Tag: America
Interview with a Historian
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 …
America’s Slouching Epidemic
In her recently published book “Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America” Beth Linker argues that at the onset of the twentieth century the United States became gripped by a poor-posture epidemic: a widespread social contagion of slumping that could have deleterious effects upon individual health, and the body politic. Posture …
America’s first Physical Therapist
Whilst Mary McMillan is lauded as the mother of the American Physical Therapy Association, the nation’s first ‘practitioner’ was more likely Charles Fayette Taylor, who brought the therapeutic exercises and massage of the Swedish Movement Cure to New York half a century earlier. Judge for your self by reading excerpts …
Physical Therapy’s Oscar Winning Film
On the 75th anniversary of its production we look back at the profession’s 1949 Oscar winning film. ‘Toward Independence’ is a 1948 American short documentary film about the rehabilitation of military veterans with spinal cord injuries. In 1949, it won an Oscar for Documentary Short Subject at the 21st Academy …
The Mother of #GlobalPT
The hashtag #GlobalPT emerged on the social media network Twitter at the World Confederation of Physical Therapy (now World Physiotherapy) Congress in Capetown, South Africa in 2017. It worked to connect digital commentary and build international camaraderie amongst practitioners, including those who could not be physically present. In this article, …
From Aide to Diagnostician: An American Physical Therapy Transformation
How current physical therapists became diagnosticians illuminates the trajectory of the profession and the value we offer. My recent exploration into this American story was recently published as an historical essay in Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal (PTJ). Here, I provide a brief overview of the article. Transformation didn’t occur …
Member Malaise in 1921
It is 102 years since the first editions of The P.T. Review were published. A periodical which would become the Journal of Physical Therapy, now PTJ. Taking the time to step back and immerse ourselves in the writings of those who led the formation of the professional association; that would …
Sister Kenny
On the eve of the 70th anniversary of her passing we will explore the life of this Australian ‘nurse’ whose work with polio victims opened the modern-day era of rehabilitation and physiotherapy. Whilst working in outback Queensland in 1909, Kenny found that several children suffered from a disease that she …
Marathon Man
The grandson of enslaved parents, Ted Corbitt (1919-2007) was born on a cotton farm near Dunbarton, South Carolina, USA. He recalls a childhood of running for pleasure and for the sheer necessity of getting around. Corbitt ran track events in high school and later at the University of Cincinnati. Surrounded …
PNF in Short
Initially termed ‘proprioceptive facilitation’ by Dr Herman Kabat in the early 1940’s, physical therapist Dorothy Voss added the word ‘neuromuscular’ to give us the now familiar Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF). Kabat’s conceptual framework for PNF came from his experience as a neurophysiologist and physician, and the works of Sister Elizabeth …