moving stories and images
Agnes Wenham, a physiotherapist who trained in Sweden and England, was a well-known character in the profession, especially in Johannesburg, where she practised for many years. She moved to South Africa from the United Kingdom as a young woman and worked …
It is rare to find physiotherapists writing about their experiences (Nicholls, 2021), which makes Olive Millard’s (1952) autobiography Under My Thumb so important. A summary of Millard’s professional career is written by Goldstone (2024) and is further summarised here: Becoming …
Before the restoration of Ukraine’s Independence in 1991, rehabilitation occurred within the Soviet paradigm, which set itself in opposition to Western ideology – not out of rational consideration, but out of the need to be different. Some of the key …
On the 8th September 1951, delegates representing seventeen national physiotherapy associations met in Copenhagen, Denmark to establish the World Confederation for Physical Therapy (WCPT); now World Physiotherapy. Seventy-five years later it represents more than 600,000 physiotherapists through 129 member organisations, …
The following obituary of Justina Wilson was published in the British Medical Journal in 1950. Whilst incorrect in some minor areas and lacking in others, it nevertheless demonstrates her extraordinary physiotherapy and medical achievements, and …
The Swedish gymnastics of Pehr Henrik Ling consisted of four branches: military (fencing), medical (physiotherapy), pedagogical (physical education) and aesthetic (dance). For the latter two, the system emphasised floor exercises along with “Swedish bars” (attached …
The First World War is considered the turning point for the institutionalisation and expansion of the physiotherapy profession. The sheer volume of injured personnel created by the mechanisation of arms, combined with emerging government social …
My vocational training as a physiotherapist in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) offered me my first internship in 1968 at a Saxon Thermal Bath, a leading spa facility in the GDR for rheumatic diseases, specialising …
As an adjunct health service or a junior partner to medicine, massage has oft lacked respect. So much so, that even its own history has remained poorly understood. Massage needed someone to come along to …
Animal physiotherapy began with surprising enthusiasm, supported from its earliest days by none other than Lord Mountbatten (1939). It began to gain recognition and caught the attention of visionary therapists and forward-thinking institutions who believed …
The original roots of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) in the United Kingdom date back to the foundation of the Society of Trained Masseuses (STM) in 1894. In 1900, the Society was incorporated by the …
The formation of the Society of Trained Masseuses (STM) by four British nurses in 1894 is often opined as the beginning of the physiotherapy profession (Ottoson, 2015). In support, physiotherapy historian and critical thinker Dave …
The Executive Committee met on three occasions by Zoom teleconference in the first half of 2025. During this period we farewelled Ryan McGrath (Australia) and welcomed new member Ken Miller (USA). The current Executive Committee …
The commonly accepted premise of the origins of the physical therapy profession in the United States is that it began in response to the First World War (Hansson & Ottosson, 2015). This understanding has likely …
