Elizabeth+Kenny,+helping+crippled+children+walk+again

=Elizabeth Kenny, helping crippled children walk again=

Elizabeth Kenny1(880 -1952) was an Australian health worker who developed a new way to treat people who had caught polio. At that time it was a very common disease which affected many people, especially children. Polio killed many people and left thousands of patients paralysed, unable ever to walk again. Sometimes they could not even breathe by themselves and had to live the rest of their lives in a machine called an iron lung. (Now almost everybody is vaccinated against polio and the disease will soon no longer occur, as long as everybody gets the vaccination.)

**Early Life**
Elizabeth Kenny was born in New South Wales, in 1880. She was home-schooled by her mother for a while and then went to regular school in NSW and Queensland. When she was 17, she broke her wrist in a fall from a horse and had to stay with a doctor called Dr. Aeneas McDonnell in Toowoomba, until she was better. While she was there, Kenny studied the human body and became interested in how it worked.

**Work**
Elizabeth worked for a while as a governess and a housekeeper but she didn't like it. There is no record of Elizabeth ever having any proper nursing training, but when she decided to be a nurse she wore a nurse's uniform and worked as bush nurse in NSW. Most of the work she did was unpaid and grateful patients just gave her small presents. At this time she had a serious boyfriend called Dan, but she chose to do nursing instead of marrying him. Elizabeth Kenny says that she saw her first cases of polio in 1910. She did not know what to do with patients whose legs were paralysed so she sent a telegram to Dr McDonnell asking him what to do. He said to treat them according to the symptoms that they had, so because their muscles seemed tight, she used hot compresses and weights made from blankets to stretch the legs. There were only six children with polio there, but they all got better. She opened a small hospital called St Canice's at Clifton NSW and looked after mothers and babies as well as people recovering from illness.

** World War I **
When WW1 began, Elizabeth went to serve as a nurse. She was not properly qualified, but they were short of nurses and she served on a number of dangerous missions, caring for wounded soldiers. In 1917, they promoted her to 'Sister' like other nurses, and she used the title for the rest of her life. In the last months of the war she served as a matron in a soldiers' hospital and was honourably discharged and qualified for a pension. Today Elizabeth Kenny's prior knowledge would be recognised but at that time she had to earn recognition as a qualified nurse.

**After the War**
In 1929 Elizabeth cared for a child called Daphne. At the time, the treatment for polio was to keep the limbs still, but Elizabeth tried exercising them and had success. Daphne was able to stand and walk with a special brace, and eventually she could write, draw, ride horses and walk with a stick. She went on treating patients without pay. Some of them got better and some of them didn't, but the Queensland Health Department investigated her methods in 1934 and found that they worked. Queensland doctors at the time did not agree, but she continued using her own methods and doctors in the USA were impressed. Elizabeth Kenny also invented a special stretcher called the Sylvia Stretcher which was used to carry injured people.

Problems
Doctors did not agree with Sister Kenny's methods and a Royal Commission found that most cases had not really improved and some had got worse. But in America doctors found that her methods did work and she became famous and received many awards. Unfortunately when other people began to use her methods they did not always do things the way she wanted and there were many problems. Just when her methods were beginning to be accepted, the Salk vaccine to prevent polio was introduced, and her methods were not needed any more.

After her death
Elizabeth Kenny died in 1952 and she was never given any awards in Australia, but physiotherapists today still use her ideas about exercising muscles instead of keeping them still.

Sources:
Elizabeth Kenny, Healing Hands, Fighting Spirit, Makers and Shakers Series, Cardigan St Publishers, 1995. ISBN: 9781875633975 Elizabeth Kenny, [|Wikipedia]