Tag: WWII
The Fall of Singapore
Following the First World War, Australia concluded that Japan’s expansionist ambitions in the Pacific posed the greatest threat to its national security. Britain was equally determined to protect its Asian territories — India, Burma, Malaya and Hong Kong — from Japanese encroachment. The Singapore Strategy In 1919 Singapore, strategically positioned …
How US Army Physical Therapy Pioneered Direct Access
The untold story of how war, necessity, and innovation transformed physiotherapy forever. When today’s US physical therapists evaluate a patient without a referral, few realise that the roots of this autonomy stretch back to the battlefields of the 20th century. Long before “direct access” became a catchphrase for professional independence, …
Bombed
Over 40,000 Londoners died in the bombing ‘blitz’ of World War II. Australian physiotherapist Barbara Thomas, aged 32, was amongst the first and her tragic death prematurely curtailed a remarkable career. Barbara Mortimer Thomas was the daughter of Nehemiah James Thomas and Jane Emily Nora Clapcott. She was born in …
A Distinctive Style
In September 1940, in the dark days of the Second World War, Denmark was occupied by Germany and Rudie Agersnap was elected chairman of the Danish Massage Association. Restrictions and rationing brought challenges for the profession, with a lack of necessary goods for the masseuses to carry out their work. …
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 …
Lina Haag (1907-2012): A Moral Voice in Nazi Germany
In 2012 Lina Haag died near Munich at the advanced age of 105 years. She was born in 1907 in the German southwest as the daughter of a maid and a worker and became involved in the German Communist Party in the 1920s. After the Nazis seized power, her husband …