Our Last Meeting - Elaine - Sister Kenny

Sergeant Richard welcome us to the meeting which included globetrotter Darryl as Chair.

 

Darryl welcomed guests – Greg from Ipswich and Sally "Rocky Girl" and "Miss Bossy Boots"- watch out.

Her nursing career has included being part of the team for ROMAC

 

The International Toast was proposed by Jim to the Rotary Club of Lyon

 

Welcome Back Chris

 

Thanks for the photos Dave

 

Darryl started us off with a round room starting with your first day at Rotary and which Club?

 

He went first - he started with the Rotary Club of Caloundra in 1989 at a meeting at the RSL. He has been with us for half of the Club’s existence. He was sergeant for six years - they used to be at the Blue Dolphin and the Golf Club too.

 

Elaine volunteered to introduce herself – The "Polio Warrior”

 

She talked about her “hero” Elizabeth Kenny

Elizabeth Kenny was born in Warialda, New South Wales, 20th September 1880.

 

Kenny was home schooled by her mother, and only received a few years of formal education when living at Headington Hill, near Nobby. When 17 she broke her wrist in a fall from a horse. Her father took her to Dr where she remained during her McDonnell in Toowoomba, where she remained during her convalescence. While there, Kenny studied McDonnell's anatomy books and model skeleton. This began a lifelong association with McDonnell, who became her mentor and advisor. Kenny later confirmed that while there she became interested in how muscles worked.

 

Kenny earned the title Sister while nursing on transport ships that carried soldiers to and from Australia and England during the First World War. During this period of her life she was entitled to describe herself as a Nurse even though there are no verified records of her undertaking any formal nurse training or possessing nursing qualifications.

 

In her 1943 autobiography she describes her first encounter with a patient who she treated for the disease that Dr McDonnell thought was infantile paralysis. Sensing that their muscles were tight, she applied hot compresses made from woollen blankets to the child's legs.

 

In May 1915 Kenny joined the War effort in Europe where she hoped to serve as a nurse in the First World War however she was not eligible to serve with the Australian Army Nursing Service as she was not a qualified nurse. Kenny's war service records state her date of appointment to theNo. 1Section, Special Transport Service, as the 28 July 1916. Kenny served on these missions throughout the war, making 8 round trips (plus one round the world via the Panama Canal). It is likely Kenny observed
advanced rehabilitation techinques whilst working in these hospitals.

 

Kenny in 1917 earned the title "Sister" which in the Australian Army Nursing Service is the equivalent of a First Lieutenant. Kenny used that title for the rest of her life and was criticized by some for doing so, but she was officially promoted to the rank during her wartime service. In 1919 Kenny was honourably discharged and awarded a pension.

 

In April 1925, Kenny was elected as the first president of the Nobby branch of the Queensland Country Women's Association and remained an active member of the local first aid service. In May 1926 she provided first aid to Sylvia Kuhn, a young girl who had been injured in a farming accident. The child's injuries were sufficiently serious to warrant her transportation from Nobby to a hospital in Toowoomba. Kenny improvised a rigid stretcher from a cupboard door. The improvised device protected the child's injured limbs, improved her comfort, and reduced the risk of further injury during the journey. Kenny later improved and patented the stretcher for use by local ambulance services, and for the next four years marketed it as the Sylvia Stretcher, in Australia, Europe and the United States. Kenny earned a substantial royalty from the sale of the stretcher, and is believed to have provided some of the profits to the Country Women's Association.

 

In the early 1930s, Kenny resumed her involvement with the CWA and campaiging for improved rural first-aid services. In London in 1929 while promoting her ambulance stretcher. A family asked Kenny to care for their
niece Maude, who was disabled by polio. After 18 months of care under Kenny's direction, Maude recovered sufficiently to walk. Kenny's use of hydrotherapy, hot compresses and no braces with Maude caught the attention of Mrs Herbert Brookes, wife of the Trade Commissioner- General for Australia.

 

In 1932, Queensland suffered its highest number of polio cases in 30 years. This outbreak focused public attention on the inadequacy of treatment for victims of paralysis. The following year, local people helped Kenny set up a rudimentary paralysis-treatment facility under canopies behind the Queens Hotel in Townsville. The makeshift clinic expanded as more parents brought their children to be treated by Kenny. In 1934 she enjoyed the support of Eleanor Mackinnon, a key figure in the local Red Cross, for development of a new clinic. In March 1934 the Queensland Government provided funds for a trial of Kenny's methods at the Townsville Clinic. 65 Her success led to Kenny clinics being established in several Australian cities. the S i s t e r K e n n y Clinic in the Outpatients Building of the Rockhampton Base

 

Over the years, Kenny developed her clinical method and gained recogintion in Australia. She was strongly opposed to immobilising children's bodies with plaster casts or braces. Kenny requested permission to treat children in the acute stage of the disease with hot compresses, but doctors would not allow that until after the acute stage of the disease, or until "tightness" (Kenny used the word "spasm" much later) subsided. She instituted a careful regimen of passive "exercises" designed to recall function in unaffected neural pathways, much as she had done with Maude Rollinson. In 1937, she published her first description of her therapeutic techinques. The book and her methods were dismissed as unoriginal by the Australian and British medical establishment.* In 1941 she produced The Treatment of Infantile Paralysis in The Acute Stage, known as The Green Book. The broadest appraisal of her methods.

 

Between 1935 and 1940, Kenny travelled widely in Australia, helping to establish clinics, and made two trips to England, where she set up a treatment clinic in St Mary's Hospital near Carshalton. Kenny's success was controversial; many Australian doctors and the British Medical Association questioned her results and methodology. In 1934 Kenny made public claims about the success of her therapy. The Director-General of Health in Queensland was cautiously supportive of Kenny's treatment of paralysis cases, 761 but he felt Kenny was exaggerating the degree of rehabilitation produced by her methods to which Kenny replied publicly and fiercely. This response caused contentious relations between Kenny, the BMA and the Australian Massage Association (AMA). Between1936 and 1938, a Queensland Government Royal Commission evaluated Kenny's work and published its Report of The Queensland Royal Commission on Modern Methods for the Treatment of Infantile  Paralysis in 1938. Its most critical comment, on Kenny opposing the use of splints and plaster casts was: "The abandonment of immobilization is a grievous error and fraught with grave danger, especially in very young patients who cannot co-operate in re-education." However, ti stated that her Brisbane clinic, was "admirable". The Commissioners' strongest words were against the Queensland government, then funding Kenny's work, as her clinic were unsupervised by medical practitioners. The Queensland Government rejected the report and continued to support Kenny.

 

In 2009, during the Q150 celebrations of the institution of Queensland, the Kenny regimen for polio treatment was announced as an outstanding "innovation and invention".

 

In 1940, the New South Wales government sent Kenny to America to present her clinical method for treating polio victims to doctors. Doctors who headed polio treatment centres there, were impressed and told her she should stay. Minnesota was Kenny's base in America for 11 years. In a 1943 letter to the British Medical Journal, Kenny noted, "There have been upwards of 300 doctors attending the classes at the University of Minnesota.”

 

During this time, several Kenny treatment centres were opened throughout the United States, the best-known being the Sister Kenny Institute in Minneapolis (opened 17 December 1942. There were also facilities at the New Jersey Medical Center and the Ruth Home in El Monte, California. She received honorary degrees from Rutgers University and the University of Rochester. Kenny met US President Roosevelt, whose paralytic illness was believed to be polio, and discussed his treatment. In 1951, Kenny topped Gallup's most admired man and woman poll as the only woman in the first ten years of the annual list to displace Eleanor Roosevelt from the top. The Sister Kenny Foundation was established in Minneapolis to support her and her work throughout the United States.

 

In recognition of her work, in February 1950 President Harry Truman signed a Congressional bill giving Kenny the right to enter and leave the US as she wished without a visa. This honour had only been granted once before, to the French Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, a leader in the American War of Independence.

 

Kenny filled her final years with extensive journeys in America, Europe and Australia in an effort to increase acceptance of her method.

She had treated more cases than anyone else in the world - she gave the precise number, 7,828.

 

Kenny's funeral on 1 December 1952 at Neil Street Methodist Church in Toowoomba was recorded for transmission in other parts of Australia and in the United States. The cortège to Nobby Cemetery was one of the largest seen in Toowoomba.

 

Between 1934 and her death on 30 November1952, Kenny and her associates cared for thousands of patients, including polio victims throughout the world. Their testimony to Sister Kenny's help is part of her legacy, as is The Kenny Concept of Infantile Paralysis, and Its Treatment, known as the "Red Book"

 

A Sister Kenny Memorial House was opened in Nobby on 5 October 1997. This contains many artefacts from Kenny's life and a collection of documents from her private correspondence, papers and newspaper clippings. In Toowoomba, the Sister Elizabeth Kenny Memorial Fund provides scholarships to students attending the University of Southern Queensland who dedicate themselves to work in rural and remote areas of Australia. In Townsville, her life was marked in 1949 by the unveiling of a Sister Kenny Memorial.

 

Her life story was told in a 1946 film, Sister Kenny, where she was portrayed by Rosalind Russell, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.

 

A wonderful and dedicated Australian woman whom we all should be immensely proud of.

 

In response to a question from Mark, Elaine noted that polio affects nerves, including in the lungs. It's now called “physiotherapy. Once limbs become withered, they become useless

 

20% of children in Queensland are not vaccinated.

Chris asked about the Gaza case - Polio is still "still there" "wild polio lives in places where there is poor sanitation

 

We have nearly eliminated the disease through vaccination. But not the virus.

 

Darryl mentioned Sir Clem Renouf

 

Elaine was thanked for the talk

 

 

Mark – 70th Anniversary on 12 October – we decided on a 10 o'clock brunch at Bennett Park

 

Deborah discussed the Golf Day which is proceeding well. QR code is being set up. It's at the Beerwah Golf Club -  Murray will do food packs – Pancakes of Peace – 25th of October which is the day before the election.

 

Elaine asked for ideas for Guest Speakers or else! – more Elaine

Richard knows a Pommie antique dealer who could do an Antiques Roadshow

Terry Landsberg
Duck Holes Creek

The the underpass from West Avenue into Ben Bennett Park

Information centre
Art gallery project

 

Jim congratulated Chris and his involvement Philippines biogas project. They have six pigs now

 

Dave introduced Chris as the point of sale attendant of the day
He will be in Melbourne for a while

 

 

Cross fine from Darryl - something about a bicycle and "too much information”

 

Cheesy pizza jokes and elevator joke reminds me of the boy at confession telling the priest that he had sex with his girlfriend in a lift. The priest said Oh No!  That's so wrong, on so many levels