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Physical Therapist

Decent Essays

Lina Acheampong
Professor Thompson
December 10, 2015
Physical Therapist A physical therapist is a professional who helps injured or sick people improve their movement and manage their pain. According to author Olga Dreeben from the University of North Texas “The creation of physical therapist is centered on two major events in U.S history: The Poliomyelitis epidemics and the negative effects of World War 1 and World War 2”.
-The profession can be compared with a living entity, changing from an undeveloped, young occupation in its formative years (1914-1920) to a firm, growing establishment in its developing years (1920 to 1940). As a mature profession, during its fundamental accomplishment years (1940 to 970), physical therapy was able to …show more content…

Sanderson was a physiotherapist who graduated from the Boston Normal School of gymnastics and used to work with Dr. Joel Goldthwait and orthopedic surgeon who later became the chairman of the war reconstruction committee of the American Orthopedic Association. Because of her prior physiotherapy experience, in 1917, Dr. Goldthwait appointed Sanderson as the first Supervisor of reconstruction aides. Her role was to recruit and arrange for training of reconstruction aides and also send them to Europe to help wounded soldiers. In 1922, Sanderson married and withdraw from active participation in the school. The training program for the reconstruction aides took place at Walter Reed General Hospital. The program at Walter Reed was assigned to a reconstruction aid named Mary Livingston McMillan. Mary McMillan was a mature, educated woman who was born in the United States from Scottish ancestry, when she was 5 years old, her mother and sister died of consumption (tuberculosis). Mary was sent to live with relatives in Liverpool, England. Although acquiring a higher education was unusual at that time for a young woman, as an avid and eager learner Mary received a college degree in Physical education and a postgraduate degree in her chosen career, the science of physical therapy. Mary McMillan’s physical therapy degree …show more content…

Because of her education and experience, she was hired immediately at the children’s Hospital in Portland, Maine, where for 2 years she was director of massage and medical gymnastic, treating children with scoliosis, congenital hip dislocations, and other childhood orthopedic bone and joint abnormalities. In 1918, at the recommendation of Sir Robert Jones, Elliot Bracket, a Boston orthopedist and one of the organizers of the army’s reconstruction program, asked McMillan to consider service with the U.S Army Medical Corps. As a reconstruction aid she was assigned to Walter Reed General Hospital in Tacoma Park. Maryland, shortly after, in June 1918, due to her experience and education in England, McMillan was asked to go to Reed College in Portland, Oregon, to train reconstruction aid applicants in the practical, hands-on segment of the War Emergency Training Program. With her contribution, Reed College’s physical therapy curriculum became the standard by which other emergency war training programs were measured. In January 1919, Mary McMillan was awarded the position of Chief Reconstruction Aid in the department of physiotherapy at Walter Reed General Hospital. Between 1919 and 1920, the number of physical therapy reconstruction aides was reduced primarily because of a major postwar decrease in military hospitals (at home and overseas). The number of hospitals shrank from 748 to 49. Despite the cutback, the army’s

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