Elizabeth Kenny - Work

Work

In 1909, Kenny returned to Nobby and assumed the role of a qualified nurse after paying a tailor to make her a nurse's uniform, complete with cap and cape. Using the money she earned by brokering produce in Guyra, she opened a cottage hospital (St. Canice's) in 1911 at Clifton. Kenny provided convalescent and midwifery services at St. Canice's, and treated her first confirmed cases of infantile paralysis (as polio was also known) under the supervision of the local Lodge Doctor.

Kenny claimed in her 1943 autobiography (co-authored by Martha Ostenso) that she treated her first cases of infantile paralysis in 1910 while working alone as a bush nurse in the Clifton district. That episode was romanticized in the 1946 film Sister Kenny, featuring Rosalind Russell (who befriended Kenny). Surveillance records from the early 1900s show that infantile paralysis was a rare disease in Queensland prior to World War I, although there is evidence that subacute cases were brought to Kenny's cottage hospital in Clifton. In her memoir, Kenny claimed she was baffled by the cases she encountered and sought assurance from Dr. Aeneas McDonnell. He wired back, "...treat them according to the symptoms as they present themselves". Sensing that their muscles were tight, she did what mothers around the world did: applied hot compresses and weights made from woolen blankets to their legs. Kenny wrote in her autobiography that a little girl woke up very much relieved and said, "Please, I want them rags that well my legs". Several children recovered with no serious aftereffects. Many years passed before Kenny treated anyone else who might have had polio. The story of Kenny's first encounter with an acute case of polio is a 20th-century medical legend, but there is no documented record other than her memoir. The chief witness to the discovery of her method for treating poliomyelitis was Aeneas McDonnell, who died before the story was widely publicised.