This is a collection of our latest and greatest content from our talented writers.
Tag: Featured
Manipulation – “Setting” the record “Straight”
Understanding the complex history of the manipulation in the physiotherapy profession requires a recognition of the role of traditional lay healers such as bonesetters have played. Here is a sampling which to some may be quite interesting: During the 18-19thcentury there was a considerable growth in the middle-class as industrialization …
An emerging history of Physiotherapy in the United Arab Emirates
Very much in the centre of our familiar flat world map is a small country with a coastline at the north east of the Arabian Peninsula on what we call the Arabian Sea and other may know as the Persian Gulf. In fact, this area has been long fought over, …
The therapeutic use of hot and humid grottoes
A town on the south-western coast of Sicily, Sciacca, has developed a peculiar history in the use of thermo-mineral waters and vapour grottoes since high antiquity. Today, its geo-thermal area is still marked by two streams, the Carabollace on the eastern side and Carrozza on the western, which receive their …
Brasil: Os Primeiros Anos da Profissão: Parte 2 – O Caso de Pernambuco
Meio-termo no sentido aristotélico¹, não se aplica quando situamos o Estado de Pernambuco como Celeiro de Fisioterapeutas para o país; preferimos o excesso. E assim estamos em boa companhia, quando o Prof. Miguel Doherty no prefácio do livro O Trabalho Médico Científico², de Ruy Neves Baptista (Recife: Bagaço, 2003) referindo-se …
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 …
‘No sale of drugs’ – the problem of quack medicine
When the Society of Trained Masseuses (now the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy) was formed in the UK in 1894, its founders set out a number of rules for professional practice1. Although the massage scandals in the summer of 18942 had highlighted the need for a professional masseuse, the founders of the …
Lina Haag (1907-2012): A Moral Voice in Nazi Germany
In 2012 Lina Haag died near Munich at the advanced age of 105 years. She was born in 1907 in the German southwest as the daughter of a maid and a worker and became involved in the German Communist Party in the 1920s. After the Nazis seized power, her husband …
History of Physiotherapy Education in South Africa – the SMU & UKZN story
Physiotherapy Department at Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU) (Information provided by the current HOD, Prof Douglas Maleka, class of 1976 and all MEDUNSA/UL/SMU graduates, associates and friends, especially Mrs Melody Nguna (nee Mji) and Ms Shoeshoe Zulu (nee Mopeli)) Physiotherapy was one of the professions reserved exclusively for the …