Scared of Polio

[ema-adama]

Let me start by saying that I was scared of polio about a year ago. The combination of the image of an iron lung and the hieroglyphs from Egypt had conjured in my mind an image of an ancient and very serious disease that has thankfully been eradicated from our society. I knew I would not be vaccinating in the first years and thought polio and tetanus would be a good idea at some point.

I then found posts by MT in the MDC archives as I tried to figure out just what the disease was and how it was treated.

While reading through the archives I was getting myself into quite a mess emotionally wondering how I could find sister Kenny's books as this seemed to be my only course of action if I should ever need to treat my child should he get polio. My relief at finding out that the treatment is very simple and acessible (especially as an OT who has 'treated' patients young and old with GBS) was profound. From my understanding it is essentially mantaining range of motion of the joints and using warm packs to ease discomfort.

I am only sorry I did not find you earlier MT. I often thought of trying to email you through MDC, but I had no idea if you were even alive.

Anyway, I am writing this as I reflect back on what I have learnt, and how very real the fear is of your child being the one who gets this dread disease. It has helped me to see the similarity between polio and Hib and scratch my head at why the medical profession see fit to vaccinate every child in the event of a pathogen becoming invasive, instead of looking at what happens in the immune system to create the environment for a pathogen to become invasive.

The approach for protecting your child obviously changes dramatically.

Today my mental check list that I go through when I question my choice is:
My child is breastfed
My child eats a variety of organic, local food
I do not use chemical cleaners in our home
My child plays freely outside without sunblock
I do not hovver over my child wiping his hands with disinfectant
I love and snuggle my child every day, several times a day

If I think of more, I'll add them.

[3monkeys]

My checklist is much the same.

My child is breastfed
My child eats a variety of organic, local food
I do not use chemical cleaners in our home
My child plays freely outside without sunblock
I do not hovver over my child wiping his hands with disinfectant
I love and snuggle my child every day, several times a day

My child is stronger and more able to fight disease because their immune system is as optimum as I can possibly make it. Yes they will get sick, but yes we can fight it.

My child doesnt live on junk food

Gosh there could be a lot couldnt there.

[ema-adama]

Oh yes, not eating processed sugar and flour products... although my son does eat wholewheat pita and whole grain rice cakes.

Cross posted with you 3monkeys.... but yeah, that is about it :D

[magical1]

This should be the mantra posted outside all Doctors offices.

[3monkeys]

Wouldnt that be a great day.........

[ema-adama]

That would be an awesome day....

And yet, if I were to show this list to my IL's - they would probably freak out all over again and try and find sneaky ways to inject my son (a family full of MD's).

[MinorityView]

Well, if diet plays a role in immune function, it isn't surprising that there were a lot of epidemics in early modern cities. Fresh food was available in the countryside, except at the tail end of winter, but in the cities people ate a lousy diet. Mostly flour, sugar, canned goods (once those were invented), nothing fresh. Add to this awful sanitation, crowded living conditions, air pollution, etc. and it is no wonder that there were large outbreaks of disease.

We assume that babies used to get breastfed by their mothers, but working class women often had to go right back to work and their babies would be bottle fed and mostly die. Or, a bit earlier, be farmed out into the countryside, where they would be neglected and mostly die. The situation was horrendous.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Let me start by saying that I was scared of polio about a year ago. The combination of the image of an iron lung and the hieroglyphs from Egypt had conjured in my mind an image of an ancient and very serious disease that has thankfully been eradicated from our society. I knew I would not be vaccinating in the first years and thought polio and tetanus would be a good idea at some point.

I then found posts by MT in the MDC archives as I tried to figure out just what the disease was and how it was treated.

I will try to start a stickied thread on this one day, because it's so important for people to know that of all the diseases there are today, after tetanus, polio is actually the LEAST "infectious" of them all in terms of actual clinical disease resulting in polio, in comparison to those who get immunity to it. Measles would be the MOST infectious in terms of clinical symptoms versus subclinical disease. Around one-third of people who get measles do not get clinical disease, and two-thirds + of chickenpox cases do not get clinical disease. In polio, one per 1,000 max, will get clinical disease though in NZ, the highest rate of infection was 3 per 1,000.

Like meningitis, when polio strikes it's very visible, and therefore scary. And like meningitis, the medical profession never asks the question of WHY do the majority get immunity and the tinies minority get disease. The medical profession has never been interested in the why, until something overwhelms them.


While reading through the archives I was getting myself into quite a mess emotionally wondering how I could find sister Kenny's books as this seemed to be my only course of action if I should ever need to treat my child should he get polio.

I have all her books. I found them online through places like Abebooks.com and Alibris.com.


My relief at finding out that the treatment is very simple and acessible (especially as an OT who has 'treated' patients young and old with GBS) was profound. From my understanding it is essentially mantaining range of motion of the joints and using warm packs to ease discomfort.

Not quite. many people tried to implement what they "thought" was something suitable, and "like" her treatment, but it didn't work as well.

Her success rate was very very high, and that was because of the depth of her understanding as to why she was doing, what she was doing.

It does pay to read what she has written. Elizabeth Kenny, had a "gift" for knowing the body, and when you read her books you see where that comes from. A very determined young adolescent, she had a younger brother who was skinny, weak and emaciated. For a long time, she carried him much of the distance to and from school. She decided that she needed to work out how to strengthen him because she wouldn't be around for ever. (Amazing that her parents didn't consider this, but hey)

She borrowed books from doctors on physiology, learned about muscles etc, and then with her own hands, built equipment for her younger brother to do exercises. Her mother of course, was horrified and felt that Elizabeth was being abusive. But Elizabeth insisted, her brother persevered and complied for years, and overcame his problems. He went on to become one of the strongest men in the Australian Army, and no doubt knew he owed his "life" to her.

In watching her brother all those years, she developed an instinctive understanding of which muscles did what, what was wrong, and how to right it. She decided to become a nurse. In those days, there was no "nursing training" as we have it today. Indeed, there was actually no medical school for doctors either. Both learned in a rather crude for of apprenticeship with a skeleton of formal instruction.

She apprenticed to a doctor who remained her mentor throughout her working life, until he died.

When polio first hit in the outbacks of Australia, it always followed after similar paralysis in animals. She relates how so often, outback children would get "polio" some time after their parents noted paralysed cows etc. Her treatments were purely instinctive to begin with, and rooted in her understanding of muscle function and dysfunction from her years of working with her younger brother. Her aim was to relieve pain, and retain normal function without resorting to immobilisation.

right from the start, her mentor doctor/teacher was constantly stunned that in the patients Elizabeth Kenny treated from the beginning onwards, she never lost a patient, and no patients of hers were ever left with any residual paralysis. Indeed, under today's classification, none of her patients would be classified as polio, because you MUST have residual paralysis 60 days after diagnosis now, and none of her original patients ever had residual paralysis 60 days after diagnosis.

Another thing she was so hot on, was elimination of crap food. She was totally scornful of what so many parents fed their children on, and a big part of her treatment was feeding children correctly.

She was not politically correct, and many people came up against her ascerbic tongue, and found her brutal. But no-one could question her commitment to children, or her results.

BUT here's the stinger. When the medical profession discovered just how successful she was, they put every possible obstacle in her way, to the point where, as the years went on, unless parents somehow managed to circumvent those trying to contain her, and get to her first, she was only allowed to treat cases AFTER the supposed infectious period stopped and it was becoming evident to medical people, that their treatment had gone as far as it would. (aka, it had failed). then, they would let her treat them. Perhaps they thought she couldn't. Her reputation was only enhanced by the fact that supposedly incurable cases, she often cured. But there were cases the doctors had treated for months, for whome her skills had a very limited impact, but you can't call that her fault. She always believed that to get the best results treatment had to start right at the beginning.

Reading the books by her, and about her are very instructive, as you get to understand the vitriole, and idiocity of a medical profession which just couldn't stomach the fact that a bluntly spoken, outback apprenticed, "mere nurse" could be doing something, that they will all their alphabet soup and massive amounts of money could not do.

I tell you, my contempt for the medical profession was never so low as those years when I researched Elizabeth Kenny's treatments.

I've also had the good fortune to have met some New Zealand people who had polio and who were treated by one of her relatives. None of them have post polio syndrome, either. Another remnant scourge of classical medical treatment.


I am only sorry I did not find you earlier MT. I often thought of trying to email you through MDC, but I had no idea if you were even alive.today, I'm only just alive :D

I had an accident in the garden yesterday, and am manoeuvring around a back injury, sorting out what I can and can't do without excrutiating pain.

computer time is limited... so posts are being constructed bit piece, during walking and compresses....


Anyway, I am writing this as I reflect back on what I have learnt, and how very real the fear is of your child being the one who gets this dread disease. It has helped me to see the similarity between polio and Hib and scratch my head at why the medical profession see fit to vaccinate every child in the event of a pathogen becoming invasive, instead of looking at what happens in the immune system to create the environment for a pathogen to become invasive.

If it will help, lets talk about Polio in detail sometime.

I think I have the MDC polio threads on my hard drive. The problem will be I can't access the actual text using quote so the links come out correctly.

Or, I can just start again...


The approach for protecting your child obviously changes dramatically.

Today my mental check list that I go through when I question my choice is:
My child is breastfed
My child eats a variety of organic, local food
I do not use chemical cleaners in our home
My child plays freely outside without sunblock
I do not hovver over my child wiping his hands with disinfectant
I love and snuggle my child every day, several times a day

If I think of more, I'll add them.

we can discuss all this, in the context of the actual diseases if you want...

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

As many of you know, Dr Archie Kalokerinos is a personal friend of mine. In the fifties, he defied his superiors, and went and studied under Kenny, and in the hospitals he was in charge of, he implemented Kenny's treatment.

Years ago, he wrote a chapter for me about that time, to go into the book on Polio, which has never been published, and may not be. It was a fascinating insight into the life in australia, of a doctor who, against the wishes of his superiors, set about with a primary aim of getting his patients back into real life as quickly as possible.

He also added another equation into the mix. The heavy use of chemicals with animals in the outback, started around 1890, against various animal problems. And yes, they were often drugs like lead arsenate and their cousins.

While Dr Kalokerinos didn't know about the animal and fruit and vege industry, he made the point that he never saw large numbers of polio elsewhere, until the wholesale use of very toxic chemicals started in areas of Australia where cotton was grown. That of course, spread out into the fruit and vegetable industry, until there wasn't one aspect of "food production" which did not contain some of these highly toxic chemicals.

but where he worked was a cotton area. And he'd comment that often the polio patients he saw were the children of cotton farmers, who had had seen playing on and around the 40 gallon drums of these highly toxic chemicals. It never occured to him that there was a link between the use of chemicals and the breaking down of the cellular immunity and gut barriers, until I started showing him some of the medical stuff I had on that.

I also asked him about how often staff would get polio. He said that in all his years treating polio, only one staff member had ever come down with it, and that person ate rubbish, drank like a fish, and didn't believe in the need for a decent night's sleep.

he also said that few of the staff were worried about themselves getting it, assuming that they already had "immunity" from treating people with it, or having got that immunity in the community.

there is no doubt in my mind, that without chemical provocation, lousy diet aided and abetted by type A personalities, polio viruses are primarily endemic, and of little neurotrophic significance in normal life. This is borne out by the fact that these viruses were ubiquitous until the industrial revolution. Yes, the odd case could come up in Egyptian history. A study of Byzantium history shed light on the factors which might have applied then, which would result in polio in the odd case.

Just as coxsackie viruses cause polio in guineapigs which eat diet minus key nutrients as well. Vets can tell you the remedy. Add vitamin C and other nutrients to the water, and guinea pigs get well just fine.

Both Salk and Sabin spent much time trying to understand why it was that most indigenous communities in China, Phillipines etc in the 1940's and 1950's had 100% immunity to polio, no clinical disease, and considered clinical polio to be the "weak white man's disease". Both wrote medical articles on it. Neither connected the dots. I suspect, neither wanted to, because at the same time, doctors like Aycock and Biskind, who did connect the dots, were being pilloried and after a while, not allowed to publish in mainstream medicine.

Even in India, polio wasn't a disease which is written into historical annals, and never became a disease of note, until the advent of toxic chemicals the syringe, and a whole lot of things which would take me another book to write....

[ema-adama]

I have all her books. I found them online through places like Abebooks.com and Alibris.com.

Not quite. many people tried to implement what they "thought" was something suitable, and "like" her treatment, but it didn't work as well.
I will have to take back what I said then. I had understood GBS to be very similar to polio in it's presentation and I know that maintianing PROM (passive range of motion) and working at increasing AROM (active) while using warm packs seems to see people through the paralytic phase. I don't think it cures them, I think it protects their joints while they can't move them and eases any pain. Kind of like not doing any harm, but supporting the body while it heals itself. Although there is still a tendency to put people in splints - 'functional splints' that prevent contractures - which is not really neccessary as the patients have flaccid muscle tone with no danger of contractures if their passive range of motion is being maintained. But then again, I irritated many OT's by my approach of not doing anything unless there was a clinical reason to - and even in high tone patients splints are of highly questionable value at preventing contractures, as in I really doubt they do anything, and very possibly trigger further increases in muscle tone.


Her success rate was very very high, and that was because of the depth of her understanding as to why she was doing, what she was doing.I tried to understand. And it is just not possible in an academic hospital to introduce that big of a change when you have two years experience and no recent journal articles to back you up. I did not fit in.



today, I'm only just alive :D

I had an accident in the garden yesterday, and am manoeuvring around a back injury, sorting out what I can and can't do without excrutiating pain.

computer time is limited... so posts are being constructed bit piece, during walking and compresses....
What I wrote came across a bit weird -
I hope you are feeling better. A year ago I could not figure out what would have led to someone with your knowledge no longer posting. Death seemed more likely than politics :alien:
But I hope you are taking good care of yourself and resting. Back issues are horrid horrid horrid.



If it will help, lets talk about Polio in detail sometime.
I would like that - sometime.





The approach for protecting your child obviously changes dramatically.

Today my mental check list that I go through when I question my choice is:
My child is breastfed
My child eats a variety of organic, local food
I do not use chemical cleaners in our home
My child plays freely outside without sunblock
I do not hovver over my child wiping his hands with disinfectant
I love and snuggle my child every day, several times a day

If I think of more, I'll add them. we can discuss all this, in the context of the actual diseases if you want...I think it would be fantastic. Although I am concerned about just how demanding it could be :eek: I kinda 'know' why these things are so important and why I have come to trust in that over the syringe, but getting it all into a coherent written form is a bit intimidating.

[grandma of 4]

I am a survivor of polio from 1953 at 5 years old
My late Nana nursed me with hot oil packs and massages to my legs also hot packs to my chest .
steamed up room and lots and lots of oranges it seemed to me that was all i ate .
I spent at least 6mths at home and was isolated from the rest of my family
the local G.P used to call every day to see me .
because i had the disease i didnt have to be immunised

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

because i had the disease i didnt have to be immunised

And that's the thing. Now, if you have clinical polio, you still "have" to be immunised, because you can actually get polio three times, since types one, two and three are not cross protective :giggle:and they actually knew that way back when you had polio, so that just shows how much your doctor took notice. :D

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

I am a survivor of polio from 1953 at 5 years old My late Nana nursed me with hot oil packs and massages to my legs also hot packs to my chest . steamed up room and lots and lots of oranges it seemed to me that was all i ate . I spent at least 6mths at home and was isolated from the rest of my family the local G.P used to call every day to see me .


That sounds just like the "basics" of what Sister Kenny did.

She certainly pushed oranges, but also lots of fresh fruit and vegetables ... was her maintstay.... one of her big battles with the hospitals was the appalling diet provided to sick people, which hasn't changed to this day.

And I take it, your Nana did not get polio either :) and that the daily visits by the GP did not "contaminate" any of the other people he then visited? Isn't it an oxymoron to isolate you from the family and then have a GP come every day to spread your "germs" far and wide :LMAO:

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

I will have to take back what I said then. I had understood GBS to be very similar to polio in it's presentation No GBS is quite different to the trained eye.

The "prodromal" signs of classical polio, and it's onset is nothing like GBS.


and I know that maintianing PROM (passive range of motion) and working at increasing AROM (active) while using warm packs seems to see people through the paralytic phase. I don't think it cures them, I think it protects their joints while they can't move them and eases any pain. Kind of like not doing any harm, but supporting the body while it heals itself. Although there is still a tendency to put people in splints - 'functional splints' that prevent contractures - which is not really neccessary as the patients have flaccid muscle tone with no danger of contractures if their passive range of motion is being maintained.

But then again, I irritated many OT's by my approach of not doing anything unless there was a clinical reason to - and even in high tone patients splints are of highly questionable value at preventing contractures, as in I really doubt they do anything, and very possibly trigger further increases in muscle tone.
Kenny maintained, and she was right, that immobilisation = contractures in the first place. I have a medical article somewhere, which shows that putting normal people, without breaks, into splints, results in contractures.

It will be a while before I can sit for any length of time, which impacts on my thinking ability.... :D

[ema-adama]

That sounds just like the "basics" of what Sister Kenny did.

She certainly pushed oranges, but also lots of fresh fruit and vegetables ... was her maintstay.... one of her big battles with the hospitals was the appalling diet provided to sick people, which hasn't changed to this day.

I have issues with my IL's that is obvious. But we had a really stupid aurgument about hospital food with me saying that there is no way people can get well on sugar with added flavours and coloured presented with margerine and white bread. MIL (the doctor in public health) said that perhaps the only problem with the food was that the hospital is modeling poor food choices, but that it is nonsense that people can't get better on such a poor diet. :confused:


No GBS is quite different to the trained eye.

The "prodromal" signs of classical polio, and it's onset is nothing like GBS.
When you have the time and energy I would be interested at looking into this.



Kenny maintained, and she was right, that immobilisation = contractures in the first place. I have a medical article somewhere, which shows that putting normal people, without breaks, into splints, results in contractures.

It will be a while before I can sit for any length of time, which impacts on my thinking ability.... :D
I believe you on splints and contractures. No breaks is a serious disaster. :eek:

I love making splints, and I have seen them do wonders for people after tendon surgery and after fractures. But they are very very dangerous when you have muscle tone problems. And when they are on non-stop for more than 3 weeks, depending on the position of the limb. There are physiologically more advantageous positions to be splinted in - but again, not more than 3 weeks, and I only know about hands. And again, not for muscle tone problems.

Grandma of 4 - that is so reassuring to read about someone who lived through it. And on how you were treated. Most often I hear from people who were alive in the 50's that they were surrounded by people with very serious cases of polio and it is very very dangerous. :rolleyes:

[MinorityView]

I was born in 1950, in the U.S. and I never met someone with polio until I was an adult in my 30s! My family didn't vaccinate, so I never received a polio vaccine. I think my parents were concerned about polio, but they were just very careful about sugar and junk food.

[cartersmom]

My Uncle is wheelchair bound from "post polio syndrome" He had polio as a child, but survived with minimal paralysis, but then over the years has become completely incapacitated. I have no idea if Post Polio Syndrome is a real diagnosis or some sort of excuse....I also wonder if what my Uncle has as a child was really Polio. After reading about the history of Polio and the vaccine, I wonder if it wasn't exposure to chemicals or pesticides???

[Damien]

Pardon me for asking, but how do the anecdotes mentioned here compare to the Wikipedia article about her (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Kenny)?

[ema-adama]

I've just finished my first reading of And They Shall Walk, and wish I had bought a book with more of how she treated polio in it's different stages.

What stood out to me was her accepting of the small detail of vaccination at the port coming back to Australia. I wonder what it was for as it was in the 30's (I think). And my horror at reading about DDT being dropped by air over water in an attempt to kill the polio virus, this in the 1940's (and in the US from what I remember). I have not made up my mind about what role DDT played in the polio epidemics, but I had to remind myself that the book was written in the 40's and there just was no knowledge of the dangers in dropping huge amounts of neurotoxin over populated areas. At least I am assuming there was no known danger.... assuming is not a good idea, I know. The fact that it was written in the 1940's is actually helpful - it is free of all the speculation that any modern text has.

What also struck me was the association between paralysis of the cattle on rural Australian farms, followed by the children. Has this ever been explained?

Another issue that stood out for me, was Sister Kenny's use of unfamiliar terminilogy. I am sure that got doctors backs up, or maybe that was the scape goat for their inability to accept such a radical shift in perspective. It was astonishing to read what the orthodox understanding of polio was 100 years ago and hence the rigid clinging to the use of splints. If you believed what the doctors and specialists did believe, splints would make sense. Any OT or PT who read the medical understanding of polio that was available 100 years ago would imediatly be surprised at the poor understanding of the pathology. It makes complete sense not to do muscle testing on a muscle that has musle tone abnormality. In fact, as a student, I would have been penalised for testing muscle strength on a stroke or head injury patient. And it makes complete sense to treat the high muscle tone with warm, damp heat and maintain the PROM. I get that her method was more than that, and hence my sadness that it is not described more accurately in this book.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

She didn't use unfamiliar terminology. All the words she used were words they would have learned - they relate to muscle groups etc, and are pretty standard when talking about muscles. She didn't invent any terminology. She learned that from textbooks she borrowed from her mentor.

Damien. The reason she borrowed those books from her mentor, was in order to try to "save"her younger brother who was a "weakling". She planned and devised exercises, and invented her own equipment, and supervised his exercises for many years. That's where she got her phenomenal knowledge of the muscle groups and actions from.

she never used "weights", only hot compresses made from woolen blankets.

Basically it's pretty accurate. But reading that, doesn't give you a really good idea of what she did though...

[Damien]

Thanks MT.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

I get that her method was more than that, and hence my sadness that it is not described more accurately in this book.

the three books which give you the greatest overall picture of her treatment are:

"Infantile Paralysis and Cerebral Diplegia" Elizabeth Kenny, 1937

"Treatment of Infantile Paralysis in the acute stage" Elizabeth Kenny 1941 (I got mine from Abebooks.com, and it comes from the discards frommmm ~~~drum-roll~~~~ Stormont Medical Library, Topeka, Kansas. Poor Kansas, but lucky me.)

"The Kenny Concept of Infantile Paralysis and it's treatment" by John F. Pohl, M.D. in collaboration with Elizabeth Kenny, 1943

If you go to the Wikipedia link that Damien put up, see that film about her? Kenny was co-producer of that film, a very hard taskmaster, and worked with the actress to make sure that she did everything absolutely correctly. If you can find a copy of that film, then you will be able to see what she did.

but in some of the other books I've read written by people who were taught by her, they talk about the fact that because her knowledge of physiology was so phenomenal, she had a "feel" for the body in a much greater way than most people do. So ofter her treatment was more effective, because FEEL isn't something that comes in words.

I know this, from Japanese Embroidery. The textbook tells you how to do it, but working with silk is just as much about feel, response to the silk being used; the different type of base fabric, and what you are trying to achieve.

Working with people can be the same.

As a gymnastics tutor (long ago :alien: ) I quickly learned that every child's muscle structure is different. Even their "twitch" response is different. A child with a fast twitch factor will make them a much better tumbler, but at the same time, that twitch factor puts them in greater physical danger if they over-reach, and don't anticipate possible outcomes. Many a high level gymnast has landed up a paraplegic as a result.

But the point is, how you train a gymnast, is dependant upon their mental faculties, first, and ability to "read" what they are wanting to do, to understand spacial concepts and how the body "levers" (E.g. the centre of lever "gravity" is through the shoulder ball joints, so you have to move them so that they are further back from the hips, and then you can simply lift the first leg over and the second will follow.)

Gymnastics is taught by knowing what the gymnast will feel. A teacher who solely teaches from a manual without "knowing" will not be as good as a teacher who has been there and done that, and understands the topic at a much deeper level.

Kenny had the ultimate depth of her topic. She was the ultimate expert. And the doctors who tried her methods and failed, failed because they did not understand her concepts, and furthermore, they changed her system to suit their own lack of understanding.