Treatment for Polio

A minor outbreak of infantile paralysis (in Arkansas) may demonstrate something that doctors and parents everywhere very much want to know--how well the Kenny treatment of poliomyelitis works out in an epidemic. To Little Rock, where 25 children were down with polio, rushed a group of physiotherapists and nurses to whom the Australian nurse has been teaching her revolutionary exercise treatment (TIME, June 23, Dec. 15, 1941) in the Minneapolis General Hospital.

Kenny Cure. The patients were placed flat on their backs on a firm mattress which did not quite reach to the footboard of the bed. Their feet, with heels and toes stretching beyond the mattress, were set squarely against the footboard (so that the children could exercise, without effort, the muscular reflexes used for standing up). Their arms were kept at their sides, their knees straight. No splints or casts were used. Hot packs, made of pieces of blankets wrung out of boiling water, were laid on each child's twitching limbs, changed every two hours--in serious cases every 15 minutes.

In cases where the pain had subsided, the Minneapolis workers showed Arkansas doctors how to exercise the children's stricken muscles. Several times a day they flexed them through a limited range of motion. No massage was used. By the time the first, contagious stage of the disease is over, this treatment should relieve all pain and stiffness.

How It Works. What makes Sister Kenny's treatment so successful? This question has stumped doctors ever since her amazing number (80%) of recoveries forced them to recognize her unorthodox work. Last week Dr. Philip Moen Stimson of Cornell offered a "rationalization" of the Kenny method in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The polio virus, he wrote, does not always destroy all the nerve cells leading to the paralyzed muscles--but often sends the muscles into spasm, painful contraction or twitching. If spasm is relieved, the nerve cells which remain alive can substitute for those which have been destroyed. The danger of paralysis lies mainly in allowing spasm to continue.

The old method of splinting and immobilizing paralyzed limbs only aggravated these disorders. The peculiar advantage of Sister Kenny's method lies in her hot packs, which relieve spasm, her gentle, natural exercises, which work muscles back into normal coordination before dangerous new behavior patterns can be set up.

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