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| (CNS photo) |
"Polio Wars" tells the story of the conflict between the medical
establishment and "Sister" Elizabeth Kenny, who came to the United
States from Australia in the early 1940s with a new idea for treating
polio patients that flew in the face of standard practice at that time.
Neither an accredited nurse nor a member of a religious order, Kenny
received the title "sister" because of her status in Australia as a
senior nurse.
Kenny quickly became a media sensation and her life story was made into a
film starring Rosalind Russell. But the development of the polio
vaccine in the 1950s made Kenny's work irrelevant and she was quickly
forgotten.
Born in 1880, the fifth child of nine of an itinerant farmworker,
Elizabeth and her family moved constantly between New South Wales and
Queensland during her childhood.
