Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Australian celebrity Elizabeth Kenny.
Last updated on November 19, 2024.
Sister Elizabeth Kenny was a self-trained Australian bush nurse, who developed an approach to treating poliomyelitis that was controversial at the time. Her method, promoted internationally while working in Australia, Europe and the United States, differed from the conventional one of placing affected limbs in plaster casts. Instead she applied hot compresses, followed by passive movement of the areas to reduce what she called "spasm". Her principles of muscle rehabilitation became the foundation of physical therapy or physiotherapy in such cases. Her life story was told in a 1946 film, Sister Kenny, portrayed by Rosalind Russell, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.
In the history of medicine, it is not always the great scientist or the learned doctor who goes forward to discover new fields, new avenues, new ideas.
He who angers you conquers you.
I do not want medical men to discuss whether or not my work is valuable, because I know what it will do. I want them to tell me how best this new knowledge of rapidly restoring paralysed people to health and strength can be applied where it is needed.
I have a message to give to the world, and I shall not be thwarted.
The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science - that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.
It's better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.
At first, I was called a quack, a charlatan, and worse, year after year, in Australia, England and the United States, by men who simply refused to believe that a nurse from 'the bush' could devise a treatment which succeeded where they had failed.
'O sleep, O gentle sleep,' I thought gratefully, 'Nature's soft nurse!'
I came to America to teach my method - not to enter a research experiment.
I spent more time on dark ships in danger zones than any other woman in the world.
My mother used to say, 'He who angers you, conquers you!' But my mother was a saint.
As a girl my temper often got out of bounds. But one day when I became angry at a friend over some trivial matter, my mother said to me, Elizabeth, anyone who angers you conquers you.
It is easier to recount grievances and slights than it is to set down a broad redress of such grievances and slights. The reason is that one fears to be thought of as an arrant braggart.
I was wholly unprepared for the extraordinary attitude of the medical world in its readiness to condemn anything that smacked of reform or that ran contrary to approved methods of practice.
O sleep, O gentle sleep, I thought gratefully, Nature's gentle nurse.
He looked at the book, took my name, and consulted his records. Then he informed me I had been lost at sea and was dead. Under the circumstances, he could not possibly give me any money... Even the fact that he was dealing with someone who had been dead for several days failed to awaken interest in his official heart.
His response was remarkable for its irrelevance, if for nothing else.
Fortunately, perhaps, I was completely ignorant of the orthodox theory of the disease polio-myelitis.
The record of one's life must needs prove more interesting to him who writes it than to him who reads what has been written.
A measure of victory has been won, and honors have been bestowed in token thereof. But honours fade or are forgotten, and monuments crumble into dust. It is the battle itself that matters - and the battle must go on.
Memories do not always behave in an orderly way, but bloom, as it were, erratically.
If someone angers you, they control you.
I'd like to live every moment of my life, but not a moment after.
The American doctor possesses a combination of conservatism and... an eagerness to know what it is really all about, in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.