The Kenny R.E.H.A.B. records are arranged in four series: Detroit Chapter, 1948-1995, Supporting and Related Agencies, etc., 1945-1986, Publications, 1940s-1987, and Visual Materials, 1953-1986. The record group includes correspondence, minutes of the executive committee and the trustees, newsletters and other publications, and files pertaining to the relationship between the local chapter and the national headquarters. The records detail the changes in the administration and goals of the organization following the discovery of the Salk polio vaccine.
During the early 1900s, Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian missionary nurse, pioneered and developed the Kenny method for the treatment for infantile paralysis. Her treatment proved to be more successful than any other then being offered. News of its success spread, leading the Australian government to open clinics in Melbourne and Brisbane.
In 1940 Sister Kenny came to the United States to present her treatments to medical doctors at New York University. Her presentations were unsuccessful in convincing the New York University medical community of the value of her method. Before returning to Australia, she made her presentation to doctors in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That medical community was so interested in her methods that they allowed her to demonstrate her treatments on polio patients in the acute stage of the disease. Sister Kenny impressed upon the physicians the need for early identification and treatment of the disease to reduce the physical deformity and need for orthopedic braces and iron lungs after the disease had run its course. The Kenny method of treatment consisted of two steps. The first step was to swathe the affected muscles of the patient in 'hot packs' or strips of cloth soaked in boiling water and then wrung out. This relieved the pain and stiffness associated with the early stage of the disease. The next step of the treatment involved specific exercises and massages, which were means of muscle 're-education' to prevent paralysis. Sister Kenny eschewed immobilizing polio patients in casts, splints, and braces on the grounds that inactive, affected muscles and limbs became permanently paralyzed.
The Kenny method of treatment differed from conventional treatment in its proactivity. Reportedly, Sister Kenny, herself, was just as proactive as the treatment she developed. Biographies and reports describe her as somewhat legendary. Marvin Kline, director of the Minneapolis headquarters, writes of her as an imperious woman. She was gruff and impatient with doctors who dismissed her treatments because of her lack of a medical degree (and perhaps because she was a woman and a foreigner). She was known to be loving and kind with patients whom she coddled and encouraged back to health. Even as a child, she was said to possess uncommon strength of character and compassion for the sick. The Minneapolis Star Tribune article reports that she took especial care of her 'delicate' younger brother, Bill. She rigged up an exercise apparatus using pulleys in the family barn for Bill, who "exercised and exercised and ... became strong and muscular and athletic."
Sister Elizabeth Kenny was born in Warrialda, New South Wales, Australia in 1880. Although known as a 'sister,' she was not a nun, but derived her title from her rank as a nursing sister in the Australian Army Nursing Corps. In 1949, she retired to Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, where she died of a stroke on November 30, 1952.
The Detroit Chapter of the Sister Elizabeth Kenny Foundation was founded on September 30, 1946, four years after the national headquarters was established in 1942 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Foundation was created to provide the 'Kenny method' treatment for neuromuscular diseases, including poliomyelitis, and also to train doctors and nurses in this method. In its heyday in the late 1940s and early to mid 1950s, the Detroit Chapter operated treatment facilities in Pontiac, Farmington Hills, and Ferndale. As of 1986, Kenny was located in Pontiac General Hospital with a satellite facility in Waterford.
Originally, the Sister Elizabeth Kenny Foundation chapters, nationwide, focused primarily on the treatment of poliomyelitis. The Detroit Chapter operated as non-profit organization funded largely through grant money from the Michigan United Fund (now the United Way of Michigan) and aid from the national headquarters. Patients were not billed for treatment, only for hospitalization. In the years following the 1955 debut of the Salk vaccination, the Sister Kenny Foundation grant money from the Michigan United Fund waned, and the Detroit Chapter floundered financially. In 1958, they closed the Farmington treatment center for lack of operating funds. In 1960, they suffered the effects of bad press due to the discovery that the top Minneapolis executives had been siphoning headquarters funds for personal use. Following this discovery, the Detroit Chapter began to dissociate themselves from headquarters. In 1966 they split entirely from headquarters, renaming themselves the Kenny-Michigan Rehabilitation Foundation and eventually Kenny R.E.H.A.B. (Rehabilitation, Education, Health & Advocacy Board).
Following the virtual disappearance of polio in the late 1950s, Kenny carried on with the work of rehabilitating people from strokes, accidents, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and other physically disabling diseases. The organization changed its focus again in 1986. It was now dedicated not only rehabilitation, but the improvement of the overall quality of life for those with physical disabilities.
