Kenny, Elizabeth

Related Category: Medicine: Biographies

1886–1952, Australian nurse, b. New South Wales, grad. St. Ursula's College, Australia, 1902. She became “Sister” Kenny as a first lieutenant nurse (1914–18) in the Australian army. While caring for poliomyelitis victims in her homeland, she developed a method using hot, moist applications in conjunction with passive exercise. She came to the United States in 1940 to demonstrate her techniques, which were used extensively with good results. She was coauthor with John F. Pohl of The Kenny Concept of Infantile Paralysis and Its Treatment (1942); with Martha Ostenso she wrote the autobiographical And They Shall Walk (1943).

See biography by H. J. Levine (1954).