, though, “leading scientists in the United States and Canada … endorse her theory” and “hundreds of nurses and physiotherapists multiply the benefits of her teachings.”
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More dramatically, Rochester president Alan Valentine declared “in the dark world of suffering you have lit a candle that will never be put out.”
²⁹⁴

Kenny tried to balance triple roles as clinician, teacher, and celebrity. She became more self-conscious about her appearance and began to dress like a wealthy woman, using lipstick which she once had scorned.
²⁹⁵
She traveled more frequently by plane, wearing jeweled pins, fancy corsages, and even larger hats. “You certainly seem to be affluent,” a Brisbane friend teased her, “as it has been remarked that you have a different bonnet for every picture.”
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She also began to wear as her trademark a distinctive kind of hat with an overly wide brim she called a “digger” hat, modeled, she claimed, on the Australian Light Horse hat of the Great War.
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She never learned to drive, but the NFIP bought her a 4-door Buick sedan and paid for a driver.
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Her Minnesota base began to attract more celebrity patients such as Metropolitan Opera baritone Lawrence Tibbett's son Michael who had previously received “the very best treatment” at Warm Springs.
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In 1943 photographer Jack Delano, representing the Division of Photography of the Office of War Information, included Kenny in his travels around Minnesota. He took a series of photographs of Kenny in Minneapolis: in her apartment correcting a paper to be read at a medical meeting; relaxing while playing her favorite gramophone record; presenting 3 patients to a class of physicians and technicians; and being asked for her autograph by 2 visiting Australian soldiers.
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In each image she looms large, a woman participating in the professional world, in many ways more than a nurse.

Journalists sometimes explained away Kenny's belligerence by citing her ethnic background and her birth in the wilds of rural Australia. “A pliant and diplomatic person might perhaps have softened some of the criticism,” the
Saturday Evening Post
suggested, “but Miss Elizabeth Kenny, born on a frontier, half Irish and half Scotch, convinced she is
right, is no diplomat.”
³⁰¹
Some used her age to justify her impatience. Perhaps she should use more tact with her opponents, but, another reporter concluded, “she hasn't time for tact.”
³⁰²
Reporters liked her direct manner and made her lack of artifice a sign of sincerity. “From the quietness of her low voice to the direct gaze which looks deep into you, she is as compelling as she is unaffected,” argued a
Los Angeles Times
reporter.
³⁰³
Although reporters rarely saw a relaxed Kenny telling jokes and war stories, they did see evidence of her sharp tongue. When Gudakunst introduced her at an NFIP lunch held in Philadelphia at the Ritz Carlton hotel and praised her “new treatment” Kenny corrected him, delighting reporters with her retort: “ ‘I have not presented a new treatment … I have presented a new concept of poliomyelitis. And you should know that, Dr. Gudakunst. It would not need a medical man to see what I've been showing you. A blacksmith could see it.” Her nondeferential attitude to doctors was a provocative antidote to the familiar doctor–nurse relationship. When a photographer pleaded for another picture with the words “ ‘Please, Dr. Kenny,' ” according to one reporter, “she glared at him. ‘Young man … I am NOT a doctor.' ”
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1.
See E. Daniel Potts and Annette Potts
Yanks Down Under 1941–45: The American Impact on Australia
(Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985); John Hammond Moore
Over-Sexed, Over-Paid, & Over Here: Americans in Australia 1941–1945
(St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1981); Ray Aitchison
Thanks to the Yanks? The Americans and Australia
(Melbourne: Sun Books, 1972); Edward J. Drea “ ‘Great Patience Is Needed': American Encounters Australia, 1942”
War & Society
(1993) 11: 121–151.

2.
“Roosevelt Cites U.S. Humanity As Faith in Victory of Right”
Christian Science Monitor
January 31 1942; “Faith, Hope, Charity Still Rule World”
Washington Post
January 31 1942.

3.
Kenny to Dear Mr. O'Connor, February 19 1942, Basil O'Connor, 1940–1942, MHS-K. See also Kenny's claim that she had offered her services to the U.S. government for training men in physical therapy but had not yet been called; J.M.G. [Janet M. Geister] “The Lady from Australia”
Trained Nurse and Hospital Review
(July 1942) 109: 37.

4.
Kenny to Dear Dr. Diehl, April 13 1944, Dr. Harold S. Diehl, 1941–1944, MHS-K.

5.
Vernon L. Hart “The Kenny Principles and Injuries of the Knee Joint”
JAMA
(November 21 1942) 120: 900; see also Ethel Calhoun to Dear Dr. Ghormley, February 15 1943, Ethel Calhoun, MHS-K; “Vernon L. Hart 1898–1950”
Minnesota Medicine
(1952) 35: 240–241.

6.
Elizabeth Riddell “U.S. Swears By Sister Kenny”
New York Daily Mirror
February 4 1943.

7.
Hedda Hopper “Star Nurses An Enthusiasm!”
Washington Post
July 27 1942. Lewin later recalled that he had written a paper on Kenny and at the end had said this dramatically but Fishbein had asked him to strike it out; [Cohn interview with] Philip Lewin, October 19 1954, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.

8.
“Miss Barrymore Star of Playlet on W-G-N Tonight”
Chicago Daily Tribune
January 22 1942; “W-G-N Ramparts Show Salutes Paralysis War”
Chicago Daily Tribune
January 23 1942.

9.
DWG to BOC Memorandum re Lectures by Sister Kenny, September 18 1941 Public Relations, MOD-K.

10.
Robert M. Yoder “Healer from the Outback”
Saturday Evening Post
(January 17 1942) 214: 18, 68, 70; A. B. Hardy [Sales Promotion Department, Curtis Publishing Company] to Gentlemen, January 12 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

11.
Kenny to Dear Mr. Connor [sic], September 30 1941, Basil O'Connor 1940–1942, MHS-K.

12.
Robert L. Bennett “Discussion of Papers by Drs. John A. Toomey, Jessie Wright, and Miland E. Knapp”
Archives of Physical Therapy
(November 1942) 23: 673.