page_title: Elizabeth Kenny
section_title: Polio treatment
hierarchical_section_title: Elizabeth Kenny / Work / Polio treatment
caption_attribution_description: English: Sister Kenny Clinic, Brisbane. (Also known as The Elizabeth Kenny Clinic and Training School. Located Corner George and Charlotte Streets, Brisbane.)
context_page_description: Sister Elizabeth Kenny was a self-trained Australian bush nurse who developed a new approach for treating victims of poliomyelitis, which was controversial at the time. Her method, which she promoted internationally while working in Australia, Europe and the United States, differed from the then conventional medical practice which called for placing affected limbs in plaster casts. Instead Kenny applied hot compresses to affected parts of patients' bodies followed by passive movement of those areas to reduce what she called "Spasm". Kenny's principles of muscle rehabilitation became the foundation of physical therapy, or physiotherapy.
  Her life story was told in the 1946 film Sister Kenny, portrayed by Rosalind Russell, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
context_section_description: When sales of the Sylvia Stretcher declined, Kenny returned to Nobby to again work as a nurse. During one of her sales journeys she met the Rollinson family who owned a Station west of Townsville. In 1931, during a trip to visit her brother Will, Kenny telephoned them. They promptly asked her to care for their niece Maude, who was disabled by polio. After 18 months under Kenny's care Maude was able to walk, return to Townsville, marry and conceive a child. The newspapers in Townsville took up the story, referring to it as a cure. In 1932, Queensland suffered its highest number of polio cases in 30 years; the following year, several local people helped Kenny set up a rudimentary polio-treatment facility under canopies behind the Queens Hotel in Townsville. In a few months (after further success with local children), she moved into the bottom floor of the hotel. The first official evaluation of Sister Kenny's work took place in Townsville in 1934, under the auspices of the Queensland Health Department. Her success working with polio victims led to the establishment of Kenny clinics in several cities in Australia. The Sister Kenny Clinic in the Outpatients Building of the Rockhampton Base Hospital is now listed on the Queensland Heritage Register.
  During these years, Kenny developed her clinical method and gained recognition in Australia. She was adamantly opposed to immobilising children's bodies with plaster casts or braces. At this time, Kenny requested that she be permitted to treat children during the acute stage of the disease with hot compresses (as she claimed to have done in Clifton before the war). However, doctors would not allow her to treat patients until after the acute stage of the disease, or until "tightness" (Kenny used the word "spasm" much later) subsided. She instituted a carefully designed regimen of passive "exercises" designed to recall function in unaffected neural pathways (much as she had done with Maude). On her own, she began treatment of a patient in the acute stage in her George Street Clinic in Brisbane, afterwards transferring her to the Ward 7 Polio Clinic in Brisbane General Hospital. That child (and others) recovered with fewer aftereffects than those placed in braces. In 1937, she published an introductory book about her work and began another, The Treatment of Infantile Paralysis in The Acute Stage, known as The Green Book which was later published in the United States. The most comprehensive appraisal of her methods, "The Kenny Concept of Infantile Paralyses And Its Treatment," was published in collaboration with Dr. John Pohl in 1943, and was known as "The Red Book.".
  Between 1935 and 1940, Kenny travelled extensively throughout Australia, helping to set up clinics.  She also made two trips to England, where she set up a treatment clinic in St. Mary's Hospital near Carshalton Kenny's success was controversial; many Australian doctors and the British Medical Association (BMA) questioned her results and methodology.[28][29][30] Raphael Cilento, who was in charge of the QHD evaluation, wrote a report that was somewhat complimentary but mainly critical.[31] Kenny replied publicly, fiercely taking Cilento to task for his criticisms, unheard of then from a self-taught Australian Bush Nurse. This response caused a contentious relationship among Kenny, Cilento, the BMA and the Australian Medical Association (AMA). Between 1936 and 1938, a Queensland Government Royal Commission evaluated Kenny's work and published its Report of The Queensland Royal Commission on Modern Methods for the Treatment of Infantile Paralysis in 1938. Its most critical comment, because Kenny opposed using splints and plaster casts was: "The abandonment of immobilization is a grievous error and fraught with grave danger, especially in very young patients who cannot co-operate in re-education."  They stated that her clinic (then in Brisbane) was "admirable". The Commissioners' strongest objections were against the Queensland government, which was funding Kenny's work, because her clinics were not supervised by BMA. The Q
caption: Elizabeth Kenny Clinic, corner of George and Charlotte Streets, Brisbane, 1938
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