Tag: massage
America’s first Physical Therapist
Whilst Mary McMillan is lauded as the mother of the American Physical Therapy Association, the nation’s first ‘practitioner’ was more likely Charles Fayette Taylor, who brought the therapeutic exercises and massage of the Swedish Movement Cure to New York half a century earlier. Judge for your self by reading excerpts …
A Brief History of Physiotherapy in The Netherlands
Rise of Remedial Gymnastics and Massage in the 19th Century Physiotherapy, as it is now known, in the Netherlands has its origins in the first half of the 19th century. The forerunners were healing gymnasts and masseurs who came from Sweden and Germany. Initially separate professions with separate training, they …
Sister Kenny
On the eve of the 70th anniversary of her passing we will explore the life of this Australian ‘nurse’ whose work with polio victims opened the modern-day era of rehabilitation and physiotherapy. Whilst working in outback Queensland in 1909, Kenny found that several children suffered from a disease that she …
Were Ancient Spas Precursors for Today’s Massage and Exercise?
Balnea was the name of the ancient spas that would offer any bath and body services such as massage. This characterized both Greek and Roman spas for a long time. In the imperial times, the Roman balnea changed their name into thermae and there worked different figures such as – …
Mobilising a workforce
On Friday this week (20thNovember 2020), the physiotherapy staff in the acute London NHS Trust where I work, along with other professional groups in the organisation, received a request asking for volunteers to administer Covid-19 vaccinations to the Trust’s workforce. Physiotherapists in the UK (along with other groups of healthcare …
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 …
How an Anglo-Indian Man Made Australian Physiotherapy Great
Australia was the first country in the world to teach and examine all aspects of physiotherapy: exercise, massage and manipulation, and electrotherapy, in programmes aligned with universities. Early physiotherapists were not nurses, and men were as numerous as women. ‘Massage’ did not fairly describe the practitioners’ real knowledge and skills, …
The Development of Physiotherapy in South Africa
In 1921 a small group of masseurs in Cape Town banded together to form the Certified Masseurs Association, primarily to rehabilitate soldiers after World War I as well as the patients affected by the polio epidemic also hitting South Africa. In the same year the first pioneer group in the …
Massage and the history of physiotherapy
A few days ago, Kay Nias, Medicine Galleries Research Fellow at the Science Museum in London, gave a talk on massage and the history of physiotherapy (link). Kay was kind enough to share her slides with us and the text of her talk (see below). You can find more of …
Kay Nias
I had the great pleasure of spending an hour in conversation with Dr Kay Nias this morning. Kay is a Medicine Galleries Research Fellow at the Science Museum specializing in the history of physiotherapy, and has recently posted a beautifully illustrated and written piece on the history of the wheelchair …