? ? The goal of this project is to complete a major historical study that analyzes the profound and rapid transformation in the care of patients paralyzed by polio during the 1940s and 1950s. This examination of the dynamics of change in therapeutics and clinical care is accomplished through a case study of the struggles between Australian nurse Sister Elizabeth Kenny and leading American physicians, nurses and physical therapists in the decades before, during and after World War 2, an era that has been termed American medicine's """"""""Golden Age."""""""" American professionals caring for paralyzed polio survivors initially ignored Kenny's assertions regarding polio therapy, and, as a result, she reached over their heads to concerned parents, and set up a powerful network of lay patrons. Kenny was not content to offer her """"""""Kenny methods"""""""" as adjutants to current therapy, but argued that without accepting her theory of polio, no practitioner could use her methods effectively. She asserted, in other words, authority over the science of polio as well as its healing, a daunting claim for any nurse in this era. Using archival materials, and other primary and secondary sources, this project has the following aims: 1) to explore and reassess the Golden Age of American medicine, with a particular focus on clinical care and research; 2) to reconstruct a defining era in the history of the March of Dimes, the nation's largest and most influential disease philanthropy; 3) to examine medical populism, science popularization, and the cultural power of film in shaping medical and popular culture; 4) to use gender as a lens to investigate the ways Kenny's activism, resistance to medical authority, and claims of expertise were interpreted by American medical professionals; and 5) to explicate the ways that the Kenny story enriches our current understanding of clinical care and therapeutic change, including patient consent and consumer activism;
cl aims and counter-claims to expertise, truth and objectivity; and the rise and fall of medical heroes in popular and professional memory. ? ? ?
