History
Exercise
to shoulder and elbow to
increase motion following fracture and dislocation of humerus is
being given by an Army therapist to a soldier patient.
Physicians
like Hippocrates and later Galen are
believed to have been the first practitioners of physical therapy,
advocating massage, manual
therapy techniques and hydrotherapy to
treat people in 460 BC.[10] After
the development of orthopedics in the eighteenth century, machines like
the Gymnasticon were developed to treat gout and similar
diseases by systematic exercise of the joints, similar to later developments in
physical therapy.[11]
The earliest
documented origins of actual physical therapy as a professional group date back
to Per Henrik Ling, "Father of Swedish
Gymnastics," who founded the Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics (RCIG)
in 1813 for manipulation, and exercise. The
Swedish word for physical therapist is sjukgymnast =
someone involved in gymnastics for those who are ill. In 1887, PTs were given
official registration by Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare. Other
countries soon followed. In 1894, four nurses in Great Britain formed the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.[12] The
School of Physiotherapy at the University of Otago in New Zealand in 1913,[13] and
the United States' 1914 Reed
College in Portland, Oregon, which graduated "reconstruction
aides."[14] Since
the profession's inception, spinal manipulative therapy has been a component of
the physical therapist practice.[15]
Modern
physical therapy was established towards the end of the 19th century due to
events that had an effect on a global scale, which called for rapid advances in
physical therapy. Soon following American orthopedic surgeons began treating
children with disabilities and began employing women trained in physical
education, and remedial exercise. These treatments were applied and promoted
further during the Polio outbreak of 1916. During the First World War women were
recruited to work with and restore physical function to injured soldiers, and
the field of physical therapy was institutionalized. In 1918 the term
"Reconstruction Aide" was used to refer to individuals practicing
physical therapy. The first school of physical therapy was established at
Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., following the outbreak of World
War I.[16] Research
catalyzed the physical therapy movement. The first physical therapy research
was published in the United States in March 1921 in "The PT Review."
In the same year, Mary McMillan organized the American Women's Physical
Therapeutic Association (now called the American Physical Therapy Association(APTA). In 1924, the Georgia Warm Springs
Foundation promoted the field by touting physical therapy as a treatment
for polio.[17] Treatment
through the 1940s primarily consisted of exercise,
massage, and traction. Manipulative procedures to the
spine and extremity joints began to be practiced, especially in the British
Commonwealth countries, in the early 1950s.[18][19] Around
this time when polio vaccines were developed, physical
therapists have become a normal occurrence in hospitals throughout North
America and Europe.[20] In
the late 1950s, physical therapists started to move beyond hospital-based
practice to outpatient orthopedic clinics, public schools,
colleges/universities health-centres, geriatric
settings (skilled nursing facilities), rehabilitation centers and medical
centers. Specialization for physical therapy in the U.S. occurred in 1974, with
the Orthopaedic Section of the APTA being formed for
those physical therapists specializing in orthopaedics.
In the same year, the International
Federation of Orthopaedic Manipulative Physical
Therapists was formed,[21] which
has ever since played an important role in advancing manual therapy worldwide.
