Tag: disability
Agnes Wenham – Paediatric Pioneer
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Great Leaders Create More Leaders
Amongst the many organisations in the history of the world’s physiotherapy profession, none have contributed to the profession so profoundly as the United Kingdom’s Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP). Founded in 1894 as the Society …
International Man of Action
A man, wearing dark glasses, sits front and centre of the audience of the inaugural meeting of the World Confederation for Physical Therapy, held on 8th September 1951 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He sits upright, leaning …
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. …
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 …
A century of blind physiotherapists
2019 marks the centenary of the first ever physiotherapy special interest group. The Association of Blind Certified Masseurs (changed in 1953 to The Association of Blind Chartered Physiotherapists), was formed by the Chartered Society of …
Australia’s polio scourge
The recent movie Breathe, the inspirational true story of Robin Cavendish’s battle with paralytic poliomyelitis, is a reminder of a disease that is almost forgotten, except by those whose lives were and remain directly affected. …