Sister Kenny Medical Heretic
anthony bruni
One goal that I have with this platform is to spread a bit of heresy. The word heretic itself has Greek origins meaning, able to choose. Many throughout history have been brutally killed for heresy. Many have been shunned for speaking what they intuit as true. Sometimes these heretics open the world up and let us examine it in beautiful new ways. Sometimes they lead us into ever smaller circles of thought. Either way, they provide us with options. None of our philosophies are complete. No system of thoughts is bugfree. Without these cognitive mutants, our collective consciousness ceases to evolve. So this is dedicated to all the wild heretics of the world.
Elizabeth Kenny was born in New South Wales Australia on Sept 20, 1880. At the age of seventeen, she broke her wrist riding a horse. While under the care of Dr. Aeneas McDonnell, who she would eventually become a mentee of, she began to read books on anatomy. For a couple of years after that, she worked as an unaccredited bush nurse. Depending on who you ask received medical training from a midwife. During WWI despite having no official accreditation she works as a nurse on “Dark ships", that ran war supplies, and fresh soldiers to England, along with trading exports and the wounded back to Australia. It was on these lightless ships that she was giving the title Sister, which carried the equivalent status as a lieutenant. While after the war she kept busy treating people all without any official accreditation. It was in 1929 in Townsville that she began her career as a medical heretic, or at least became a professional at it.
It was at this time she treated, the first of what would become many, patient afflicted with polio. Whereas it was common at the time to set legs in braces, she implemented a series of passive exercises. Without this neural stimulation, muscles can become paralyzed in days. For having the wits to keep muscles tissues stimulated while this virus burrows through the nervous system the American Medical Association called her an "ignorant quack seeking money for her own gain".
That said in 1934 she this lowly unaccredited bush nurse was approved by the Queensland Health Department to set up clinics, which she did. I initially found out about her through a lecture by Robert Anton Wilson, someone who influenced me greatly in how I perceive the world, who himself had polio as a child. Was her practices better than the conventional standard of care? I do not presume to know. I am grateful to her though; for her tenacity to stand up to a monolith of power. For her gift of letting us perceive an illness through a different, perhaps more acurate lens if we so choose.
Anthony Bruni