Physical Therapy

Physical therapy treats injury, disability and disease through physical means, chiefly therapeutic exercise, manual manipulation and modalities such as heat and hydrotherapy. Its practices have ancient antecedents, commonly traced to Hippocrates, who is described as advocating massage and hydrotherapy, and later to Galen; therapeutic exercise and manipulation continued in various forms for centuries afterward. The modern profession dates to the First World War, when a shortage of physicians treating mass battlefield casualties led the United States Army to open the first school of physical therapy at Walter Reed Army Hospital and to train women as Reconstruction Aides, the term used for the role from 1918 onward. This atlas describes the history of the treatment and is not medical advice.