Polio Wars (90 page)

Most disappointing for Kenny was the quiet retreat by her beloved ward Mary. Back in Brisbane Mary was not continuing to fight for the expansion of the Kenny method in Australia. Instead Kenny found that her ward was “very happily married” and “a very busy housewife.” Mary was also no longer putting Kenny's needs ahead of her own. Thus, while Kenny was “very pleased” that Mary had a husband and a home, she complained throughout the late 1940s that she had written several letters and received no reply. “I get anxious when I don't hear from you,” she admitted.
¹⁷⁹
With so many members of her family and medical associates so far away Kenny leaned on her close Minneapolis friends like James Henry. But the Institute and the city no longer felt like home.

1.
Kenny, May 14 1948,
Hearings before the Committee on interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, 80th Congress, Second Session on H.R. 977 [Cancer and Polio Research] … H.R. 3257 [Cancer Research Commission] … H.R. 3464 [Cure of Cancer, Heart Disease, Infantile Paralysis, and other diseases] … May 13, 14 and 19 1948
(Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1948), 97, 114 hereafter
Hearings
; Gerald Gross “Sister Kenny Has Her Say Against Polio Foundation”
Washington Report on the Medical Sciences
(May 17 1948) 50: 1. Part of this chapter is a version of Rogers “Sister Kenny Goes to Washington: Polio, Populism and Medical Politics in Postwar America” in
The Politics of Healing: Histories of Alternative Medicine in Twentieth-Century North America
ed. Robert D. Johnston (New York: Routledge, 2004), 97–116.

2.
Kenny to Mr. President, Mrs. Webber and Gentlemen, May 24 1948, Board of Directors, MHS-K.

3.
Marion T. Bennett,
Hearings
, May 14 1948, 108. Bennett, a Republican Congressman from Missouri, was in the House 1943–1949.

4.
Victoria A. Harden
Inventing the NIH: Federal Biomedical Research Policy, 1887–1937
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 181.

5.
Quoted in Homer W. Smith “Present Status of National Science Foundation Legislation”
JAMA
(1948) 137: 18. The NSF bill of 1947, for example, had included special disease commissions to be directed by an eleven member board made up of 6 “eminent scientists” and 5 representatives of the general public; see Donald C. Swain “The Rise of a Research Empire: NIH, 1930–1960”
Science
138 (1962) 1233–1237; Toby A. Appel
Shaping Biology: The National Science Foundation and American Biological Research, 1945–1975
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 34–35.

6.
See J. Merton England
A Patron for Pure Science: The National Science Foundation's Formative Years, 1945–1957
(Washington DC: National Science Foundation, 1982), 85; Daniel J. Kevles
The Physicists: A History of a Scientific Community in Modern America
(New York: Knopf, 1977), 363.

7.
John Burnham “American Medicine's Golden Age: What Happened to It?”
Science
(1982) 215: 1474–1479; and see also Allan M. Brandt and Martha Gardner “The Golden Age of Medicine?” in Roger Cooter and John Pickstone eds.
Medicine in the Twentieth Century
(London: Harwood, 2000), 21–37.

8.
A study of all sources of American medical research funding during 1947 found 45% from industry, 28% from federal, state, and local governments and 13% from foundations; Smith “Present Status of National Science Foundation Legislation,” 19.

9.
Harry M. Marks “Cortisone, 1949: A Year in the Political Life of a Drug”
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
(1992) 66: 421.

10.
Clarence A. Mills “Distribution of American Research Funds”
Science
(1948) 107: 127–130 [reprinted in]
Hearing before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representative Eightieth Congress Second Session on H.R. 6007 and S. 2385 [on a National Science Foundation] June 1, 1948
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1948), 138–142.

11.
Morris Fishbein to My Dear Basil, February 23 1948, Public Relations, AMA, MOD.

12.
James Harvey Young
The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 360–389; Eric S. Juhnke
Quacks and Crusaders: The Fabulous Careers of John Brinkley, Norma Baker and Harry Hoxsey
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 76–86, 140–142.

13.
Charles M. Barber “A Diamond in the Rough: William Langer Reexamined”
North Dakota History
(1998) 64: 2–18; Glenn H. Smith
Langer of North Dakota: A Study in Isolationism, 1940–1959
(New York: Garland Press, 1979); Agnes Geelan
The Dakota Maverick: The Political Life of William Langer, also Known as “Wild Bill” Langer
(Fargo: Geelan, 1975); Lawrence H. Larsen “William Langer: A Maverick in the Senate”
Wisconsin Magazine of History
(1961) 44: 189–198; Ted Kincaid “Senator Langer Sponsors Polio Study Measure”
Washington Times-Herald
September 1 1944; Amendment, S.J. Res. 147, 78th Congress, 2d Session, Children's Bureau Central File 1941–1944, Record Group 102, Infantile Paralysis 4-5-16-1, National Archives.

14.
William Langer May 7 1945
Congressional Record Appendix, 79th Congress
volume 91, part 2 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1945), A2110; Langer “S. 800: A Bill to provide for the establishment of a National Infantile Paralysis Clinic,” 79th Congress 1
^st
Session, March 28 1945, Mayoralty Files 1945–1948, Box 10, Kenny Institute, Humphrey Papers, MHS; J. Earle Moser “Langer Seeks U.S. Supported Kenny Clinic”
Washington Times-Herald
March 29 1945; “$20,000,000 Fund to Foster Kenny Plan Proposed by Langer”
Washington Evening Star
, March 29 1945; see also David A. Horowitz
Beyond Left and Right: Insurgency and the Establishment
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 151–152.

15.
Mrs. Eugene Meyer “Judgment Day for the Private Welfare Agent”
Public Opinion Quarterly
(1945) 9: 338–345.

16.
Ralph M. Kramer
Voluntary Agencies in the Welfare State
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 114–115.

17.
See Scott M. Cutlip
Fund Raising in the United States: Its Role in America's Philanthropy
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1965); Kramer
Voluntary Agencies in the Welfare State
; Richard Carter
The Gentle Legions
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961).

18.
David Dietz “Cost of Fighting Polio: Why March of Dimes Is Needed”
New York World Telegram
January 29 1946.

19.
Richard H. Shryock,
American Medical Research: Past and Present
(New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1947), 165 n 20. These statistics were taken from a paper by Henry S. Simms read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in September 1944.

20.
Horace A. Brown “Organization of a Voluntary Health Agency” (thesis, Masters of Public Health, Yale University, 1953), 67–69; Bernhard J. Stern “[Review of]
Voluntary Health Agencies
”
American Sociological Review
(1946) 11: 757.

21.
Selskar M. Gunn and Philip S. Platt
Voluntary Health Agencies: An Interpretive Study
(New York: Ronald Press Company, 1945). See also “Selskar Michael Gunn”
American Journal of Public Health
(1944) 34: 1096–1097; “Deaths: Philip S. Platt”
American Journal of Public Health
(1979) 69: 191.

22.
Dora Goldstine “[Review of]
Voluntary Health Agencies
”
The Social Service Review
(1946) 20: 277; see also Carter
The Gentle Legions,
257–260.

23.
Edward G. Huber “Official and Non-Official Health Agencies”
Public Administration Review
(1946) 6: 189; Brown “Organization of a Voluntary Health Agency,” 70. The NFIP raised $6.5 million in 1943, $12 million in 1944, and $19 million in both 1945 and 1946; while the American Cancer Society raised $4 million in 1945, and $10 million in 1946; Angela N.H. Creager
The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930–1965
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 152.

24.
Pearl Baldock (Mrs. R. G. Baldock) to Dear Mrs. Sterne, June 2 1949, General Correspondence-B, MHS-K; and see Mrs. R.G. Baldock to Sir [Prime Minister], October 6 1952, #707/9/A, Series A462, AA-ACT.

25.
“My Report on Conferences with the Medical Profession in Fourteen Foreign Countries—Elizabeth Kenny” [reprinted in]
Hearings,
May 14 1948, 153; [film transcript in] Kenny,
Hearings,
May 19 1948, 198.

26.
New York Journal-American
March 22 1945, [abstract] Public Relations, MOD-K; “Sister Kenny Delays Plans to Leave City”
Minneapolis Morning Tribune
March 21 1945.

27.
John F. Pohl to Marvin L. Kline, February 5 1945, [accessed in 1992 before recent re-cataloging], UMN-ASC; Mary Pohl, interview with Rogers, August 21 2003, Tallahassee, Florida.

28.
Kenny,
Hearings,
May 14 1948, 116.

29.
George H. Gallup
The Gallop Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1971
(New York: Random House, 1972), 1: 663.

30.
Kenny,
Hearings
, May 19 1948, 103-4.

31.
[Cohn interview with] William O'Neill, May 20 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K; “Sister Kenny Polio Center, First In East, to Open Here June 15” [unnamed newspaper] 1947, Public Relations, MOD-K; “Kenny Center Opens”
Buffalo Courier-Express Pictorial
May 16 1948; “A Higher Force Has Helped Her Work, Sister Kenny Says”
Buffalo Evening News
November 23 1948.

32.
Kenny to Sir [Governor Dwight Green], June 4 1948, Dwight Green 1948, MHS-K.

33.
Kenny to Mr. President, Mrs. Webber and Gentlemen, May 24 1948; Kenny to Sir [Governor Dwight Green], June 4 1948; “Dedication Ceremonies: Sister Elizabeth Kenny Clinic, Centralia, Illinois, Sunday, August 24, 1947,” George W. Gould, 1946–1948, MHS-K; “Sister Kenny Clinic Dedicated In Illinois”
New York Times
August 25 1947.

34.
“Paralysis Clinic For East”
New York Times
February 27 1948; “Medicine: Sister Kenny's New Center”
Newsweek
(March 15 1948) 31: 49; Kenny to Mr. President, Mrs. Webber and Gentlemen, May 24 1948; “Sister Kenny Asks [for] A Medical Inquiry”
New York Times
March 3 1948; “Sister Kenny Institute Opens”
New York Herald-Tribune
April 6 1948; [Cohn interview with] Al Baum and Mrs. Baum, June 14 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K; “Polio Cure Goal of Mal Stevens”
New York Times
September 4 1949.

35.
“Kenny Unit Accepts Dimes Board Offer To Confer On Rift”
Buffalo Evening News
November 18 1949; “Sister Kenny Asks [for] A Medical Inquiry”; “Kenny Institute in Illinois Faces Closing”
Minneapolis Star
July 22 1948.

36.
See Jonathan Engel
Doctors and Reformers: Discussion and Debate over Health Policy 1925–1950
(Charleston: University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 209, 295–296; on Fishbein and the AMA see Frank D. Campion
The AMA and U.S. Health Policy since 1940
(Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1984), 118–130; Carl F. Ameringer “Organized Medicine on Trial: The Federal Trade Commission vs. the American Medical Association”
Journal of Policy History
(2000) 12: 445–472. The second investigation lasted until 1951. For Fishbein's version of events, see Morris Fishbein
Morris Fishbein, M.D.: An Autobiography
(New York: Doubleday, 1969), 208–223.

37.
Dr. Allan M. Butler [Progressive Citizens of America], July 3 1947,
Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, Eightieth Congress, First Session, on S. 545 [NIH funding] and S. 1320 [National Health Program] … Part 2, June 25, 26, 27 and July 2 and 3, 1947)
, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1947), 1002.

38.
Joe W. Savage,
Hearings
, May 13 1948, 71.

39.
William O'Neill Sherman [M.D., Pittsburgh] to Morris Fishbein, January 17, 1947, Public Relations, MOD-K. Nicholas Ransohoff's paper was submitted to
JAMA
for publication but was rejected by the AMA's Orthopedic Section.

40.
Eleanor Roosevelt “My Day” September 4 1947,
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1947&_f=md000749
, accessed 12/11/2009.

41.
Helen Waterhouse “Akron No Polio Nest, County Doctors Told”
Akron Beacon Journal
June 2 1948.

42.
Basil O'Connor to My Dear Mr. Michaels, February 15 1944, Public Relations, MOD-K.

43.
[Script] WPTF- “Fighting Infantile Paralysis,” Raleigh, N.C. March 11 [1944]–7:30–8:00 PM, Public Relations, MOD-K. See also Roland H. Berg
Polio and Its Problems
(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1948), 97–98. The appointment of anatomist Harry Weaver as director of research in 1946 further demonstrated the fund's belief in centralized and coordinated investigation; On Weaver see Richard Carter
Breakthrough: The Saga of Jonas Salk
(New York: Trident Press, 1966), 56–59. For comments that this direction of scientific research ran counter to “scientific tradition” and was “controversial,” see Paul
A History,
412–413.

44.
The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis
A Decade of Doing: The Story of the National Foundation For Infantile Paralysis, 1938–1948
(New York: National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, 1948), 11.