Category: Editorial
Physiotherapy history at WCPT: Pictures and Stories
The International Physiotherapy History Association has been running for more than a year now, and we have had an executive committee in place since October, so we are nearly a year old as a formal organisation. We have a wonderful new website (now available in more than 20 languages) which …
Remembering Brian Davey
We heard last week of the recent death of Brian Davey. I had the good fortune to interview Brian as part of the centenary celebrations for New Zealand physiotherapists in 2013, and it was only here that I got to understand the full breadth of his work and his service …
A brief history of Brazil’s Federal Council of Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy (English & Portuguese)
The aspiration in forming the Council was to create a federal entity that would act as ethical and social regulator of the profession, whose advent resulted from the work of the Brazilian Association of Physical Therapists together with local associations and state leaderships. Initially linked to the Ministry of Labor …
Work
Physiotherapy is inextricably linked to work; to returning people back to productive labour or meaningful activities. As an important cog in the health services of many countries around the world, physical therapies have proven a powerful and effective way to rehabilitate people who have been ill and injured and maintain their …
Australia’s polio scourge
The recent movie Breathe, the inspirational true story of Robin Cavendish’s battle with paralytic poliomyelitis, is a reminder of a disease that is almost forgotten, except by those whose lives were and remain directly affected. In recent years adults who suffered minor illnesses or had mild muscle weakness during the …
Physiotherapy history as a tool to identify the ‘soul’ of the profession
“Critique needs friction or a kind of dialogue. Existing reality must be confronted with strangeness and the historically different can assume the function of this counterpart, meaning present and past must continuously be set in relation to each other”. This quote comes from a recent paper by Thomas Foth, Jette Lange and …
How a yachtswoman revolutionised physiotherapy
Many of the earliest casualties from the First World War were large guardsmen with grievous wounds. For the short of stature like Mrs F Guthrie Smith – the masseuse in charge of a temporary command depot hospital on the British Downs – exercising these men was both a problem and …