Physical medicine over the last 40 years

In medical rehabilitation, where we are primarily concerned with the treatment of physical disabilities of the locomotor system, physical methods of treatment play a very large part in the physical recovery of the patient. All my life I have been involved with this, and particularly with the work of physiotherapists, and it is useful to look back over the changes which have occurred in the last forty years - the main one of course has been the discarding of purely traditional methods and an attempt to use methods which have a scientific basis. But it is worth pointing out at this early stage that in doing this we can become a little pseudo-scientific, and perhaps most of all we tend to forget that no two people respond in the same manner, whether it be to physical treatment or to drugs; while we have general principles the best results are obtained only by studying each patient as an individual. Not least important is the rapport established between the patient and the therapist.