91. Roy L. Chambliss, Jr. “A Social History of the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis, Inc, 1938–1948,” Master of Science in Social Service dissertation, Fordham University School of Social Service, New York, 1950, Public Relations, History, March of Dimes Archives, White Plains, New York (hereafter MOD), 83.
92. Telegram from Australian Legation to Department of External Affairs, Canberra, April 18 1940, Series A981/1, United States 148, AA-ACT. On Casey see Hudson Casey.
93. Chief Quarantine Officer [Brisbane] to J. H. L. Cumpston, April 22 1940, Series A981/1, United States 148, AA-ACT.
94. Director-General of Health to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Memorandum, April 23 1940, Series A981/1, United States 148, AA-ACT; External Affairs to Australian Legation, April 24 1940, telegram, Series A981/1, United States 148, AA-ACT; External Affairs to Australian Legation, May 7 1940, Series A981/1, United States 148, AA-ACT.
95. Mrs. Salena Thomas, R.N. to Roosevelt, February 28 1940 [abstract] FDR-OF-1930, Infantile Paralysis 1934–1942, Box 1, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum Archives, Hyde Park (hereafter FDR Papers).
96. C. H. Scott to M. A. LeHand [forwarded to Basil O’Connor], February 2 1940 [abstract] FDR-PPF-4885 (Comm. Celeb. President’s Birthday Cross-Refs 1939–1940), FDR Papers; also C. H Scott to Wilson Comptons [abstract], [January] 1940, FDR-OF-1930, Infantile Paralysis 1934–1942, Box 1, FDR Papers; these inquiries were also sent to Eleanor Roosevelt.
97. O’Connor graduated from Dartmouth in 1912 and from Harvard Law School in 1915. While his dapper clothes and luxurious lifestyle were at times attacked as signs of “excessive fund raising and egregious razzle-dazzle,” O’Connor boasted that he received no salary from the NFIP and that his insistence “on traveling de luxe” was a deliberate tactic designed to show everyone that the NFIP was “something special”; Paul A History, 308–309; Alden Whitman “Basil O’Connor, Polio Crusader, Died” New York Times March 10 1972; Carter The Gentle Legions, 100–106; Timothy Takaro “The Man in the Middle” Dartmouth Medicine (Fall 2004) 29: 52–57.
98. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 211; see also O’Connor’s recollection that he and Gudakunst had listened to her for 3 hours, [Cohn interview with] Basil O’Connor, June 20 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
99. [Cohn interview with] Basil O’Connor, June 20 1955, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
100. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 212, 213.
101. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 212. For a slightly different version of the Chicago visit in which Fishbein suggested that O’Connor send Kenny to Chicago so that Harry Mock, head of the AMA’s Council on Physical Therapy, could interview her see Morris Fishbein Morris Fishbein, M.D. An Autobiography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1969), 230–231. According to Kenny she had “personally interviewed” Mr. Carter and Dr. Coulter “both of whom informed me no material was available in Chicago;” Kenny to Dear Dr. Gudakunst, June 10 1940, Public Relations, Kenny Files, March of Dimes (hereafter MOD-K); see also Kenny to Dear Mr. Chuter, May 28 1940, Home Secretary’s Office, Special Batches, Kenny Clinics, 1941–1949, A/31753, QSA.
102. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 212–213; Paul A History, 225–231; The same argument was used to dismiss work by Australian virologists Francis Macfarlane Burnet and Jean Macnamara, who had published crucial but largely ignored research in 1931 showing more than one type of polio virus; Paul A History, 239.
103. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 213. The therapists were probably Gertrude Beard and her assistant Elizabeth Wood.
104. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 213–214, 218.
105. H. J. Wilkinson to M. Henderson, March 8 1940, Inv. Physicians Letter, 1939–1940, MHS-K; see also Geoffrey Kenny “Wilkinson, Herbert John (1891–1963)” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002), 16: 547–548; Wilkinson “Foreword” Kenny Infantile Paralysis and Cerebral Diplegia, i–xvii. He had visited Europe and the United States as a Rockefeller Fellow a decade earlier.
106. Melvin S. Henderson to Dear Dr. Wilkinson, April 9 1940, Home Secretary’s Office, Special Batches, Kenny Clinics, 1941–1949, A/31753, QSA. Henderson told Wilkinson he had spoken to Cole who was in charge of Gillette Hospital for Crippled Children, which was used by the University for teaching purposes and that “Dr. Cole would like very much to have Sister Kenny visit Gillette Hospital.”
107. Frank H. Krusen Physical Medicine: The Employment of Physical Agents for Diagnosis and Therapy (Philadelphia, PA: W. B. Saunders Company, 1941); Krusen and John Kolmer Light Therapy (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1933); Krusen Physical Therapy in Arthritis (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1937). See also Kenny to Dear Mr. Chuter, May 28 1940, Home Secretary’s Office, Special Batches, Kenny Clinics, 1941–1949, A/31753, QSA. A tuberculosis survivor, Frank Hammond Krusen (1898–1973) (Jefferson MD) had set up the first physical therapy training program for physicians at Temple University Hospital in 1929. At the Mayo Clinic he directed the nation’s first 3-year physical medicine residency program. He had written physical therapy textbooks for physicians and nurses and also directed the Mayo Clinic’s physical therapy training program, which had graduated its first class only a year earlier; “Dr. Frank Krusen of Mayo Clinic, 75” New York Times September 18 1973; Glenn Gritzer and Arnold Arluke The Making of Rehabilitation: The Political Economy of Medical Specialization, 1890–1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 87–88. Krusen had coined the term “Physiatrist” as a way of distinguishing physician specialists from physical therapists; G. Keith Stillwell “In Memoriam: Frank H. Krusen, M.D. 1898–1973” Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (November 1973) 54: 493–495.
108. Krusen, “Observations on the Kenny Treatment of Poliomyelitis” Proceedings of the Staff Meetings of the Mayo Clinic (August 12 1942) 17: 450; [Cohn interview with] Frank Krusen, March 24 1953, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
109. Henderson had given Kenny an introduction to Wallace Cole, head of orthopedic surgery at the University of Minnesota; Melvin S. Henderson to Dear Dr. Wilkinson, April 9 1940, Home Secretary’s Office, Special Batches, Kenny Clinics, 1941–1949, A/31753, QSA.
110. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 217–220; see also Kenny to Dear Mr. President, September 2 1940, Public Relations, MOD-K.
111. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 220–221; Kenny “Paper Read at the Northwestern Pediatric Conference, Nov. 14, 1940, Saint Paul University Club, “Kendall Collection”; “Lecture given at Minneapolis General Hospital, August 12 1940” in Kenny Treatment of Infantile Paralysis, 116.
112. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 220–221.
113. Krusen “Observations,” 450. See also Krusen on Knapp as “the most patient soul that ever lived”; [Cohn interview with] Frank Krusen, March 24 1953, Cohn Papers, MHS-K. Miland Knapp had received his MD from the University of Minnesota in 1929 and became interested in physical medicine but had struggled unsuccessfully to set up a specialty practice limited to physical therapy in Chicago, despite support from John Coulter, until he had returned to Minneapolis where he was appointed as the head of a physical therapy department at the Minnesota General Hospital; [Cohn third interview with] Miland Knapp, August 24 1963, Cohn Papers, MHS-K; see also Russell J. N. Dean Rehabilitation for America’s Disabled (New York: Hastings House, 1972), 56–58.
114. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 221; Alexander Maverick, 118–119; Krusen “Observations,” 451; [Cohn third interview with] Miland Knapp, August 24 1963, Cohn Papers, MHS-K.
115. For a suggestion about Midwestern openness see Alexander Maverick, 128–129.
116. Kenny “Paper Read at the Northwestern Pediatric Conference, Nov. 14, 1940, Saint Paul University Club.”
117. Mary Pohl, interview with Naomi Rogers, August 21 2003, Tallahassee, Florida; “John F. Pohl” [Biographical Information] in Supplementary Data, Committee to Review Request of Elizabeth Kenny Institute to National Foundation f
or Infantile Paralysis: General, Medical Sciences, 1944, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. He also visited the Manchester Royal Infirmary and then spent a year as a resident in neurosurgery at the Boston Children’s Hospital.
118. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 225–227; Henry M. Haverstock To Whom It May Concern, September 4 1940, Public Relations, MOD-K. Haverstock later remembered his parents asking her to stop reading her testimonials and begin her examination; Gould Summer Plague, 96–98; Alexander Maverick, 118–119.
119. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 225–227.
120. Kenny Treatment of Infantile Paralysis, 270.
121. O’Connor to Cole, September 10 1940, FDR-OF-1930, Infantile Paralysis 1934–1942 Box 1, FDR Papers.
122. Kline “The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met,” 203–208; see also Harold S. Diehl “Summary of the Relationship of the Medical School of the University of Minnesota to the work of Sister Elizabeth Kenny” May 1944, Public Relations, MOD-K.
123. Kenny with Ostenso And They Shall Walk, 223.
124. Chuter to Dear Sister Kenny, July 15 1940, Wilson Collection.
125. Evelyn P. Holmberg to Dear Sir [O’Connor], November 13 1940, Public Relations, MOD--K.
126. Kenny “Report of Activities: June, 1940–1943,” FDR-OF-5188, Sister Elizabeth Kenny Institute, 1940–1944, FDR Papers.
127. Robert Gurney in Edmund J. Sass with George Gottfried and Anthony Sorem eds. Polio’s Legacy: An Oral History (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996), 25.
128. See Alexander Maverick, 45–50.
129. Kenny to Dear Dr. Diehl, June 21 1943, Dr. Harold S. Diehl, 1941–1944, MHS-K.
130. Kenny to Dear Sir [O’Connor], June 24 1940, Public Relations, MOD-K; on the delay between May and September see Diehl “Summary.”
131. Alexander Maverick, 85–87, 92; [Cohn interview with] Mary and Stuart McCracken, April 14 1953, Cohn Papers, MHS-K; Cohn Sister Kenny, 69–70. Mary Moore Kenny died on December 20 1937 when she was 93; [Chris Sharpe] Interview with Mary Stewart Kenny McCracken and Stuart McCracken, July 3–4 1998, Chris Sharpe Collection, in author’s possession.
132. Kenny to Dear Dr. Diehl, June 21 1943, Dr. Harold S. Diehl, 1941–1944, MHS-K. See also Abe Altrowitz “Under Your Hat” Minneapolis Tribune November 1943, Box 19, Sister Kenny Institute 1938–1948, Myers Papers, UMN-ASC.
133. Henry W. Haverstock to Senator Henrik Shipstead, July 3 1940, Series A981/1, United States 148, AA-ACT. Shipstead (1881–1960), a dentist, was elected first to the Senate as a member of the Farmer-Labor Party in 1922, and later in 1940 as a Republican. Kenny also wrote directly to Richard Casey at the Australian legation, suggesting the Australian government provide $150 a month to “assist and promote a friendly feeling so much to be desired in the present troublesome times” and “earn the gratitude of the people of the United States of America forever”; Kenny to Australian Legation, July 6 1940, Series A981/1, United States 148, AA-ACT; see also Henrik Shipstead to Australian Legation, July 6 1940, Series A981/1, United States 148, AA-ACT. With the knowledge he had gained from earlier inquiries, Casey was not sympathetic. He reminded Kenny and Shipstead that Kenny’s visit “was not sponsored in any way” by the Australian government. He further pointed out that during the European war “the need at the present time [was] to conserve as many dollars as possible in this country”; R. G. Casey to Kenny, July 12 1940, Series A981/1, United States 148, AA-ACT; R. G. Casey to Shipstead, July 12 1940, Series A981/1, United States 148, AA-ACT.
134. Kenny to Dear Dr. Diehl, June 21 1943, Dr. Harold S. Diehl, 1941–1944, MHS-K; Kenny to Gentleman, July 3 1940, Series A981/1, United States 148, AA-ACT.
135. Arthur D. Reynolds to Keith Morgan, September 5 1940, Public Relations, MOD-K.
136. O’Connor to Reynolds, September 17 1940, Public Relations, MOD-K.
137. Reynolds to O’Connor, November 29 1940, Public Relations, MOD-K. Note that she told reporters in 1940 that her 20 years of effort had been “entirely gratuitous”; “Australia Brings American Medicine New Method of Treatment Infantile Paralysis” Los Angeles Times April 16 1940; see also “She reports that she is doing this work free of charge in the interest of science”; Henry M. Haverstock To Whom It May Concern, September 4 1940, Public Relations, MOD-K.
138. Kenny to Dear Mr. President, September 2 1940, Public Relations, MOD-K; Kenny to Roosevelt, September 2 1940 [abstract] FDR-OF-5188, Sister Elizabeth Kenny Institute 1940–1944, FDR Papers; see also Henry M. Haverstock To Whom It May Concern, September 4 1940, Public Relations, MOD-K.
139. Kenny to Dear Mr. President, September 6 1940, Public Relations, MOD-K; Kenny to Roosevelt, September 6 1940 [abstract], FDR-OF-5188, Sister Elizabeth Kenny Institute 1940–1944, FDR Papers.
140. O’Connor to Cole, September 10 1940, FDR-OF-1930, Infantile Paralysis 1934–1942, Box 1, FDR Papers.
141. Cole to Kenny, September 9 1940, Cole, Dr. Wallace H. 1940–1947, MHS-K. Between August and November 1940 Kenny received $180 a month; Diehl to My Dear Sister Kenny, April 13 1944, Dr. Harold S. Diehl, 1941–1944, MHS-K.
142. Kenny And They Shall Walk, 254.
143. Kenny to Dear Dr. Cole, September 12 1940, Public Relations, MOD-K.
144. Kenny to Dear Mr. Chuter, May 28 1940, Home Secretary’s Office, Special Batches, Kenny Clinics, 1941–1949, A/31753, QSA; see also Kenny to Dear Mr. Chuter, November 15 1940, Home Secretary’s Office, Special Batches, Kenny Clinics, 1941–1949, A/31753, QSA.
145. Diehl, “Summary.”
146. Miland E. Knapp to Dear Doctor Diehl, March 10 1944, [accessed in 1992 before recent re-cataloging] Am 15.8, Folder 1, UMN-ASC; Wallace H. Cole and Miland E. Knapp “The Kenny Treatment of Infantile Paralysis: A Preliminary Report” Journal of the American Medical Association (June 7 1941) 116: 2577–2580; and see Wallace H. Cole, John F. Pohl, and Miland E. Knapp “The Kenny Method of Treatment for Infantile Paralysis” Archives of Physical Therapy (1942) 23: 399–418, also published as a separate pamphlet by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (Publication No. 40, 1942); see also Diehl “Summary.”
147. Kenny to Dear Dr. Diehl, June 21 1943, Dr. Harold S. Diehl, 1941–1944, MHS-K.
FURTHER READING
On polio in Australia see Kerry Highley “Mending Bodies: Polio in Australia,” Ph.D. thesis in History of Medicine, 2009, Australian National University, ACT; Anne Killalea The Great Scourge: The Tasmanian Infantile Paralysis Epidemic 1937–1938 (Hobart: Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1995); Milton J. Lewis The People’s Health: Public Health in Australia, 1950 to the Present (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2003), 37–42; Barry Smith “The Victorian Poliomyelitis Epidemic 1937–1938” in John C. Calwell et al. ed. What We Know About [the] Health Transition: The Cultural, Social and Behavioural Determinates of Health: The Proceedings of an International Workshop, Canberra, May 1989 (ANU Printing Service, Canberra, [1990], vol. 2), 866–881; John Smith “The Polio Epidemics in Australia 1895–1962 With Specific Reference to Western Australia,” Ph.D. thesis in History, 1997, Edith Cowan University, Perth.
On polio in North America see Tony Gould A Summer Plague: Polio and Its Survivors (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); David M. Oshinsky Polio: An American Story (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); John R. Paul, A History of Poliomyelitis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971); Naomi Rogers Dirt and Disease: Polio before FDR (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992); Christopher Rutty “Do Something! Do Anything! Poliomyelitis in Canada, 1927–1962,” Ph.D. Thesis, 1995, University of Toronto; Rutty “The Middle-Class Plague: Epidemic Polio and the Canadian State, 1936–1937” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History (1996) 13: 277–314; Jane S. Smith Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine (New York: William Morrow, 1990); Daniel J. Wilson Living with Polio: The Epidemic and its Survivors (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
On nursing in Australia see Elizabeth Burchill Australian Nurses since Nightingale 1860–1990 (Richmond: Spe
ctrum Publications, 1992); Angela Cushing A Contextual Perspective to Female Nursing in Victoria, 1850–1914 (Geelong: Deakin University Press, 1993); Mary Dickenson An Unsentimental Union: The NSW Nurses Association 1931–1992 (Sydney: Hale and Ironmonger, 1993); Judith Godden and Carol Helmstadter “Woman’s Mission and Professional Knowledge: Nightingale Nursing in Colonial Australia and Canada” Social History of Medicine (2004) 17: 157–174; Rupert Goodman ed. Queensland Nurses: Boer War to Vietnam (Bowen Hills: Boolarong Publications, 1985); Helen Gregory A Tradition of Care: A History of Nursing at the Royal Brisbane Hospital (Brisbane: Boolarong Publication, 1988); Ruth Lynette Russell From Nightingale to Now: Nurse Education in Australia (Sydney: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1990); Bartz Schultz A Tapestry of Service: The Evolution of Nursing in Australia (Melbourne: Churchill Livingstone, 1991); Glenda Strachan Labour of Love: The History of the Nurses Association in Queensland 1860–1950 (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1996).
On nursing in North America see Patricia D’Antonio American Nursing: A History of Knowledge, Authority, and the Meaning of Work (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); Kathryn McPherson Bedside Matters: The Transformation of Canadian Nursing, 1900–1990 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996); Barbara Melosh The Physician’s Hand: Work Culture and Conflict in American Nursing (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982); Susan M. Reverby Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
There is no complete history of the National Foundation but see Angela N. H. Creager The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930–1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001); Scott Cutlip Fund Raising in the United States (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1965); Tony Gould A Summer Plague: Polio and Its Survivors (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Sydney A. Halpern Lesser Harms: The Morality of Risk in Medical Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Lawrence Friedman and Mark McGarvie eds. Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Stephen E. Mawdsley “ ‘Dancing on Eggs’: Charles H. Bynum, Racial Politics, and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, 1938–1943” Bulletin of the History of Medicine (2010) 84: 217–247; David M. Oshinsky Polio: An American Story (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); John R. Paul A History of Poliomyelitis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971); David W. Rose March of Dimes: Images of America (Charleston: Arcadia, 2003); Jane S. Smith Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine (New York: William Morrow, 1990); Olivier Zunz Philanthropy in America: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).
Polio Wars Page 10
