Awesome Stuff Women Did

Developed innovative yet highly controversial treatments for polio, involving prolonged applications of moist hot packs to help ease muscles, relieve pain and allow limbs to be stretched and gently exercised, at odds with the orthodox treatment of immobilisation through the use of plaster casts and splints. Vilified by the medical establishment, became a hugely popular public figure, once voted the ‘Most admirable woman in the United States’. Seen as beacons of hope by parents desperate for their stricken children and dissatisfied by existing treatments, a series of treatment centres opened across the United States throughout the 1940s. Her methods retain a place in rehabilitative medicine to this day. (Sister Elizabeth Kenny)