...and that is true now and apparently true 100 years ago when the box was much smaller.
The film opens with Elizabeth Kenny (Rosalind Russell) graduating from nursing school in Australia and returning home to the bush to celebrate with her parents along with her mentor, Dr. McDonnell (Alexander Knox). She there informs them she intends to be a rural nurse, basically a circuit rider nurse, who goes among the sparsely distributed rural population where she is needed. Like most women of the early 20th century, she intends her career to end when she marries her beau, Kevin (Dean Jagger).
Then one day Kenny is called to a house where the little girl is ill with horribly debilitating muscular spasms. She has no idea what is wrong, so she telegraphs Dr. McDonnell who says it is infantile paralysis (polio) and to treat the symptoms because nothing else can be done. So using her knowledge of biology and knowing nothing of the disease, she does just that. When the crisis passes and the girl cannot move her legs, Kenny studies the situation a bit and figures that the girl needs to relearn how to walk. The girl does walk normally again. She has five more cases that she treats the same way and all fully recover.
Kenny is angry that the doctors stodgily hold to the traditional treatment and refuse to give her treatment a second thought. They also forbid her to treat any more acute cases in this way. So she takes the crippled children the doctors have given up on and has marvelous success.
Needless to say this delays her marriage to Kevin to the point where she finally breaks it off with him for his sake. The years turn to decades, she eventually comes to America, and although the medical establishment never gives her treatments any credence, the young up and coming doctors are anxious to learn about her method because she is getting results.
All through the film much is said about how she always wanted ten children, but figured she would always hear the suffering of polio stricken children every time hers laughed, and resigned herself to being unmarried and childless. The final scene insinuates that she might not be so childless as she thinks.
The movie was a passion project for Russell, who worked with the Sister Kenny Foundation, and it shows through in the authenticity of her portrayal. Russell was well aware that biopics about cause crusaders were usually not cash cows, but she felt it was a film she really needed to do, although none of the studios initially showed any interest. She finally agreed to a three-picture deal with RKO if one of those pictures could be Sister Kenny.
