Treatment for Polio

A new and apparently successful treatment for infantile paralysis--reversing all accepted methods of treating the disease at its outset--was last week described to U.S. doctors. Instead of immobilizing paralyzed limbs by strapping them to splints, the new treatment calls for patiently flexing a victim's useless limbs while he is still sick in bed. No doctor invented this method, but a nurse in the Australian bush named Sister Elizabeth Kenny.*

In the Journal of the American Medical Association, Drs. Wallace H. Cole and Miland Elbert Knapp of the University of Minnesota told how they invited strapping, soft-spoken Sister Kenny to work in Minneapolis hospitals. They reported observing and helping her in treating 20 patients within two weeks after the onset of the disease. Results within two months:

"Eleven have already been discharged completely normal. ... At least five of the others will recover completely within a reasonably short period of time."

Sister Kenny places a patient flat on his back on a firm mattress which does not quite reach to the footboard of his bed. The patient's feet, with heels and toes stretching beyond the mattress, are set squarely against the footboard. Thus he exercises the muscular reflexes used for standing up. His arms are kept at his side, his knees straight. No splints or casts are used. Hot packs made of pieces of blanket wrung out of boiling water are laid on his paralyzed limbs. The packs are usually changed every two hours, every half hour in very serious cases.

Several times a day, Sister Kenny flexes the patient's arm or leg "through the range of motion possible without pain." As pain is reduced, the exercises are increased. By the time the first, contagious stage of the disease is over, all pain and stiffness are usually relieved. Treatment is continued twice a day until the patient finally learns to move again under his own power.

The doctors' conclusion:

"The patients . . . were much more comfortable and cheerful during the acute stage than are those who are immobilized. Thus far, we have seen no ... deformities following this treatment. ... In most of them there is more flexibility than there was before the onset of the disease."

* Miss Kenny is not a nun. In England and Australia, experienced graduate nurses are called Sister.

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