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 …
Fysiotherapie in perspectief, 50 jaar verleden – heden
Physiotherapy in Perspective, 50 years past – present The Stichting Gescheidenis Fysiotherapie (SGF) (History of Physiotherapy Foundation) of the Netherlands, through 2018 to 2021 published a series of short historical articles in the journal PhysioPraxis. The series was titled “Physiotherapy in Perspective, 50 years past – present”. With great thanks …
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 …
100 Objects of Physiotherapy
Physiotherapy is a profession synonymous with its hands, however there is much equipment we also use. The 100 Objects of Physiotherapy project aims to tell a story of the profession through the tools that it has used throughout its history. Some of the objects we’ve chosen are iconic, others are …
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: …