Dubious Electrotherapy
The word physiotherapy was used by many different practitioners in the first part of the twentieth century; including French physicians, American electrotherapeutists and later British radiologists as medical radiation was first grouped with electrotherapy. The word physiotherapy was also also used by ‘cultists’ like chiropractors and osteopaths, and untrained laypersons …
On the Origins of Netball
The international game of netball can trace its popularity and codification to a unique college of Swedish gymnastics in the United Kingdom at the turn of the nineteenth century. The all-female college was also at the heart of the development of both the physical education and physiotherapy professions. Women’s Basketball …
Dr Bum’s Famous Institute of Mechanotherapy
The term ‘mechanotherapy’ was introduced by Swedish physician Gustav Zander to define a method of treating certain illnesses through massage and exercise, particularly using mechanical equipment. The exercises were drawn from the work of countryman Pehr Henrik Ling, but the equipment was Zanders, and in 1865 he opened the world …
The Bloodless Surgeon of Vienna
Adolf Lorenz was born in rural Austrian Silesia in 1854. His father was a harness maker and innkeeper. A smart boy, Lorenz was able to attend high school through the financial support of his uncle, a monk, and later self funded through his own tutoring. He graduated from the medical …
My European Study Tour
In 1903 Australian proto-physiotherapist Josephine McCormick visited the principal physical culture institutes of Europe, in London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin. She also undertook courses of study with orthopaedists Professor Adolf Lorenz of Vienna, and Dr Bernard Roth of London. Professor Lorenz was a founder of the German society of Orthopaedic …
Australia’s First Physiotherapist
Physiotherapy emerged from nursing and hospitals in the United Kingdom, and later physical education and the military in the United States. In contrast, physiotherapy began in Australia in private practice. Migrants, predominantly British, brought their skills and knowledge in the fields of massage, therapeutic exercise and/or electrotherapy to their new …
Angel of Summerdown: Physiotherapy’s Forgotten Benefactor
This story begins with the unusually named Almeric Paget Massage Corps. Located in the United Kingdom, the Corps was formed to serve in the First World War. It was the forerunner of physiotherapy services for wounded servicemen; and its’ success significantly boosted the profession by raising practitioner numbers, and their …
Are We Keeping Physical Therapy White?
Medicine has often been framed as the “ideal” profession, leading other health fields to emulate it when pursuing their own professionalisation. American medicine’s current education system came about during the early-twentieth century, as part of a multi-decade campaign to enhance the profession’s status by restricting education to an elite few, …
The Birth of Women’s Health
In 1912, Dr John Shields Fairbairn, a leading consultant obstetrician at St Thomas Maternity Hospital, London, commenced a program to revolutionise the medical approach to child delivery. He aimed to replace the 19th century medical practice of heavily medicating women during labor and the common use of force to deliver. …
100 Years of Enraf-Nonius
Enraf-Nonius is a Dutch medical equipment manufacturer celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. For many physiotherapists Enraf-Nonius have provided the equipment used across entire careers, and so they have grown in parallel with the profession. Founded in 1925 by Mr AG Hoekstra, the First Dutch X-ray Machine Factory [Eerste Nederlandse Röntgenapparaten …