When we think about the history of physiotherapy, the story we usually tell is largely an English-speaking one: the development of massage, exercise and physical rehabilitation in Britain, Scandinavia, Australia and North America, followed by the emergence of physiotherapy as a recognised profession. The French story is rather different.
Jacques Monet’s (2023) article on the history of French physiotherapy traces the development of physical and manual therapies in France from the late nineteenth century through to the First World War. It shows a profession emerging from a complex mixture of medical practice, gymnastics, massage, hygiene, neurology and rehabilitation, with one particularly important feature: the word “kinesitherapy” was initially far more prominent in France than “physiotherapy”.
The word “kinesitherapy’ had appeared in 1847 but passed unnoticed in the medical world. It was introduced by the Swedish gymnast August Georgii, deputy director of the Royal Central Gymnastics Institute in Stockholm, a pupil of Pehr Henrik Ling – founder of Swedish gymnastics.
From gymnastics to therapy
In the nineteenth century, therapeutic movement was becoming increasingly fashionable in France. Gymnastics was no longer regarded simply as physical recreation. Physicians and others began to see movement as something that could be prescribed for health and disease.
Massage followed a similar path. Techniques of manipulation had long existed, but during the nineteenth century massage became increasingly incorporated into medical thinking. It was used for a wide variety of conditions and became associated with emerging medical specialties, particularly neurology.
At the same time, European medicine was developing a growing interest in physical agents. Hydrotherapy, electricity, heat, light, massage and exercise were increasingly being brought into therapeutic practice.
This created an interesting problem: who should control these new forms of treatment?
Medicine, massage and the struggle for professional territory
The French medical profession was already well established, while massage and gymnastics were attracting practitioners from outside medicine. The boundaries between medical treatment, hygiene, physical education and manual therapy were therefore far from clear.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Société de Kinésithérapie attempted to establish kinesitherapy as a coherent field. Its members sought to bring together massage, movement and related physical treatments and to give them a stronger scientific and professional identity. But there was considerable resistance.
Massage in particular became the subject of a prolonged debate. Who should be permitted to practise it? Should it be regarded as a medical act? Could non-medical practitioners perform it under medical supervision? And where did massage end and medical treatment begin? These were not simply arguments about terminology. They were arguments about professional jurisdiction, education and status.
The rise—and fall—of kinesitherapy
One of the most intriguing aspects of the French story is that kinesitherapy appeared to offer the possibility of becoming a distinct medical specialisation, but ultimately failed to establish itself in that form.
The Paris Faculty of Medicine became involved in questions concerning the use of physical agents, while competing interests continued to shape the development of the field. Kinesitherapy struggled to define a sufficiently independent territory within medicine. Meanwhile, the broader concept of physiotherapy was gaining ground internationally.
The terminology is important. Kinesitherapy emphasised treatment through movement. Physiotherapy provided a much broader umbrella for the therapeutic use of physical agents—including movement and massage, but also hydrotherapy, electricity, heat and other modalities.
The Great War
The First World War transformed the situation. The enormous number of wounded soldiers created an urgent need for massage, exercise, rehabilitation and functional restoration. What had previously been scattered practices acquired a new and compelling purpose: helping injured people regain movement and independence.
The war also created a shortage of medical and nursing manpower. This encouraged the development and greater visibility of workers specifically trained in rehabilitation and physical treatment. In this environment, the practical importance of physiotherapy became much harder to ignore.
The French story therefore takes us from nineteenth-century gymnastics and massage, through debates over professional ownership and the attempted establishment of kinesitherapy, to the emergence of a broader concept of physiotherapy shaped by international developments and the enormous rehabilitation demands of war.
A different route to the same profession
For English-speaking physiotherapists, perhaps the most interesting lesson is that there was no single, universal pathway by which physiotherapy became a profession.
In France, the journey involved physicians, neurologists, gymnasts, massage practitioners, hygienists and rehabilitation workers. It involved arguments over who could practise, what constituted a medical act, and whether movement therapy could become a specialty in its own right.
Most importantly, the French experience reminds us that the words we use are not merely labels. Kinesitherapy and physiotherapy emerged from particular professional, medical and cultural circumstances. Understanding this history adds another piece to the international story of our profession—and shows just how much of physiotherapy’s history remains largely unknown in the English-speaking world.
NB: The original article by Monet (2023) was translated from French to English by ChatGPT, and this summary article was written by ChatGPT.
References
Monet J. (2023). De la Kinésithérapie à la Physiothérapie, à la fin du XIXe et au début du XXe siècle [From Kinesitherapy to Physiotherapy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries]. Histoire des Sciences Médicales, 5, 203-224.
