Quiz 1

World Physiotherapy Congress 2025 took place on 29-31 May 2025 in Tokyo, Japan. The United Arab Emirates hosted in 2023 and Singapore in 2015.

Physiotherapy was originally a specialisation of the nursing profession and practitioners were known as medical auxiliaries until 1957 when the Spanish government separated physiotherapy into its own unique and independent profession. However, practitioners were subsequently titled physiotherapy assistants, able to practice only under medical supervision. The Spanish Association of Physiotherapists was formed in1969 and access to the title physiotherapist occurred in 1970 when training moved to the university sector.

The Colombian Association of Physiotherapy joined the World Confederation for Physical Therapy at the 4th General Meeting in Paris in 1959.

The Pasifika Physiotherapy Association is made up of physiotherapists from the island nations of the Pacific Ocean. It is based in New Zealand.

A graduate of the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, Marguerite Sanderson, worked with orthopaedic surgeon Dr Joel Goldthwait, providing corrective exercises to his patients. When commissioned by the US Army to provide medical services, Goldthwait recommended Sanderson to train the reconstruction aides. Mary McMillan was the second recruit and Inge Lohne the third. Emma Vogel was student of McMillan and led an industrious career as a military physical therapist.

The overmedicalisation of health services in centrally planned Soviet nations lead to medical practitioners performing tasks otherwise undertaken by other staff, including physiotherapy. In Russia physiotherapy was a distinct post graduate medical specialty. It took some time for them to let go of the title.

In 1949, the film ‘Toward Independence’ won an Oscar for Documentary Short Subject at the 21st Academy Awards.

In 1831 German physician Friedrich Julius Siebenhaar was the first to use the word physiotherapy. He wrote, “…I would prefer to say, physiotherapie be used to describe the science of the relationship between the entire nature and external world to the human body” (translation from the German original). It took until 1851 for more extensive use of the word by German physician Lorenz Gleich. In 1894 Canadian physician Edward Playter erroneously claimed to be the first to coin the word, but it was just the anglicisation. In 1922 the American Physiotherapy Association was re-named, beginning the process of adoption of the word as we know it today.

The timing and location were specifically coordinated with the 2nd World Polio Congress, which was also held in Copenhagen from 3-7 September. Also a congress under the auspices of the International Council for the Care of Cripples was scheduled to take place in Stockholm from 9-15 September, making it convenient for interested participants to attend all events.

South Africa was a founding member of World Physiotherapy in 1951, and by 1991 the region still only had five members. Africa now has 27 member nations as members of World Physiotherapy, and is growing.

The world’s oldest physiotherapy association, was founded in 1889 in the Netherlands as the Society for the Practice of Healing Gymnastics and later, as a result of a merger with the masseurs, it became the Dutch Society of Healing Gymnastics and Massage. The Society responded to governmental protection of the title ‘physiotherapist’ in the Paramedical Professions Act 1965 by immediately changing its name to the Dutch Society of Physiotherapy. The title Royal was granted in 1989, as the Society celebrated its 100th anniversary.

Although books dating back to ancient Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Greek and Roman civilisations contained numerous accounts of physical therapies, De Arte Gymnastica by Mercurialis is the first book dedicated to the specific prescription of those physical therapies. Méndez’s Book of Bodily Exercise, published in 1553, predates Mercurialis but covers only the therapeutic benefits of exercise.

As a part of their name change and rebrand in 2019 World Physiotherapy updated its website and changed the Uniform Resource Locator (website address) to www.world.physio. Thereby adopting the profession’s own domain extension.

In 1894, in the United Kingdom, four nurses founded the Society of Trained Masseuses to promote and regulate massage – in response to the “Massage Scandals” that linked massage to prostitution. Membership required strict adherence to medical referrals only, specific rules of engagement and training/examination protocols that began the professionalisation of physiotherapy.

Gustav Zander created about 76 machines that replicated Ling’s exercises. His first gymnasium opening in Stockholm in 1865 and they spread across the globe, including the ill-fated ship The Titanic. Zander was even nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his contribution. Max Herz invented the variable resistance machine in 1897. Josef Pilates invented his machines in the mid twentieth century. Forrest Bird invented the Bird ventilator, the first significant alternative to the Iron Lung.