Whilst Mary McMillan is lauded as the mother of the American Physical Therapy Association, the nation’s first ‘practitioner’ was more likely Charles Fayette Taylor, who brought the therapeutic exercises and massage of the Swedish Movement Cure to New York half a century earlier. Judge for your self by reading excerpts from his own writings, as provided by his son Henry Ling Taylor. And if that name sounds familiar read on to discover the remarkable connection:
“So far as I know and believe I was the first person who practiced kinesipathy, or the movement cure, in this country. Just as I got through with my course of lectures at the medical department of the University of Vermont, in Burlington, early in June, 1856, I received a letter from my brother in New York, who said there was stopping with him an old fellow by the name of Donovan (I think) who talked a great deal about curative exercise, but he kept his method a profound secret. I heard in some way, about the same time, of the Swedish system of [Pehr Henrik] Ling, and became very much impressed with the idea, so much so that I determined to go abroad for the purpose of seeing what I could find on the subject, and I started at once for New York. I took the last money I had and started at once for London as a second-class passenger, where I arrived safely.”
“There were three persons practicing the movement cure in London; a Swede educated at the Royal Gymnasium in Stockholm by the name of Georgii, M. Roth, and an Englishman whose name I have forgotten. I first applied to Georgii, but he would not be troubled with learners. I then went to Dr. Roth, who accepted me at a guinea an hour, and I paid him for 60 hours in advance. His instruction was not what it ought to have been, but I picked up a good lot which laid the foundation for all that followed on those lines. My book entitled ‘Theory and Practice’ of the Movement Cure,” published in 1860 or 1861, was an effort to express some of the ideas absorbed from Dr. Roth at that time. But I soon got over that infliction and afterwards very soon began to think my own thoughts.”
“In 1858 my brother George went to Sweden; but he did not enter the Royal Gymnastic Institution, but secured an entrance to the Dr. Satherberg Institution. Ling had been some time dead and Branting was the leader of the Royal Institution in Ling’s place. You know the Royal Institution consists of several departments: the curative, the pedagogic and the military, each with a system of exercise adapted to the special needs of the class for which it was intended. I suppose that the schools of Stockholm are the best arranged of any in the world, and exercise for scholars is planned with great skill and judgment, and finely adapted to the needs of young persons; at least, that is the way I was impressed when I visited them in 1881.”
“Immediately after returning from England in December, 1856, I set up apparatus corresponding to that which was used in giving the movements which I had learned, only to discover that it was not possible for me to administer the treatment as I had been taught to do it. …I could comprehend that slow muscular actions might produce different effects from rapid ones; and that a local muscular action and local movements might produce general or local effects or both combined, so I had to originate both the theory and practice of therapeutic exercise.”
One of the first things that I recognized was the necessity of controlling the circulation in a peripheric sense. Instead of putting the feet into warm water to relieve the head and warm the feet, I set the muscles of the feet and leg into such regulated action as I thought would be most likely to call blood and retain it in the extremities. First I used the hand alone in resistance to the patient’s muscular action in flexion and extension. That did well enough when I could do it myself and could control both patient and operator, but when I was obliged to have assistant operators I found the effects produced to be very different. I resorted to mechanical means to take the place of a living operator. I took two pieces of board, shaped them to the bottom of the shoe and securely fastened them there by means of straps; they projected about a foot beyond the toe, and at the end cords were attached which passed through pulleys over the patient’s head and were properly weighted at the end. The patient sat in an ordinary cane bottom extension chair such as are carried on shipboard, and the pulleys were carried by two pieces of wood screwed upon the back of the chair extending above the head. The weight having a long leverage flexed the ankle and excited resistance, so that it was easy for the patient to keep up a gentle motion for considerable time without fatigue. The appliance was as effective as it was simple.
The next apparatus for bodily movements… …was my first attempt to give form and direction on a large scale to bodily movements, and may be considered the actual point of departure from unassisted or assisted movements to mechanically regulated movements. I saw how futile it was to attempt to hold the body by means of the insufficient and variable strength, and deficient skill of assistants, with their unharmonizing mental conditions, more especially as brought out in cases of lateral curvature.
Kneading the abdomen had been extensively practiced, particularly in Water Cure Establishments for indigestion and constipation and, it must be admitted, with good, often with surprisingly good, results. My personal use of the same practice had satisfied me that the method was useful, but as done by an assistant not reliable in effect. As a means of stimulating the abdominal action, No. 12 [machine] was certainly much more effective than the best results obtainable by manipulations. Admitting all this, I still regard it as not quite natural, with possible chances of afflicting internal injuries, and so the reclining position was altered to the prone position in order that the abdomen might fall forward upon the vibrating pads, which would thus he further away and less likely to injure the kidneys, liver and spleen.
I was still under the influence of the ordinary professional sentiment which found expression in the term “spinal irritation,” and had not yet clearly apprehended that the cures or ameliorations of people under treatment for cases of backache…. …depended more upon the tonic effects of motion through the loins upon the digestion, secretive, and assimulative apparatus, in increasing the general tone to health and correspondingly diminishing the hyperaesthesia, than on any special effects upon the spinal muscles producing the motion.
I have often been told that the first year’s success was something phenomenal. One day forty-three patients visited my office, a larger number than I have ever had since in one day; twenty-five or thirty patients were not at all infrequent. They were mostly for movements; the larger portion were women, though I had quite a number of gentlemen from time to time.
Prices were low: $1.00 a visit, much less by the month, and a very small charge hy the year for certain cases of lateral curvature. But notwithstanding the low charges, at the end of the first year I had taken in more than five thousand dollars, had seven hundred dollars in the bank, and several hundred dollars in bills receivable. Orthopedic cases scarcely paid expenses; but they appealed to me very strongly and my interest in them constantly deepened without diminishing the other cases.
References
Taylor, HL. (1899). The Work of Charles Fayette Taylor, M.D., in the field of therapeutic exercises. American Physical Education Review, 4(3), 281–292.
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