October is National Physical Therapy Month, a time to raise awareness of the benefits of physical therapy that can improve mobility, reduce pain, and enhance an individual’s overall well-being. Advanced Rehab and Sports Medicine Clinic Manager Doug Price shares some history on how modern physical therapy came to be:
“It was really during World War I, you had a lot of nurses administering medicines and doing this and that, but during that there was such a need for helping those soldiers when they need to learn how to walk. So, they kind of created this separate sect; these nurses were called Reconstruction Aides, and they were helping all these soldiers get back to battle. Also, during that time, the 1916 polio epidemic broke out. So, same kind of deal as people were left with a lot of weakness, a lot of paralysis; trying to figure out how they are going to move, how they are going to walk, how they are going to do all this stuff. So, working with the muscles and doing all of that is basically how physical therapy kind of got its’ start.”
The very first physical therapy school was created in 1918 at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
