ANEW TREATMENT FOR POLIO VICTIMS

"Use Your Best Observation and Judgment."

For most of this century standard treatment for polio included immobilizing the limbs of paralyzed victims in a variety of braces, casts, and forms for months. Physicians believed this prevented strong, normal muscles from pulling weak muscles out of position. An Australian bush nurse named Elizabeth Kenny rejected this standard approach and ultimately reformed therapeutic treatments of paralytic poliomyelitis. In 1910 Sister Kenny (Australian chief nurses are commissioned as "sister") first confronted a small epidemic of infantile paralysis in the Australian bush country. "Use your best observation and judgment," said the nearest physician, forty miles away. Knowing nothing about the disease and thrown on her own resources, Sister Kenny decided to treat polio's symptomatic muscle spasms. She used hot water, massage, and exercise, and her patients...