Polio Wars by Naomi Rogers

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    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rogers, Naomi, 1958–
Polio wars: Sister Elizabeth Kenny and the golden age of American medicine/Naomi Rogers.
    p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978–0–19–538059–0 (hardback: alk. paper)—ISBN 978–0–19–970146–9 (updf ebook)—
ISBN 978–0–19–933413–1 (epub ebook)
I.  Title.
[DNLM:    1.  Kenny, Elizabeth, 1886–1952.    2.  Nurses—Australia—Biography.
3.  Poliomyelitis—history—Australia. WZ 100]
RA644.P9
614.5′49—dc23              2013011373
    9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

For Nat, Dory,
and JH

Introduction

    STANDING ON MY bookshelf is a coin container in an outrageous bright orange that was popular in the 1940s. Under white letters urging me to “Sock Polio” are 3 figures: a toddler in a loin cloth standing awkwardly but steadily; singer Bing Crosby, with a pipe and a jaunty hat; and a white-haired woman in a black dress and pearls, her hands reaching up toward the child with a look of intense pride. “Please Give to the Sister Elizabeth Kenny Foundation,” the container pleads. Crosby was the national chairman of the foundation’s 1945 appeal, but who was Sister Kenny? When this can was passed down the aisle at movie theaters, no one in America needed to ask. She was so familiar and iconic a figure that Holly Golightly in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
declared that she would not testify against a friend, “not if they can prove he doped Sister Kenny.” 1
    Sister Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian nurse, came to the United States in 1940 to seek medical approval for her new methods of treating patients paralyzed by polio. (“Sister” was a British designation for senior nurse, not a religious title.) Despite the skepticism and even hostility of American physicians, she succeeded. With the sometimes grudging support of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP), a polio philanthropy committed to funding patient care, research, and professional training, her methods were made standard polio care by the mid-1940s. Kenny became one of the most prominent women of her era: the subject of a Hollywood movie
Sister Kenny
(RKO 1946) starring Rosalind Russell; an expert witness at Congressional hearings on the founding of the National Science Foundation; and in 1952, not