October is National Physical Therapy Month in clinics throughout the country, and StayFIT Physical Therapy in Oahu is no exception. To honor the occasion, they’d like to talk about the origins of physical therapy and how it has changed over time.

The successful physical therapy treatments we know today have been devised over thousands of years of study, experimentation, and collaboration, with some of the earliest documented accounts beginning with Hippocrates (otherwise known as the “Father of Modern Medicine”) in 460 B.C. Below is a brief overview of how physical therapy has progressed since.

Physical Therapy Around the World

At least in writing, Hippocrates was among the first to discuss the benefits of massage therapy to relieve pain. But he was by no means the only one using such treatments: During the same era, other Greeks were practicing hydrotherapy, in addition to manual massage. People throughout Asia had their own types of massage therapy to cure various ailments, and many hailed the health benefits of mindful movement and exercise.

Europe & America

It may come as no surprise that some of the first Europeans to develop and regulate massage therapy were the Swedish in the 19th century — however, the famous “Swedish massage” technique actually originated in the Netherlands. Physical rehabilitation gained prominence in Great Britain around 1894, when four nurses formed the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. It also spread to the United States around the early 20th century and became especially important in the 1920s during a polio outbreak. Many breakthroughs were reached during this time, and one particularly notable achievement belongs to Mary McMillan, who founded the American Women’s Physical Therapeutic Association and is now known in the industry as the Mother of Physical Therapy.

Physical Therapy Today

Now, massage therapy is used to treat a wide assortment of problems, and technological advances have allowed for even more innovation in the field (e.g. electronic muscle stimulators). While pain alleviation and injury recovery are some of the most common reasons people seek massage, they aren’t the only ones — even conditions like asthma and insomnia have been lessened by massage. Whatever successes we enjoy today, we owe to the centuries of hard work performed by therapists who’ve come before.

If you’re dealing with chronic pain, work-related injuries, or otherwise need physical therapy, StayFIT Physical Therapy welcomes you to one of their two clinics in Aiea and Kapolei, HI. To schedule an appointment, give their main office a call at (808) 487-0487. More information is also available on their website.