Passion for the cause takes them to the edge - (Full text for Easier Reading follows)
Sister Elizabeth Kenny was evidently both a saint and a bit of a phoney.
She pioneered the only treatment which indisputably saved thousands of polio victims before the introduction of the Sabin vaccine and was justly famous and revered around the world for it.
To accomplish her mission she had to struggle very hard against an obdurate medical profession, although one should record that there were several doctors and one academic at the University of Queensland who, at an early critical moment, spoke up for the efficacy of her treatment.
Kenny wasn't a trained nurse at all. It's thought that she first picked up the rudiments of nursing while doing voluntary work at a small New South Wales maternity hospital. Later, she continued to offer her free nursing services on the Darling Downs, where in 1911 she discovered by chance that hot cloths on the limbs of just-stricken children not only gave them relief, but also usually cured or at least vastly ameliorated the polio.
Kenny used a laudatory letter from a doctor to enlist as a nurse during World War I, and in 1917 she was given the honorary title of Sister. She was a strapping woman and a tender nurse, but she also possessed a dress sergeant's temper whenever anyone opposed her, and she had a habit of casually using other people's ideas as though they were her own.
Ideas weren't that important. She had good timing and good eyes. That made all the difference.
I thought of Kenny as I read A Dyslexia Consultant's Mailbag (Turkey Tracks Press, Kenmore) which was recently sent to me by its author, Christina Alexander. The circumstances of Kenny and Alexander are, on the face of it, fundamentally different, for Alexander is a fully qualified teacher with a certificate in remedial teaching from the Schonell Research Centre.
They are similar, however, in the unbridled passion of commitment to their chosen cause. Alexander merely starts within the profession and proudly walks to its edge in order to pour scorn on it for its wilful failings, whereas Kenny charged in from the outside to do the same thing.
There is also more than a little self promotion and hectoring involved in the promulgation of the Alexander method. It would appear that that is something which comes with the territory when fighting for a cause with one's back against the wall as Kenny did before her.
I know very little about dyslexia and so am not qualified to pass judgement on Alexander's theories and work. However, on the face of the evidence of her book, which consists of a hundred letters sent to her and her answers to them, it does seem that she has helped many young people with her holistic exercise stimulus designed to improve the performance of both the left and the right hemispheres of the brain at the same time.
Her scorn at what is being done to dyslectics even at special schools for them is molten. She simply won't tolerate the proposition that dyslectic children are sub-normal and reminds people that Thomas Alva Edison was a dyslectic.
She cites a congress on gifted children she once attended, where one teacher said dyslectic children were "often gifted and talented - all brains and creativity and innovation - but stymied by books", whereas another "conditioned" teacher described them as "slow learners under a fancy name. Parents can't take having a thick kid. I know their game".
Alexander wants to see such attitudes shamed into silence. I believe that her cause is just. We have seen only last week how many in the psychiatric profession failed Queensland through acquiescence to substandard treatments for the mentally disturbed.
Isn't that what all professions do? Their interest is in their own status and well being; those they serve tend to come as an afterthought.
There are some exceptions to this rule. Engineers, for example, have the happy option of figuring out the necessary stresses and then simply doubling them for safety's sake and at the client's expense. But they make mistakes too, and their mistakes are very public indeed.
George Bernard Shaw said that all professions are a conspiracy against the public. There are many dedicated professionals, but there are also many Rasputins about, with and without beards and diplomas. That's why society is lucky and should always be grateful when crusaders who can cure come along. Sometimes, just professionalism isn't enough. Why can't professionals be taught that?