Elizabeth Kenny was a self-trained nurse who started her career on the Darling Downs in Queensland before serving as a staff nurse in the Australian Army Nursing Service in 1915. She was promoted to Sister in 1917 and continued to use this title after her she left the army. She became well-known for her controversial clinical management of poliomyelitis and cerebal palsy in children that she cared for in her clinic in Townsville from 1932. Although strongly opposed by many in the medical profession, her treatments became popular as the results proved more positive than traditional methods of immobilization. She became a cult figure around the world, particularly in North America where she started many clinics during the poliomyelitis epidemics of the 1940s. She died in Toowoomba in 1952. A film about her life, Sister Kenny premiered in 1946.