NEW TREATMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23620, 2 April 1940, Page 13

NEW TREATMENT

INFANTILE PARALYSIS QUEENSLAND WOMAN'S STUDY CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE A woman whose work in the study and treatment of infantile paralysis is now well known, Sister 13. Kenny, of Queensland, passed through Auckland yesterday in the .Monterey on her way to the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, United States, on behalf of the Queensland Government. The Premier. of Queensland, Mr. For (fa n Smith, has written to the president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in New York, stating that, in the opinion of his Government, Sister Kenny's treatment is a notable contribution to the cause of humanity. This view has been endorsed in a letter signed by the consultant surgeon, the consultant physician and the medical superintendent oi the Brisbane and South Coast Hospital, the medical suiKsrintendent of the Children s Hospital in Brisbane, and the public health officer. This is a notable tribute to the work of a woman who is herself not a qualified doctor of medicine, but a trained nurse who went through the last war. 25 Years' Work Although Sister Kenny has been working on her treatment for 25 years, it was not made public until seven years ago. At present it is practised onlv in Queensland and at the Koyal North Shore Hospital, New South Wales. She has worked for many years in a purely honorary capacity to bring the benefits of her discoveries and her treatment to sufferers among the people of Queensland. 1 "The recognised modern treatment, according to the evidence collected by the Koyal Commission of Investigation into the Treatment of Paralysis appointed b.v the Queensland Government, is immobilisation and re-education, Sister Kenny said when interviewed vesterdav. "This evidence was collected from all the English speaking clinics throughout the world. My method was firstly the complete abandonment or immobilisation, which is the placing or the patient in splints. Secondly, there is the treatment of symptoms which hitherto had been unnoticed. Immobilisation prevents these symptoms from becoming apparent, and, while tliej exist, satisfactory re-education is impossible." Discoveries to be Shared Sister Kenny introduced these symptoms to a group of specialists in London, who remarked that they were entirely new to them, but at that time no further investigation was carried out. Later she introduced her discoveries to orthopaedic surgeons in Melbourne, who agreed that her views on the subject should be inquired into. This inquiry was made by medical men, and the statement was made tjiat bister Kenny had introduced an entirely new conception ot the disease. , "My idea has always been to present mv work to the medical profession, and therefore I have worked with, and under the supervision oi, medical men. Sister Kenny continued. "So opposed were my views to the generally accepted orthodox ideas, that it is only within the last nine months that acute cases have been submitted for treatment. Medical men have now agreed that the treatment has introduced an original conception of the disease. "The science of healing knows no frontiers, and 1 am glad to shaie in J knowledge with individual medical men, or groups," Sister Kenny continued. "This disease is an enemy which robs the world of its man power, and brings sorrow to many otherwise happy homes."