Time for Change
Fifty years ago the Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) elected its first physiotherapist President. Previously the APA had always been presided over by a medical practitioner; which seemed perfectly natural when medical referrals were required for physiotherapy treatment. The 1970’s was a politically tumultuous period in Australia. After 23 years of …
Soviet Electrotherapy
Perhaps no other country in the world has been engaged in the hardware of physiotherapy as massively as the Soviet Union. Since childhood, every Soviet citizen knew about devices for the prevention of all kinds of diseases: They were not only in hospitals and sanatoriums, but also in kindergartens, schools …
Fair Competition in the Paralympics
The history of disabled people participating in sport is closely allied with modern thoughts and techniques of rehabilitation and recovery from injury. In the 1940’s one of the earliest pioneers of disabled sports, Sir Ludwig Guttmann, observed that the enjoyment and motivation of competition could drive much better levels of …
Pathway to the Modern Olympic Polyclinic
Doctors (and later nurses, physiotherapists, nutritionists, and other biomedical staff) have been present at the Olympic Games from the very beginning but the pathway to modern Olympic polyclinic can only be described as adventurous. In 1896 (Athens) the marathon and water sports got most of the medical attention because they …
De Arte Gymanstica – The Art of Exercise Prescription
Although books dating back to ancient Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Greek and Roman civilisations contained numerous accounts of physical therapies (Galen reports that Roman emperor Julius Caesar used electric fish to treat neuralgia, for instance), De Arte Gymnastica may be the first book dedicated to the specific prescription of those physical …
The Physiotherapy that Time Forgot
In 2018 I experienced “physiotherapy” from many years ago; at the Igalo Spa in Herceg Novi, Montenegro. That’s not me in the photo above, just an indication of what is to come. To give some background about the Igalo Spa I’ve taken a few excerpts from their website at www.igalospa.com: …
A history of physiotherapy at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, Australia
In 1889 lectures and exams on the subject of ‘the massage battery’ were given to trainee third year nurses, who initially carried out practical work in massage and electricity in the Royal Prince Alfred (RPA) wards and outpatients department. These practices reflected the overseas work of Swedish practitioner Per Henrik …
Mobilising a Profession: Geoffrey Maitland
…Maitland’s emphasis on very careful and comprehensive examination leading to the precise application of treatment by movement and followed in turn by the assessment of the effects of that movement on the patient, form the basis for the modern clinical approach. This is probably as close to the scientific method …
A New World of Physiotherapy
Nearly 70 years after its inauguration, the World Confederation for Physical Therapists (WCPT) transformed into World Physiotherapy on 30 June 2020 with the launch of their new website at www.world.physio. The idea of creating an international body began in 1948 when Physical Therapists from a number of countries met to discuss …
Australian Physios Preserving their Past
The following edited excerpts are from the article titled “Preserving our Past: Why physio history matters”. It was published in the Australian Physiotherapy Association’s (APA) InMotion Magazine on 3 February 2020 and describes the current status of physiotherapy history activities throughout Australia. The full article can be accessed here. Throughout …