Tag: C20th
The Mexican Rehabilitation Institute, 1960 – 1983
The Mexican Rehabilitation Institute was founded in 1960 in Mexico City; responding to the social need for comprehensive rehabilitation for people with motor disabilities. The Institute was established as a civil society, receiving contributions from the Mexican government, private companies, and the Mary Street Jenkins Foundation. It became one of …
Angel of Summerdown: Physiotherapy’s Forgotten Benefactor
This story begins with the unusually named Almeric Paget Massage Corps. Located in the United Kingdom, the Corps was formed to serve in the First World War. It was the forerunner of physiotherapy services for wounded servicemen; and its’ success significantly boosted the profession by raising practitioner numbers, and their …
Fees and Remuneration in South Africa in the 1920’s
The South African Society of Massage and Medical Gymnastics (now known as the South African Society of Physiotherapy) was formed on 11 December 1924. It had four branches, aligned with the country’s provinces at the time: the Cape Province, Transvaal, Natal and Orange Free State. Early considerations of the Central Governing …
Are We Keeping Physical Therapy White?
Medicine has often been framed as the “ideal” profession, leading other health fields to emulate it when pursuing their own professionalisation. American medicine’s current education system came about during the early-twentieth century, as part of a multi-decade campaign to enhance the profession’s status by restricting education to an elite few, …
100 Years of Enraf-Nonius
Enraf-Nonius is a Dutch medical equipment manufacturer celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. For many physiotherapists Enraf-Nonius have provided the equipment used across entire careers, and so they have grown in parallel with the profession. Founded in 1925 by Mr AG Hoekstra, the First Dutch X-ray Machine Factory [Eerste Nederlandse Röntgenapparaten …
Careers for Girls
In 1927 ‘The News’ newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia ran a weekly series of articles on their Woman’s page exploring suitable careers for girls; “a problem which at times confronts the parents of daughters”. The newspaper obtained the information for the article from an un-named “authority in the occupation”. The …
The Value of Physical Treatment
The following Letter to the Editor, published in The Lancet in 1918 provides an extraordinary review of the growth of physiotherapy from the First World War. SIR,—The Prime Minister in his speech on Nov. 16th, in placing the case for the Coalition at the Central Hall, Westminster, said: ” The …
Paralympic History
On the eve of the Paralympics Games Paris 2024 where more than 4,000 athletes, representing 169 nations, will compete over twelve days for 549 medals across 22 events it is instructing to consider its humble beginnings. At a hospital for war veterans in Stoke Mandeville, located 60 kilometres north of …
A Personal History of Dry Needling
In 1992 when I was studying a post-graduate manual therapy course at Curtin University, Perth, the educational emphasis was primarily on joints and neural tissue, with an early smattering of pain science. Whilst assessing a patient during one clinical session, no tests related to any of the education provided were …
A Short History of Physiotherapy in Ireland
Miss Amelia Hogg set up the first Irish School of Massage at 86 Lower Lesson Street, Dublin in 1905. Nine years later the school moved to 12 Hume Street and remained there for 50 years. Miss Hogg had trained as a nurse, and the 1911 census recorded that she was …