Sister Elizabeth Kenny's methods : freedoms, knowledges and the making of history

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dc.contributor.authorWallace, Patricia Joanneen_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-15T20:13:45Z
dc.date.available2024-08-15T20:13:45Z
dc.date.copyright2002en_US
dc.date.issued2002
dc.degree.departmentSchool of Nursingen_US
dc.degree.levelMaster of Nursing M.N.en
dc.description.abstractUsing a Foucauldian form of discourse analysis, this historical study explores the methods of poliomyelitis rehabilitation developed between 1911 and 1952 by an Australian nurse, Sister Elizabeth Kenny. The author takes a novel approach to constructing a historical account of Kenny and her work, exploring the ways in which Kenny's practices evolve through an analysis of statements about the body receiving rehabilitation. The author's main argument is that Kenny's practices, and in accordance with them her concept of the body in poliomyelitis, constitute a breach in two narratives of medicine, progress and war, providing an opportunity to envision other possibilities for the body, hence other possibilities for the poliomyelitis survivor and those providing healthcare for the disease. The author explicates the power associated with knowledges of the body and determines Kenny's knowledge to have currency in discourse because of direct impact her practices have on the body. Added to its undeniable benefits for the corporeal body, Kenny's work is textualized and circulated in discourse in unconventional ways, ignoring the rules established in the scientific community regarding the development of healthcare entities. It thus emerges as the first poliomyelitis treatment accessible to those inside and outside of medical science. For this reason, the author examines how the 'truth' about Kenny's practices emerge in relation to the unique positions they sustain in discourse. The author also considers that nurses can take a more critical stance toward their accounts of the body in front-line practice. To address this issue, the author suggests nurse historians, writing within the literary realm, may be freed from the constraints placed on scientific representations of the body in medicine. Thus, nurse historians have the potential to generate narratives that promote critical examination of the medicalized body.
dc.format.extent220 pages
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/20071
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.titleSister Elizabeth Kenny's methods : freedoms, knowledges and the making of historyen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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