2013 Eleanor Krohn Herrmann lecture. The most admired woman in the world: forgetting and remembering in the history of nursing.

Abstract

In 1992, Richard Owen, the physician and polio survivor who directed the Kenny Institute in St. Paul, Minnesota, organized celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Institute, calling on former patients to offer their memories and honor a pioneer [who changed] . . . the way the world viewed polio treatment.2 The Institute held exhibit on Elizabeth Kenny, and the state's governor declared December 17 Sister Kenny Day. The Twin Cities hosted Indoor Wheelchair Tennis Tournament and International Art Show by Disabled Artists, which was annual event sponsored by the Institute.Owen was known to have been patient of Kenny in the 1940s when the nurse had visited the Indiana hospital where he had been teenage patient; was an awesome lady, large physically and in aura, he had told local reporters. Methods for treating polio paralysis were no longer important, he admitted, but her ideas about early mobility and reeducation were still part of current therapies for spinal cord and head injuries. Although she did not know the technical language of medical doctors, Kenny had made accurate observations, which others had missed, were totally correct.3I met Owen in December 1992 when I first came to the Twin Cities during the early stages of my research on Kenny. Elizabeth Kenny, nurse born in Australia, had come to America in the 1940s, confronted suspicious doctors and other nurses, and transformed the clinical care of polio. In her day, was celebrity, but I had never heard of her while I was growing up in Melbourne in the 1960s and 1970s. Like most Australians, I was taught that polio was old disease, which medical science had conquered through vaccines and laboratory ingenuity. In the 1980s, doctoral student at the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania working on the history of polio, I became intrigued by the story of nurse from Australia who changed American medicine.In 1992, while teaching history at Monash University in Melbourne, friend told me that Mary Kenny McCracken-Kenny's beloved ward who had traveled to America with her in 1940-was alive, living in Queensland, and willing to be interviewed. I went to see Mary and her husband Stuart and found them hospitable, bit wary, and willing to show me papers and photographs, which they had not yet given to the University of Queensland. The 5 years Mary had spent in the United States had left profound impres- sion on her; my dual background (born and raised in Australia but trained in American history in the United States) intrigued her.4 When I received Australian Research Council grant to travel to the United States to pursue this research, the first place I went to was St. Paul to look at the Kenny Collection at the Minnesota Historical Society. There I met Richard Owen who invited me to attend the Institute's celebrations that same week.Although I was only just beginning my research on Kenny, I was asked to sit in front of video camera and interview the former patients-most in their 60s and 70s-who had flocked to celebrate the Institute's anniversary. They spoke warmly of their memories of being treated by Kenny and her techni- cians and told me in matter-of-fact ways about their later experiences of living with postpolio syndrome (PPS).When I look back now at that moment in December 1992, I am struck by how, in some ways, it was misleading. I thought the anniversary celebra- tions, including the responses by Minnesota's governor and Twin City offi- cials, indicated lasting, energetic interest in Kenny and her work. In fact, that moment was brief bubble; even in Minnesota, there was little interest in Kenny or polio-and I later realized that I needed to explain the forgetting of both the nurse and the disease.What continued to resonate with me through my later years of research and writing was my opportunity to meet Kenny's former patients and hear their voices and see their bodies. …