American Physical Therapist and historian, Beth Linker’s latest book Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America has just been released. We provided a review of the book in a previous post but this time wanted to learn more about the author herself. Beth is unique in the physiotherapy community as a historian and recently made herself available for interview to explore her progression into healthcare and history.
Beth grew up in Ohio, middle America, in a small rural town. Her maternal grandmother had earnt a Registered Nurse qualification later in life and opened a nursing home in 1952. Her mother also became a Registered Nurse and took over the business with her father. So health care was always a part of Beth’s early life. Her family had a strong history of gender specific roles for women, either nurse or teacher, so Beth sought to buck that trend, at least a little, by becoming a physical therapist. This also meant leaving her home town, finding a college out of state. To gain her parents’ consent, Beth knew that the College had to have to have an early, competitive entry so that she could demonstrate its value and have an offer in place early.
Beth attended Ithaca College, New York from 1988-1992. She found the four year Bachelor course incredibly demanding and rigorous from day one. The program required that students receive no grade lower than a B-, so there was a lot of ‘weeding out’ in the first two years. In her final year, she took courses for 12-months straight.
Her first job was at a very small private practice that served severely disabled and underserved children in the New Jersey school system. Beth worked in the clinic for seven years but found the limitations of Managed Care (where insurers were dictating treatments) the cause of great frustration. She began to wonder how health care delivery got to this point and this was the trigger to start her exploring the history of US health policy and medicine. While working as an orthopaedic physical therapist at Michigan State University, she began to take courses in philosophy and history, and in 1999, she earned an MA in bioethics.
Thereafter, she decided that she wanted to devote herself full-time to the academic study of history. She gained entry into Yale University’s Department of History and the Program in the History of Science and Medicine. She completed her PhD in 2006, writing her dissertation on the historical beginnings of rehabilitation medicine during World War I, including the origins of the physical therapy profession. Shortly after earning her PhD, she secured a tenure-track job in the History and Sociology of Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania where she continues to teach courses to undergraduates and PhD students on the history of disability and medicine. Currently, she is the Samuel H Preston Endowed Term Professor in the Social Sciences and Department Chair.
As one of the few physical therapy historians, Beth is well placed to comment on the state of the profession. She believes that the lack of interest in the profession’s history is a ‘willed ignorance’. To many educators and practitioner, history seems to offer little value when competing with the glitz and glamour of the hard sciences. She recalls that as a student it was drummed into their heads the need for evidence based medicine, lest we imperil the future of the profession.
Beth notes that healthcare is highly ableist, seeking clear cut biomarkers that can be cured with a magic bullet. The system privileges acute disease models leaving those with chronic pain and disability, and their carers, marginalised.
Beth first book was titled War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (Chicago, 2011) which went on to be featured in a Ric Burns documentary titled A Debt of Honor in 2015. Currently she is exploring slow medicine and theories of back pain.
Thank you for the valuable historical knowledge about the roots of physiotherapy using the example of American ways. The related profession of physiotherapist arose from the hardship and social suffering of world wars to recognize the wisdom of the body and to act in a healing manner. It is a wealth of experience with future value!
Friendly from Saxony to Beth Linker
from B. Böttcher