Polio Wars (27 page)

174.
DWG to BO'C Memorandum: Re Miss Kenny, January 19 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

175.
Kenny to Sirs [
JAMA
] January 18 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

176.
Compere to Dear Doctor Guderkunst [sic] January 27 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

177.
Ibid.

178.
Kenny to Dear Dr. Compere, February 16 1942, Dr. Edward L. Compere, 1942–1945, MHS-K; see also Kenny to Dear Dr. Fishbein, January 24 1942, Dr. Edward L. Compere, 1942–1945, MHS-K.

179.
Kenny to Dear Dr. Compere, March 2 1942, Dr. Edward L. Compere, 1942–1945, MHS-K; Fishbein to Dear Sister Kenny, January 28 1942, Dr. Edward L. Compere, 1942–1945, MHS-K.

180.
Compere to Dear Miss Kenny, March 6 1942, Dr. Edward L. Compere, 1942–1945, MHS-K; Compere to Dear Miss Kenny, March 15 1942, Dr. Edward L. Compere, 1942–1945, MHS-K.

181.
Kenny to Dear Dr. Compere, March 17 1942, Dr. Edward L. Compere, 1942–1945, MHS-K.

182.
J. D. Ratcliff “Minutemen Against Infantile Paralysis”
Colliers
(October 9 1943) 112: 18; “Dr. Don Gudakunst, Paralysis Expert”
New York Times
January 21 1946; “Medical Chief In Polio Drive Dies In Hotel”
Chicago Daily Tribune
January 21 1946; see also “Don Walsh Gudakunst”
JAMA
(January 26 1946) 130: 234; Benison
Tom Rivers
, 276–278.

183.
DWG to BO'C Memorandum, December 10 1941, Public Relations, MOD-K; “Sister Kenny Receives Parent's Magazine Award”
Parents Magazine
(December 1942) 17: 38.

184.
Kenny [paper “I wish to present to you”] “Handed to DWG by Miss Kenny, 12-16-41 in Minneapolis,” Public Relations, MOD-K; Kenny to Dear Dr. Gudakunst, December 31 1941, Public Relations, MOD-K.

185.
DWG to BO'C Memorandum: Re Miss Kenny, January 19 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K; Salter to Dear Don [Gudakunst], January 23, 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K; Gudakunst to Dear Larry [Salter], December 19 1941, Public Relations, MOD-K.
JAMA
, he complained to O'Connor, “has done a rather poor job of reporting her work”; DWG to BO'C Memorandum: Re Miss Kenny, January 19 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

186.
DWG to BO'C Memorandum: Re Miss Kenny, January 19 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K; Salter to Dear Don [Gudakunst] January 23 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K; see also Gudakunst to Dear Larry [Salter], January 21 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

187.
Gudakunst to Dear Larry [Salter], December 19 1941, Public Relations, MOD-K.

188.
Gudakunst to Dear Doctor Viets, January 17 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

189.
Gudakunst to Dear Larry [Salter], December 19 1941, Public Relations, MOD-K.

190.
Gudakunst to Dear Doctor Compere, January 29 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

191.
DWG to Files Memorandum Re Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing Western Reserve University Kenny Method, January 15 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

192.
Salter to Dear Don [Gudakunst], January 23 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

193.
Gudakunst to Dear Doctor Knowlton, January 22 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

194.
“Correction: The Kenny Method”
JAMA
(January 17 1942) 118: 241; on Fishbein speaking with O'Connor by phone see Salter to Dear Don [Gudakunst] January 23, 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

195.
Wallace H. Cole, John F. Pohl, and Miland E. Knapp
The Kenny Method of Treatment for Infantile Paralysis
(New York: National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, Publication No. 40, 1942).

196.
Richard Kovacs ed.
The 1941 Year Book of Physical Therapy
(Chicago: Year Book Publishers, 1941), 329–332.

197.
“The Kenny Method of Treatment of Infantile Paralysis”
New England Journal of Medicine
(April 23 1942) 226: 700–702. Another editorial in the same journal praised the NFIP's sponsorship of an investigation of Kenny as “outstanding,” and the endorsement by the NFIP's medical advisory committee as “proof of the value of the foundation's farsighted policies”; “National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis”
New England Journal of Medicine
(April 9 1942) 226: 620.

198.
James Gray “Sister Kenny's Progress: A Triumph for Modern Medicine”
St Paul Pioneer Press
[n.d.], Clippings, MHS–K.

199.
Burton A. Brown to Dear Doctor Gudakunst, December 17 1941, Public Relations, MOD-K.

200.
Lem H. Tittle to Dear Mr. O'Connor, December 6 1941, Public Relations, MOD-K.

201.
Ann van Kavcren to My Dear Mrs. Roosevelt, January 10 1942, Public Relations, MOD-K.

On polio and American physical therapy see Glenn Gritzer and Arnold Arluke
The Making of Rehabilitation: The Political Economy of Medical Specialization, 1890–1980
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Beth Linker “The Business of Ethics: Gender, Medicine, and the Professional Codification of the American Physiotherapy Association, 1918–1935”
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
(2005) 60: 320–354; Beth Linker “Strength and Science: Gender, Physiotherapy, and Medicine in Early Twentieth Century America”
Journal of Women's History
(2005) 17: 106–132; Marilyn Moffat “The History of Physical Therapy Practice in the United States”
Journal of Physical Therapy Education
(2003) 17: 15–25; Wendy B. Murphy
Healing the Generations: A History of Physical Therapy and the American Physical Therapy Association
(Alexandria, VA: American Physical Therapy Association, 1995); Donald A. Neumann “Polio: Its Impact on the People of the United States and the Emerging Profession of Physical Therapy”
Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy
(2004) 34: 479–492; Dorothy Pinkston “Evolution of the Practice of Physical Therapy in the United States” in Rosemary M. Scully and Marylou R. Barnes eds.
Physical Therapy
(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1989), 2–30; Daniel J. Wilson
Living with Polio: The Epidemic and its Survivors
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

On medical politics in the 1930s and early 1940s see James G. Burrow
AMA: Voice of American Medicine
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963); Frank D. Campion
The A.M.A. and U.S. Health Policy Since 1940
(Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1984), 114–130; Jonathan Engel
Doctors and Reformers: Discussion and Debate over Health Policy 1925–1950
(Charleston: University of South Carolina Press, 2002); Elizabeth Fee and Theodore Brown eds.
Making Medical History: The Life and Times of Henry E. Sigerist
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Michael R. Grey
New Deal Medicine: The Rural Health Programs of the Farm Security Administration
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Rickey Hendricks
A Model for National Health Care: The History of Kaiser Permanente
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993); Daniel S. Hirschfield
The Lost
Reform: The Campaign for Compulsory Health Insurance in the United States from 1932 to 1943
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970); Elton Rayak
Professional Power and American Medicine: The Economics of the American Medical Association
(Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1967); Paul Starr
The Social Transformation of American Medicine
(New York: Basic Books, 1982); Patricia Spain Ward
“United States versus American Medical Association et. al.:
the Medical Antitrust Case of 1938–1943”
American Studies
(1989) 30: 123–153.

AMID THE EXCITEMENT
around Kenny and her work came the wrenching moment of Pearl Harbor, followed by Roosevelt's declaration of war against Japan and Germany. In this new era isolationism was defeated, Roosevelt transformed from Dr. New Deal to Dr. Win the War, and a massive economic upturn ended the Great Depression. The war also remade American alliances around the world. For the first time Australian foreign policy was formally oriented toward the United States. As American troops arrived they were mocked as “dammed Yanks” but also welcomed by most Australians as they fought alongside Australian troops to push back Japan's expansion in the Pacific.
¹

In the United States polio was immediately another war at home. With the declaration of war coming just weeks before the annual March of Dimes campaign, O'Connor conferred with Roosevelt and his advisors, and announced that the president agreed that “even in time of war those nations which still hold to the old ideals of Christianity and Democracy, are carrying on services to humanity which have little or no relationship to torpedoes or guns or bombs.”
²

Caught up in the patriotic fervor of wartime America, Kenny volunteered her technicians in Minneapolis—a group she called the Australian Unit—“to give our services to any military or naval fort, camp, hospital or depot” should a polio outbreak occur in any of these centers.
³
Vernon Hart, an orthopedic surgeon who had attended her lectures and demonstrations before joining the Army, published a study of knee injuries treated by the Kenny method in
JAMA
, which showed, according to Kenny, “that this type of treatment is most satisfactory for restoring function after war wounds.”
⁴
Hart did praise the Kenny principles as “simple and scientific,” although—in an argument Kenny did not repeat—he described them as “old ones which have been salvaged from a disorganized field of physical therapy [by] … a sincere, intelligent and practical nurse.”
⁵
As American
troops arrived on Australia's east coast, bringing attention to the nation's new Pacific ally, Kenny was “always referred to as ‘the Australian nurse,' ” according to the
New York Daily Mirror
. “Her Australianism is part of her, and she claims it proudly.”
⁶
“The United States has given Australia Douglas MacArthur,” Chicago orthopedist Philip Lewin declared, and “Australia has given us Elizabeth Kenny.”
⁷

The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) hoped that Kenny's work would become another element in its own propaganda. Even before she published her autobiography, local NFIP chapters used her story to enhance fundraising efforts and a Chicago radio station's March of Dimes program dramatized Kenny's life starring Ethel Barrymore as Kenny.
⁸
The foundation wanted to control how the work was presented and tried to restrict Kenny “from writing articles for public or professional magazines, lecturing or releasing information in any way except through this Foundation.”
⁹
But Kenny became the story and the agent of change. She loved the limelight. She talked to reporters wherever she went, determined to spur patients and their families to demand that experts in their communities be trained in her methods. Informal AMA censor Fishbein was horrified after he had read and approved a story on Kenny in the
Saturday Evening Post
when he found that the magazine began to promote this article saying that the American Medical Association (AMA) had reversed its accepted views of polio therapy “with a bow of recognition to the nurse from down under.” After Fishbein made a sharp call to the Curtis Publishing Company a salesman explained abjectly to the magazine's retailers that “the American Medical Association has never officially considered Sister Kenny in any way whatever.”
¹⁰
Still, despite Fishbein's efforts to draw a line between medical practice and AMA policy, Cole and Knapp's
JAMA
article and the NFIP's subsequent announcement in December 1941 were easily interpreted as signs of AMA-approved progress in polio care.

By raising the question of clinical change, Kenny's results made physicians uncomfortable. Here was a breakthrough without a pill or surgical tool, involving the use of familiar methods based on a new reading of the paralyzed body. When Kenny quoted physicians who “thanked me most profusely and said they could only view with great sorrow the terrible mistakes made in the past in the treatment of this disease,” she saw such remarks as a powerful indication of the ability of professionals to be humble in the face of an original contribution.
¹¹
But her interpretation simplified a far more complex process. Had physicians in the past made “terrible mistakes”? What did it mean to accept the notion that previous therapies might have harmed their patients?

Therapeutic change was the most difficult part of medical progress to explain. New drugs like insulin, hormone therapy, and the sulfonamides were concrete technologies backed by the familiar trappings of laboratory research and pharmaceutical promotion; physical therapies were more difficult to evaluate. Nor was it easy to pin down the rationale for therapeutic change beyond the derogatory designation of medical fad. Elite researchers talked about “controlled trials,” but this was not yet a standard practice.