Category: Editorial
Obituary: Freddy Kaltenborn (1923-2019)
A giant has died, the likes of which we will see no more. He was the right man at the right time. Physical Therapy had not yet become a profession when in the 1950’s Freddy Kaltenborn then of Norway and later of Germany, began his interest in mastering joint manipulation. …
A Heart Stopping Game
Physios are like goal keepers and umpires: you don’t notice the good ones. A shell shocked and broken England cricket team was touring New Zealand in February 1975 for a two match test series. Having just faced the fearsome pace attack of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson in Australia and …
Office aerobics c.1917
It’s not unusual for people to think that today’s vices are worse than anything we’ve seen before in history, but this is plainly nonsense. Paleolithic cave-dwellers were just as worried about food security as we are today and Victorians worried about the accelerating pace of life as much, perhaps even …
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 …
The Primary Contact Physiotherapist
In 1976 the Australian Journal of Physiotherapy published an article by Prue Galley titled ‘Patient referral and the physiotherapist’. This article was a synthesis of the debates and arguments about whether Australian physiotherapists were ready to act as primary contact professionals. Galley asked: Have we as physiotherapists, the knowledge, the …
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 …