Kenny, born at Warialda in NSW in 1880, developed a revolutionary and controversial treatment for infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis) using cloth fomentation.

Her treatment helped polio patients and those with cerebral palsy by using hot baths and foments and by encouraging movement.

Before World War I she set up a cottage hospital at Clifton in Queensland. Despite some remarkable successes with her treatment, she was derided or ignored by the medical establishment.

In 1915, she became a staff nurse on ships bringing home Australian wounded from the trenches in France and she was promoted to sister — a title she jealously guarded and proudly used for the rest of her life.

Against dominant medical opinion, the state government helped her open clinics to treat polio, a tragically common disease in those days.

In 1940, a small group of sympathetic Queensland doctors urged her to go to the US where she was given almost instant celebrity status — helped undoubtedly by the fact that popular president Franklin Roosevelt had triumphed over polio. Kenny was invited to meet him at the White House in 1943.

Elizabeth Kenny demonstrates part of her treatment for a polio patient.

In retrospect, it is hard to conceive that at the height of World War II an unqualified Queensland bush nurse could have become such a popular figure in the US, but polio in those days was a deadly curse.

Initially working at the University of Minnesota's medical school where she established a training school and won early recognition, she set up the Kenny Institute to help polio victims.

Her Kenny Foundation attracted millions of dollars in donations with the support of stars such as Bing Crosby. A movie starring Rosalind Russell was made of her life.

Sister Kenny proved to be a skilful and charismatic media personality, giving many interviews, with articles such as "Healer From The Outback" appearing in popular magazines such as Reader's Digest and The Saturday Evening Post.

Her 1943 autobiography And They Shall Walk was a best-seller. She was frequently in newsreels and on radio.

In a 1945 Gallup Poll, 52 percent of Americans recognised Kenny and the "Kenny Method". In a similar poll two years later she was one of only two women (the other was Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of the president) ranked among "the most admired living people in the world".

Sister Kenny managed to alienate many in the medical establishment, not simply because of her theories but because of her arrogant confidence and abrasive clinical teaching style.

In 1943 in America she bluntly said her lectures and demonstrations would be a "waste of time" if doctors did not accept her basic beliefs.

Asked about the huge weight of negative medical opinion from specialists, she firmly dismissed them as the views of "ignorant old men".

Sister Kenny remained at heart a Queenslander and returned to retire to Toowoomba in 1951 where she died the following year.