Polio Wars (51 page)

36.
E. M. W. [Edwin M. Watson] Memorandum for the President, May 10 1943, FDR-OF-5188, Sister Elizabeth Kenny Institute 1940–1944, FDR Papers. He also wrote to Kenny saying that the president “hopes very much that he will have a chance for a visit with you, but that the appointment should be arranged through Mr. Basil O'Connor”; Edwin M. Watson to My Dear Sister Kenny, May 12 1943, FDR-OF-5188, Sister Elizabeth Kenny Institute 1940–1944, FDR Papers.

37.
Basil O'Connor to Dear Grace [Tully], June 4 1943, FDR-OF-5188, Sister Elizabeth Kenny Institute 1940–1944, FDR Papers; “The Day in Washington”
New York Times
, June
9 1943. O'Connor had proposed a lunch meeting with Kenny and the president several times; Basil O'Connor to Roosevelt, January 12 1943, FDR-OF-5188, Sister Elizabeth Kenny Institute, 1940–1944, FDR Papers. See also O'Connor [memoranda of] February 1 1943 and April 1 1943, FDR-OF-5188, Sister Elizabeth Kenny Institute, 1940–1944, FDR Papers.

38.
“President Roosevelt Greeting Sister Kenny Yesterday” [Associated Press Photo]
New York Times
June 9 1943. Roosevelt told reporters later that they “discussed plans to train more Americans in the use of Sister Kenny's method.”

39.
Kenny “Report of Activities: June, 1940–1943,” FDR-OF-5188, Sister Elizabeth Kenny Institute, 1940–1944, FDR Papers; Kenny to Dear Mary [McCarthy], July 5 1943, Mary McCarthy, 1942–1944, MHS-K.

40.
Kenny and Ostenso
And They Shall Walk
, 268.

41.
E.M.W. [Edwin M. Watson] Memorandum for the President, May 10 1943, FDR-OF-5188, Sister Elizabeth Kenny Institute, 1940–1944, FDR Papers.

42.
Kenny to Dear Doctor Stimson, October 8 1945, Public Relations, MOD-K.

43.
Edward Compere “Management and Care of the Infantile Paralysis Patient”
Archives of Physical Therapy
(December 1943) [abstract]
Physiotherapy Review
(1944) 24: 80.

44.
Robert M. Yoder “Healer from the Outback”
Saturday Evening Post
(January 17 1942) 214: 18–19, 68, 70; anon. “Sister Kenny: Australian Nurse Demonstrates Her Treatment for Infantile Paralysis”
Life
(September 28 1942) 13: 73–75, 77; Kenny with Ostenso
And They Shall Walk
, 227. See also Alexander
Maverick
, 118–119.

45.
Seth Koven has pointed out that the role of “shut in” was restricted to the disabled members of wealthy families; Seth Koven “Remembering and Dismemberment: Crippled Children Wounded Soldiers, and the Great War in Great Britain”
American Historical Review
(1994) 99: 1167–1202.

46.
“Still in Wheel Chair: Polio Invalid Inmate For 50 Years”
Washington Post
December 18 1943.

47.
See Kim E. Nielsen
The Radical Lives of Helen Keller
(New York: New York University Press, 2004).

48.
“Mr. Smith Again Will Come To Washington—for Jubilee”
Washington Post
January 18 1942; “Nancy Merki, Girl Tank Star, Gets Bid to White House”
Washington Post
January 11 1942.

49.
Considine “On the Line”
Washington Post
January 22 1942.

50.
Lawrence
Interrupted Melody
, 219–226; “Marjorie Lawrence Real Star of ‘Tannhauser' at Metropolitan”
Christian Science Monitor
January 23 1943.

51.
“Diva Returns, Paralysis Beaten”
New York Times
December 29 1943; “Singer Wins Over Paralysis”
Hartford Courant
January 10 1943.

52.
Lawrence
Interrupted Melody
, 227–230, 247–263.

53.
See one example of an NFIP scholarship for an orthopedic nurse, who was a former polio patient; “Professional Advancement Expedited by Polio Treatment Scholarships”
Archives of Physical Therapy
(November 1944) 25: 687. See also the head of Nebraska's Scotts Bluff County NFIP chapter who was a polio survivor; Mr. Stone to Mr. Wear, Memorandum: Re Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska, August 17 1945, Public Relations, MOD-K.

54.
F. P. Sahli to Gentlemen, December 12 1944, Public Relations, MOD-K.

55.
Gudakunst to Dear Mr. Sahli, December 21 1944, Public Relations, MOD-K.

56.
Neil M. Tasker “Infantile Paralysis Patient”
National Foundation News
(March 1943) 2: 20.

57.
Robert W. Lovett “Orthopedic Problems in the After-Treatment of Infantile Paralysis”
Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery
(1917) 2: 693. See also Fishbein warning of public “ignorance”
as the cause of both popular fears and also the use of “quack practitioners”; Morris Fishbein “The National Foundation Reports” [radio address], Columbia Broadcasting System, November 8 1940, Public Relations, Fishbein, MOD.

58.
Lewis L. Clarke to Dear Mr. President, February 7 1944, Public Relations, MOD-K. See also a father who “studied everything I could find and believe I knew as much and more about the disease than does the average doctor”; Frank P. Fischer to Dear Sister Kenny, May 17 1943, Case Files-Misc., A-K, 1943–1946, MHS-K.

59.
A Parent, “Our Son Has Polio” [1945], Ray of Light Letters, 1944, MHS-K.

60.
Nurses had long recognized the importance of providing mothers with concrete instructions; see Jessie L. Stevenson
The Nursing Care of Patients with Infantile Paralysis
(New York: National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, 1940), 23–24. For other examples of mothers as primary rehabilitative caregivers see Ruth Esau, quoted in Silver and Wilson
Polio Voices
, 42; Katherine Pappas, quoted in ibid, 46.

61.
Kenny to Mrs. Frank P. Fischer, March 3 1944, Case Files-Misc., A-K, 1943–1946, MHS-K; Georgia Fischer to Dear Sister, May 17 1944, Case Files-Misc., A-K, 1943–1946, MHS-K.

62.
Mr. and Mrs. Howard Allen to Dear Sister Kenny, November 4 1943, Mrs. Howard Allen, 1944 [sic], MHS-K.

63.
“Sister Kenny To Speak”
New York Times
February 4 1943; “News for Nurses: Sister Kenny in N.Y.”
Trained Nurse and Hospital Review
(February 1943) 110: 127.

64.
Clarence R. Newman “Sister Kenny Here to Aid Polio Victims”
Los Angeles Examiner
[1943], Clippings, MHS-K. Her 1943 textbook, she proudly told lay supporters, “would be of tremendous help to all mothers and fathers on whom the burden of this work is thrust in many cases”; Elizabeth Kenny to Dear Mr. Harris, August 18 1944, Calvin Harris, 1944–1945, MHS.

65.
Dorothy Ducas to P. J. A. Cusack Memorandum on
Reader's Digest
article by LMM ‘Sister Kenny vs. the Medical Old Guard', December 5 1944, Public Relations, MOD-K.

66.
“Kenny Way”
Newsweek
(February 7 1944) 93.

67.
Mr. and Mrs. Steven Hotinska to Dear Sister Kenny, January 28 1943, Requests for Treatment 1942–1945, MHS-K.

68.
Betty Adler [Baltimore] to Dear Sister Kenny, January 28 1943, Requests for Treatment 1942–1945, MHS-K.

69.
Mrs. Clara Conte to Dear Sister Kenny, January 31 1943, Requests for Treatment 1942–1945, MHS-K.

70.
Dorothy Marie Meissner to Dear Sister Kenny, January 24 1943, Requests for Treatment 1942–1945, MHS-K.

71.
Charlotte Gruber Birch to Dear Miss Kenny [1943], Requests for Treatment 1942–1945, MHS-K.

72.
This attitude was shared by other polio experts; see also Florence Kendall's view that people who worked with polio patients “can't afford to be afraid or just couldn't do their job”; Kendall, interview with Rogers, April 26 1999.

73.
Marion Williamson “Review of a Polio Epidemic”
Public Health Nursing
(June 1945) 37: 312; Robert D. Blute, Sr., father of Margaret Marshall, quoted in Silver and Wilson
Polio Voices
, 54; William Foote Whyte
Participant Observer: An Autobiography
(Ithaca: ILR Press, 1994), 133; Marian Williamson “Review of the Current Poliomyelitis Epidemic” [November 13 1944] Central File 1944–1945, Children's Bureau, Box 103, Record Group 102, Infantile Paralysis 103-4-5-16-1, National Archives.

74.
Patient quoted in Richard L. Bruno
The Polio Paradox: Understanding and Treating ‘Post-Polio Syndrome' and Chronic Fatigue
(New York: Warner Books, 2002), 83. Even years later a polio survivor might face this. “Sometimes people would look at me like I had some kind of contagious disease,” one survivor recalled; Robert Gurney in Edmund J. Sass with George Gottfried and Anthony Sorem eds.
Polio's Legacy: An Oral History
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996), 28.

75.
Lora M. Lee “I Contact Polio”
Dr Shelton's Hygienic Review
(July 1945) 6: 255. A physical therapist in Massachusetts recalled that she “had to scrub, before I went in, [and] after I came out, change my shoes”; Irja Hoffshire, quoted in Silver and Wilson
Polio Voices
, 23–24. See also a recollection of ward nurses wearing masks and floor length isolation gowns at Columbia University's Babies Hospital in 1944; William A. Silverman
Where's the Evidence? Controversies in Modern Medicine
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1.

76.
Myra G. Lehman “Poliomyelitis Problems: The Alabama Epidemic”
American Journal of Nursing
(October 1946) 46: 690.

77.
Kenny with Ostenso
And They Shall Walk
, 204.

78.
Helen H. Ross “Physiotherapy in the Treatment of Infantile Paralysis: Kenny Method”
Canadian Public Health Journal
(June 1942) 33: 286.

79.
See, for example, Charles J. Frankel and Robert V. Funsten “Use of Neostigmine (Prostigmine) in Subacute Poliomyelitis”
Southern Medical Journal
(June 1946) 39: 483.

80.
Ratcliff “Minutemen Against Infantile Paralysis,” 80.

81.
“A Date with the Future” [Buffalo], November 2 1949, Buffalo, NY, MHS-K.

82.
Editorial “Fact and Fancy in Poliomyelitis”
British Medical Journal
(July 31 1943) 2: 142; “The Kenny Method In Poliomyelitis”
Lancet
(January 30 1943) 241: 148. Yet the editor felt it was necessary to refer to other sources of authority. The results of the new method had “been observed by other workers outside the Minneapolis group” and “spasm” had been “demonstrated and photographed.”

83.
Robert V. Funsten “The Influence of the Sister Kenny Publicity on the Treatment of Poliomyelitis”
Virginia Medical Monthly
(October 1945) 72: 404. His speech was given in 1944 and published the following year.

84.
Elizabeth Kenny to Ladies and Gentlemen, [July 1944].

85.
[Mary Lou Drosten] A Layman's Report, “Evaluation of the Kenny Treatment for Poliomyelitis” [July 1944], Ray of Light Letters, 1944, MHS-K.

86.
Whyte
Participant Observer
, 132–133.

87.
Richard Kovacs in “Discussion of Papers by Drs. John A. Toomey, Jessie Wright and Miland E. Knapp”
Archives of Physical Therapy
(November 1942) 23: 674.

88.
Ethel Calhoun “A Report On The Use of The Sister Kenny Concept and Method of Treatment for Poliomyelitis Patients at Oakland County Contagious Hospital, 1944–1949” [1949], Minnesota-Hospitals, 1944–1961, Sister Kenny Institute, Walter H. Judd Papers, MHS. See also Edward L. Compere “Modern Concepts of Infantile Paralysis”
Archives of Physical Therapy
(November 1942) 23: 677; Dorothy I. Ditchfield and Ethel M. Hyndman “The Nursing Procedure”
Canadian Public Health Journal
(June 1942) 33: 284.

89.
Plastridge “Report,” 9.

90.
Ray K. Gullickson in Sass with Gottfried and Sorem eds.
Polio's Legacy
, 44–45.

91.
Pohl and Kenny,
The Kenny Concept of Infantile Paralysis
, 152.

92.
“Nurse's Paralysis Therapy Endorsed”
Los Angeles Times
May 7 1942.

93.
Gullickson in Sass with Gottfried and Sorem eds.
Polio's Legacy
, 44.

94.
See the assumption that a patient must be motivated and able to understand the goals of therapy; “Recovery is slow and difficult in the patient who does not understand what is
wanted, in the lazy person and in the spoiled, pampered child”; John A. Toomey “Observations on the Treatment of Infantile Paralysis in the Acute Stage”
Canadian Medical Association Journal
(January 1946) 54: 1–6.

95.
Clemson Griggs to Dear Sister Kenny, September 1 1951, Personal Correspondence and Related Papers, 1942–1951, MHS-K. J. Philip Kistler, a child from California, was another Institute patient who was also taken to a big auditorium “where she would demonstrate”; J. Philip Kistler, quoted in Silver and Wilson
Polio Voices
, 43–44.

96.
Plastridge “Report,” 7.

97.
Lois Maddox Miller “Sister Kenny Wins Her Fight”
Reader's Digest
(1942) 41: 27–28; see also Irene F. Shea, “Notes on Kenny Method of Hot Foments Taken at the University of Minnesota, September 28 to October 4, 1942,” Sydenham Hospital Collection, MS C 243, Box 82, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine. My thanks to Janet Golden for showing me this source. See also Janet Golden and Naomi Rogers “Nurse Shea Studies the ‘Kenny Method' of Treatment of Infantile Paralysis, 1942–1943”
Nursing History Review
(2010) 18: 189–203.

98.
Charles C. Zacharie to My Dear Dr. Stimson, January 11 1943, Box 2, Folder 4, Correspondence re Medical Talks, Philip Stimson Papers, Medical Center Archives, New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, New York.