Why physical medicine, physical disability and physical rehabilitation? We should abandon Cartesian dualism

Adjectives are supposed to describe the associated noun more fully or definitively, and the adjective physical is sometimes added to words such as medicine, rehabilitation and disability. What increase in description does its use allow? The adjective was probably added when rehabilitation started to develop for several reasons: it contrasted the mode of treatment with pharmacology and surgery; it contrasted the nature of the supposed aetiology with emotionally generated disorders, especially shell-shock; and it justified the presence of rehabilitation within the profession of medicine. Its continued use, however, perpetuates a Cartesian, dualist philosophy. This editorial uses the World Health Organization International Classification of Functioning (WHO ICF) model of illness to analyse its continued use, and concludes that its continued use may disadvantage both patients and the practice of rehabilitation.