Tag: disability

Physical Therapy’s Oscar Winning Film

On the 75th anniversary of its production we look back at the profession’s 1949 Oscar winning film. ‘Toward Independence’ is a 1948 American short documentary film about the rehabilitation of military veterans with spinal cord injuries. In 1949, it won an Oscar for Documentary Short Subject at the 21st Academy

Chartered Society of Physiotherapy Council 1997-1999

Great Leaders Create More Leaders

Amongst the many organisations in the history of the world’s physiotherapy profession, none have contributed to the profession so profoundly as the United Kingdom’s Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP).  Founded in 1894 as the Society of Trained Masseuses, the CSP was repeatedly challenged by scandal, patriarchy, war, epidemics and economics

International Man of Action

A man, wearing dark glasses, sits front and centre of the audience of the inaugural meeting of the World Confederation for Physical Therapy, held on 8th September 1951 in Copenhagen, Denmark.  He sits upright, leaning forward slightly, his arms resting lightly on his knees with his hands loosely curled, portraying

Marathon Man

The grandson of enslaved parents, Ted Corbitt (1919-2007) was born on a cotton farm near Dunbarton, South Carolina, USA.  He recalls a childhood of running for pleasure and for the sheer necessity of getting around.  Corbitt ran track events in high school and later at the University of Cincinnati. Surrounded

Maggie Knott and students learning PNF techniques

PNF in Short

Initially termed ‘proprioceptive facilitation’ by Dr Herman Kabat in the early 1940’s, physical therapist Dorothy Voss added the word ‘neuromuscular’ to give us the now familiar Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF). Kabat’s conceptual framework for PNF came from his experience as a neurophysiologist and physician, and the works of Sister Elizabeth

A century of blind physiotherapists

2019 marks the centenary of the first ever physiotherapy special interest group. The Association of Blind Certified Masseurs (changed in 1953 to The Association of Blind Chartered Physiotherapists), was formed by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, then the Incorporated Society of Trained Masseuses (ISTM), in 1919 in response to three

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

New book: The Oxford Handbook of Disability History

The Oxford Handbook of Disability History (link) Michael Rembis, Catherine J. Kudlick, and Kim Nielsen, eds. Table of contents Part I. CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS 1. The Perils and Promises of Disability Biography – Kim E. Nielsen 2. Disability History and Greco-Roman Antiquity – C.F. Goodey and M. Lynn Rose 3. Intellectual Disability

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