What Is The History Of Physiotherapy?

There are kinds of illnesses and conditions that you cannot treat with medications and surgeries. At the onset, they can be mitigated by pain relievers and even corrective surgeries. But after you are subjected to the core treatments, you still need to undergo a longer healing process that is rehabilitation. This is mostly true with physical injuries in which you have stretched a muscle too far or have broken a bone. You would have to go through a rigorous rehabilitation treatment because even after the medications and surgeries, your muscles and bones still need more time to heal. One of the most popular rehabilitation treatment courses is physical therapy or physiotherapy.

Even as the practice of physical therapy seems to have started only a few years back, experts on the field have studies to believe that it actually has been present since 460 BC. This was during the time of Hippocrates and Hector. The practice in this time involved the use of massages and hydrotherapy (the use of water as a therapeutic treatment). However, the earliest documentation that you can find on the subject dates back only to 1813 when Per Henrik Ling, dubbed as Sweden's Father of Swedish Gymnastics started the Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics that centered on massages and exercises.

Per Henrik Ling's initiative was soon followed in other countries like England, in which the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy was founded in 1894. New Zealand had also started in 1913 its own School of Physiotherapy at its prestigious University of Otago. This was followed in 1914 by the Reed College in Oregon in the United States. The college had graduates then that it named as reconstruction aides.

The field of physiotherapy boomed especially during World War I, when soldiers had so much grave injuries that they needed to undergo rehabilitation, which was then facilitated mostly by women. But researches gave way to more developments in the field of physiotherapy. This was pioneered by The PT Review that came out in the United States in March of 1921.

Several other organizations were formed afterward with each group developing the most advance techniques in physiotherapy that they could find. At present, schools and universities were also offering specializations on physiotherapy that showcase recent developments in the field. The practice of physiotherapy and its many principles are also utilized as extensions and complements to other alternative practices like in osteopathy.