99 Fun Facts About Physical Therapy

Which ancient Greeks are often credited as the first practitioners of physical therapy?

Hippocrates and Galen both treated patients with their hands: Hippocrates wrote that a physician must be skilled in rubbing, and Galen began as physician to the gladiators of Pergamon.

In which country did Per Henrik Ling found the 1813 gymnastics institute seen as the origin of physical therapy?

Sweden. After several failed appeals to the government, Ling won its backing in 1813 for the Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics in Stockholm, which trained instructors in his system of exercise as medicine.

Per Henrik Ling, whose gymnastics gave rise to physical therapy, was hired by Lund University in 1805 to teach which sport?

Fencing. Ling took it up on his travels abroad, found that daily exercise restored his own failing health, and so began designing exercises to do the same for other people.

Which global sporting event grew from a 1948 archery contest for wheelchair-using war veterans at Stoke Mandeville Hospital?

The Paralympic Games began as rehabilitation: Dr Ludwig Guttmann made sport part of treatment at his spinal injuries unit, and timed his 16-archer contest for the very day the 1948 Olympics opened.

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy was founded in 1894 by four members of which profession?

Nurses founded it as the Society of Trained Masseuses, to protect their trade after press stories warned of massage being offered as a cover for other services; a royal charter followed in 1920.

The rotator cuff, a group of four muscles that physical therapists often rehabilitate, holds which joint together?

The shoulder. Its socket is so shallow that the four cuff muscles, not the bones, keep the ball of the upper arm in place, which is why a tear can make even combing your hair painful.

The University of Otago opened an early school of physiotherapy in 1913, in which country?

New Zealand. The Dunedin school began life inside Otago's medical school as the School of Massage, and its first students left with a university Certificate in Massage rather than a physiotherapy degree.

Which Portland, Oregon institution trained 'reconstruction aides', forerunners of physical therapists, for the US Army in 1918?

Reed College ran one of the emergency wartime courses for the Army's new reconstruction division, whose aides went on to work in military hospitals at home and overseas as civilians.

The first US school of physical therapy was established during World War I at which army medical centre?

Walter Reed, the Army hospital in Washington, D.C., needed staff trained to get wounded soldiers moving again, and from 1918 the recruits who did that work were known as 'reconstruction aides'.

Which word completed the APTA's original 1921 name, 'the American ___ Physical Therapeutic Association'?

Women's. A year later the name became the American Physiotherapy Association so that qualified men could join, and the first two were admitted in 1923.

Who was the first president of what became the American Physical Therapy Association?

Mary McMillan, an American who trained in England, came back in wartime to become the Army's head reconstruction aide in 1918, and the aides she led went on to form the association.

Which future US president bought a run-down Georgia spa in the 1920s and turned it into a hydrotherapy centre?

Franklin D. Roosevelt, diagnosed with polio in 1921, spent much of his fortune on Warm Springs after hearing what its waters could do, and the foundation he set up there led to the March of Dimes.

Sister Elizabeth Kenny, whose polio methods shaped modern physical therapy, came from which country?

Australia. Self-taught and working in rural Queensland, Kenny saw her polio methods ridiculed by doctors at home, so in 1940 she took them to the United States, where they won wide acceptance.

What did Sister Kenny apply to polio patients' limbs before moving them, defying medical consensus?

Hot compresses were meant to ease what Kenny called 'spasm'; she then worked the very limbs that doctors of the day kept still in splints, braces and plaster.

The Sister Kenny Institute, now Courage Kenny Rehabilitation, opened in 1942 in which US city?

Minneapolis gave Kenny her American start: when most doctors dismissed her ideas in 1940, doctors in the city backed her, and the institute followed two years later.

The Epley manoeuvre, a series of head movements that therapists use to treat vertigo, shifts loose crystals in which organ?

The inner ear. Tiny calcium crystals can break free and drift into its fluid-filled balance canals, sending false signals of movement, and the head positions use gravity to roll them back out.

The World Confederation for Physical Therapy, founded in 1951, has its head office in which city?

London. Britain's Chartered Society of Physiotherapy organised the confederation's first congress there in 1953, and the two bodies now share an office building in the city.

Lateral epicondylitis, an overuse injury that physical therapists often treat, is better known by which sporting nickname?

Tennis elbow. Most people who get it never pick up a racquet: painters, plumbers, cooks and butchers strain the same forearm tendons through repeated gripping and twisting.

Since 2016, US entry-level physical therapist programs have awarded what level of degree?

A doctorate, the Doctor of Physical Therapy, replaced the master's degree, which US schools no longer offer, so therapists who qualified under the old system can take a 'transitional' DPT to match newer colleagues.

Which rehab product, developed by chiropractor Kenzo Kase in the 1970s, took off after athletes wore it at the 2008 Olympics?

Kinesiology tape was donated to athletes at the Beijing Games and its popularity soared, yet reviews of the research still find the evidence that it works mixed at best.

A physiatrist, a title easily confused with physical therapist, is what kind of professional?

A medical doctor. Physiatrists specialise in physical medicine and rehabilitation and lead the rehab team, ordering tests and giving injections, while physical therapists deliver the exercise and hands-on treatment.

What is 'direct access' in physical therapy?

Seeing a PT without a physician referral was legal in some form in all 50 US states by 2025, although in a number of them rules still limit how far treatment can go before a referral arrives.

Men are most often referred for pelvic floor muscle training after surgery on which organ?

The prostate. Surgery on it can leave men leaking urine, and the remedy is the same squeeze-and-hold exercise that gynaecologist Arnold Kegel described for women in 1948.

Hippotherapy, used by some physical therapists to improve balance and posture, harnesses the movement of which animal?

A horse: the name comes from the Greek hippos. Its rhythmic, three-dimensional walk shifts the rider's body with every step, which therapists use to work on posture, balance and coordination.

What instrument does a physical therapist typically use to measure a joint's range of motion in degrees?

A goniometer, in its usual form a two-armed protractor held against the joint, gives the angle in degrees, and repeating the reading over the weeks shows whether rehabilitation is working.

In physical therapy, what is 'passive range of motion'?

Movement produced by the therapist with no patient effort is compared with what the patient manages alone: a truly stiff joint is limited both ways, even in someone else's hands.

Which phase of the walking gait cycle disappears completely once a person breaks into a run?

Double support, the moment in each step when both feet are on the ground, is what makes a walk a walk; in a run it gives way to a flight phase with neither foot down.

Which injury acronym did Dr Gabe Mirkin coin in 1978, then partly disown decades later as likely to delay healing?

RICE: rest, ice, compression, elevation. Mirkin later withdrew the advice on ice and complete rest, saying they may delay healing because inflammation is part of how tissue repairs itself.

In the updated injury protocol POLICE, what does the 'OL' stand for?

Optimal Loading took the place of 'Rest' when three sports medicine researchers proposed POLICE, arguing that carefully graded early movement speeds recovery while long rest holds it back.

What does the acronym TENS stand for in physical therapy?

Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation sends mild pulses through pads on the skin, a modern take on an old idea: the Roman physician Scribonius Largus described easing pain with a live electric fish.

TENS machines draw on which 1965 theory of pain?

Gate control theory, the work of Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall, says signals in fast touch fibres can close a 'gate' in the spinal cord on slower pain fibres, so a harmless tingling current can crowd out an ache.

In constraint-induced movement therapy, the good hand is put in a mitt to retrain an arm weakened by what?

A stroke. Survivors learn to lean on the good arm and stop trying with the weak one, a habit researcher Edward Taub called 'learned non-use', so the therapy takes the easy option away.

The Lachman test, in which the examiner pulls the shin bone forward, checks for a tear in which knee ligament?

The ACL, the anterior cruciate ligament, normally stops the shin sliding forward, so extra give with the knee slightly bent signals a tear; it is considered the most sensitive bedside test for one.

Foam rolling, a staple of many rehab and warm-up routines, is described as a method of what?

Self-myofascial release means using your own body weight on the roller to massage muscle and the fascia around it; studies find a short-lived gain in flexibility, but how fascia responds is still poorly understood.

Which family firm built a bathtub pump in the 1940s so that a child with rheumatoid arthritis could have hydrotherapy at home?

Jacuzzi. The firm made farm pumps until Candido Jacuzzi adapted one for his young son Kenneth; the tub with built-in jets, and the leisure craze, followed two decades later in 1968.

Which tendon, the largest in the body, can snap with a pop that patients often mistake for a kick from behind?

The Achilles tendon ties the calf muscles to the heel bone and usually gives way during a sudden push-off, such as breaking from a walk into a run, rather than from any blow.

LSVT BIG, a therapy programme built on exaggerated, oversized movements, was designed for people with which condition?

Parkinson's disease shrinks and slows movement, so the programme drills deliberately huge ones; it grew out of LSVT LOUD, a speech therapy that trains people with the condition to speak louder.

Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran eased amputees' phantom limb pain using a simple box fitted with which household object?

A mirror. The patient watches the reflection of the intact limb moving where the missing one should be, and the illusion lets them 'unclench' a phantom that feels stuck in a painful position.

Carpal tunnel syndrome, a common reason for hand therapy, comes from pressure on which nerve at the wrist?

The median nerve supplies feeling to the thumb, the index and middle fingers and half of the ring finger, which is why the little finger escapes the numbness and tingling.

In 2013, physiotherapists in which country won the right to prescribe medicines independently after extra training?

The United Kingdom changed its medicines law in August 2013 so that physiotherapists with extra training could prescribe without a doctor's signature, which its health minister called 'paving the way for other countries'.

Since 2020, the WCPT, the profession's global confederation, has operated under which brand name?

World Physiotherapy is only the public face: the body is still legally registered as the World Confederation for Physical Therapy, the name it kept for governance when it rebranded.

Who played Sister Kenny in the 1946 biopic, earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination?

Rosalind Russell won a Golden Globe for a flattering portrait: the script drew on Kenny's own 1943 autobiography, And They Shall Walk.

The American Physical Therapy Association is headquartered in which city?

Alexandria, Virginia sits on the Potomac, bordering Washington, D.C., which keeps the association, with its 100,000-plus members and its own political action committee, on the doorstep of Congress.

Elizabeth Kenny earned the title 'Sister' through First World War service doing what?

Nursing on troop transport ships that carried soldiers out and the wounded home won Kenny promotion to Sister in 1917: an army nursing rank, not a religious title, and one she used for the rest of her life.

Pain shooting from the lower back down the back of one leg usually means pressure on which nerve, the body's widest?

The sciatic nerve. The old remedy of bed rest is no longer recommended for sciatica: patients are told to stay active and begin back exercises early.

Which law, named for a 19th-century surgeon, says that bone remodels itself to grow stronger under load?

Wolff's law cuts both ways: bone that goes unloaded thins, which is why astronauts in orbit steadily lose mineral from their weight-bearing bones.

The APTA's founding president was interned by Japan at Santo Tomas camp in which country?

The Philippines. She was heading home from China and had reached Manila when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and inside the camp she went on treating fellow internees as a volunteer, without equipment.

Alfonso Borelli's 1680 work De Motu Animalium gave a framework for understanding what?

Human biomechanics: Borelli, often called the father of the field, followed Galileo in testing ideas against observation, and his book, printed just after his death, showed that contracting muscles are what move the body.

Which 1569 book by Italian physician Hieronymus Mercurialis set out exercise as treatment for the sick and disabled?

De Arte Gymnastica was the work of a physician steeped in Greek and Latin texts, who revived what the ancients wrote about exercise and applied it to the healthy, the elderly and the sick alike.

The 'Swiss ball' of rehab gyms was first made in 1963 by a plastics manufacturer in which country?

Italy is where Aquilino Cosani first moulded the big plastic ball. Swiss clinicians, among them a physical therapy school in Basel, were early to adopt it for treatment.

Which German trainer devised his 'Contrology' exercises while interned in Britain in World War I?

Joseph Pilates was held at Lancaster Castle and then on the Isle of Man, where he refined the mat exercises that still carry his surname.

Which US president bought Georgia's Warm Springs resort and turned it into a rehabilitation centre?

Franklin Roosevelt first visited the resort's warm springs in 1924, seeking therapy for his paralysed legs, and later died at his cottage there, the Little White House.

Muscle soreness that peaks a day or more after hard exercise was long blamed on which substance?

Lactic acid returns to normal levels within an hour of exercise, so it cannot cause pain that arrives a day later. Microscopic damage to muscle fibres is the likelier culprit.

Where is a walking cane normally held when it takes weight off a sore hip or knee?

A cane goes on the opposite side from the sore leg, because that hand naturally swings forward with it, just as the arms do in ordinary walking.

Hippotherapy, used to train a patient's balance and posture, relies on the motion of which animals?

Horses are thought to move a rider's pelvis with the same rotation and side-to-side sway as human walking, so the therapist sets the animal's pace to challenge the rider.

Lateral epicondylitis, a painful condition of the outer elbow, is commonly named after which sport?

Tennis lends the condition its everyday name, yet many of the people who develop it have never played a racquet sport.

Bumping the 'funny bone' at the elbow actually strikes which nerve, which runs to the little finger?

The ulnar nerve is the largest in the body left unprotected by muscle or bone, which is why a knock behind the elbow sends an electric jolt down the forearm.

The pop of a cracking knuckle comes from gas bubbles forming in which joint-lubricating fluid?

Synovial fluid holds dissolved nitrogen, and it takes about 20 minutes for the gas to dissolve again before the same knuckle can crack a second time.

Which pitcher gave his name to the elbow operation that surgeon Frank Jobe first performed on him?

Tommy John was given a one-in-100 chance of success by his surgeon, spent the whole 1975 season in rehabilitation and returned to pitch in 1976.

The thickest tendon in the human body, joining calf to heel, is named after which Greek hero?

Achilles, in the best-known telling, was held by the heel when his mother dipped him in the River Styx. Anatomist Philip Verheyen cited the story in 1693, in the oldest known record of the name.

Which bone, the longest in the human body, is the only one found in the thigh?

The femur makes up about a quarter of a person's height on average, and by some measures it is the body's strongest bone too.

A strain damages muscle or tendon, whereas a sprain is an injury to which kind of tissue?

A ligament is a tough, inelastic band of collagen that ties bones together at a joint, and the more severe grades of sprain tear it.

Adhesive capsulitis, which can stiffen a joint for several years, is better known by which name?

Frozen shoulder creeps on over weeks or months as the joint capsule becomes inflamed and scarred, and it is most common between the ages of 40 and 60.

Which sensation, named by American Civil War physician Silas Weir Mitchell, makes a missing arm or leg ache?

Phantom limb was Mitchell's own phrase for the ghostly presence that, he reported, nearly every man who lost a limb went on feeling.

Which three-time European Cup-winning Liverpool manager had earlier been the club's physiotherapist?

Bob Paisley taught himself the trade after retiring as a player in 1954 and was said to be able to diagnose an injury just by looking at a player.

Which doctor's games for injured veterans at Stoke Mandeville Hospital grew into the Paralympics?

Ludwig Guttmann held his first Stoke Mandeville Games on 29 July 1948, the very day the London Olympics opened.

Which Nintendo console, launched in 2006, did therapists adopt for balance and stroke rehab?

The Wii turned up in clinics as well as living rooms, and its effects have been studied most for stroke, cerebral palsy and balance training.

Which profession, often paired with physiotherapy, helps people relearn everyday tasks such as dressing and cooking?

Occupational therapy uses 'occupations' to mean every activity that fills a day, leisure and school included, and in parts of Europe it goes by the name ergotherapy.

Supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor and subscapularis are the four muscles of which group?

The rotator cuff holds the ball of the upper-arm bone in a socket so shallow that the joint has been likened to a golf ball sitting on a tee.

Which nerve, the longest and widest in the human body, runs down the back of the leg to the foot?

The sciatic nerve lends its name to sciatica, the pain that travels from the lower back down the leg.

Which muscle, the largest in the human body, straightens the trunk after bending forward?

Gluteus maximus owes its size to upright posture: it keeps the trunk erect, whereas other primates have much flatter hips and cannot stay standing.

Which bone, the largest sesamoid bone in the human body, protects the front of the knee joint?

The patella, or kneecap, is embedded in a tendon, which is what 'sesamoid' means, and it acts as a lever that boosts the pull of the thigh muscles.

Which condition, caused by pressure on the median nerve, numbs the thumb and first two fingers?

Carpal tunnel syndrome squeezes the nerve inside a narrow passage at the wrist, and its tingling is typically most troublesome at night.

Which American gynecologist's 1948 paper lent his surname to bladder-supporting muscle exercises?

Arnold Kegel got the credit, although Margaret Morris had published the same kind of exercises in 1936 and was given little recognition at the time.

The seven vertebrae of the human neck, the same number a giraffe has, form which spinal region?

The cervical region has seven vertebrae in almost every mammal, however long the neck; the only known exceptions are manatees and sloths.

The elbow and knee, which bend and straighten in a single plane, are examples of which joint type?

A hinge joint permits motion in only one plane, and the knee is the largest in the body, though it is a less typical one because it allows a slight rotation.

Rectus femoris and the three vastus muscles together make up which group that straightens the knee?

The quadriceps take their name from the Latin for four-headed, and the group is the knee's sole extensor, a fleshy mass covering the front and sides of the thigh.

Which muscle capping the upper arm is named for its likeness to a triangular Greek letter?

The deltoid echoes the capital letter delta and gives the top of the arm its rounded contour; it is the prime mover when the arm is lifted out sideways.

Which sense, described by Charles Sherrington in 1906, lets you touch your nose with eyes closed?

Proprioception is the sense of the body's own movement, force and position, and alcohol dulls it, which is why American police use the nose-touch as a sobriety check.

Pulling the toes up toward the shin, as when walking on the heels, is which ankle movement?

Dorsiflexion brings the toes closer to the shin, while its counterpart, plantar flexion, is the push used to press a car pedal or stand on tiptoe.

Which forearm rotation, sharing its root with the word for lying face up, turns the palm upward?

Supination leaves the palm facing forward in the standard anatomical position, while its counterpart, pronation, turns the palm to face backward.

Which anatomical plane, the one a biceps curl moves through, divides the body into left and right?

Sagittal comes from the Latin sagitta, meaning arrow, and the bending and straightening of limbs, flexion and extension, takes place in this plane.

Which type of muscle contraction occurs when the biceps lengthens while lowering a dumbbell?

An eccentric contraction lets a muscle act as a brake while it lengthens, and exercise-induced muscle damage is greater in this phase than when the muscle shortens.

Which term describes complete paralysis of one entire side of the body, a frequent result of stroke?

Hemiplegia is the most severe form of one-sided loss; when that half of the body is weakened but not fully paralysed, the term is hemiparesis.

The Epley manoeuvre, a set sequence of head positions, treats a common cause of which symptom?

Vertigo of the positional kind comes from calcium crystals knocked loose in the inner ear, and the manoeuvre tips the head so they settle back where they belong.

Damage to which part of the brain, the fine-tuner of movement, causes the clumsiness called ataxia?

The cerebellum does not start movements but times and refines them, which is why examiners look for trouble there with finger-pointing tests and a watch of the walk.

Trigger-point pioneer Janet Travell was the first female personal physician to which US president?

John F. Kennedy relied on her for his chronic back pain, and the rocking chair she prescribed became a familiar sight in his Oval Office.

The Cobb angle, measured on a spinal X-ray, is the standard gauge of which condition's severity?

Scoliosis is graded by the Cobb angle, named after American surgeon John Robert Cobb, and a sideways curve of under 10 degrees is not counted as the condition at all.

Which law, named for a German surgeon, holds that healthy bone adapts to the loads placed on it?

Wolff's law runs in reverse too: astronauts in orbit, whose skeletons carry little load, tend to lose bone density, while weightlifters often gain it.

The Borg scale, which runs oddly from 6 to 20, asks an exercising person to rate what?

Perceived exertion on Gunnar Borg's scale was built to shadow heart rate: multiply the rating by 10, so the starting 6 matches a resting pulse of about 60.

On the 0-to-5 scale of manual muscle testing, a grade 3 muscle can move its joint against what?

Gravity only is the bar for grade 3: the muscle can lift the arm or leg but gives way as soon as an examiner adds resistance, while grade 5 means normal strength.

In France, where the state diploma takes five years, a physiotherapist is known by which title?

Kinésithérapeute, in full masseur-kinésithérapeute, is a title regulated by France's public health code, and the profession has its own national Order.

Which 1965 theory by Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall explains why rubbing a bump eases the ache?

Gate control holds that touch signals from the rubbing shut out pain signals in the spinal cord; the idea met considerable scepticism when it was first proposed.

Which part of a spinal disc pushes out through its tough outer layer in a 'slipped disc'?

The nucleus pulposus spreads pressure in all directions when the spine is loaded. 'Slipped' is a misnomer, since discs are firmly attached and cannot slide out.

Which word describes a limp that cuts short the time spent standing on a sore leg?

An antalgic gait, its name built from the Greek for 'against pain', is a good sign that bearing weight hurts.

Which fall-risk test has a patient stand from a chair, walk three metres, turn, walk back and sit?

A Timed Up and Go time of 10 seconds or less suggests normal mobility; the slower the time, the greater the concern about falls.

Which physiotherapist's back-pain method tries to draw pain toward the spine, called centralisation?

Robin McKenzie developed his exercises in the late 1950s and in 1981 launched them as Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy, covering the spine and the limbs.

Which condition, the most common form of arthritis, comes from the breakdown of joint cartilage?

Osteoarthritis is treated first with exercise and with easing the load on the joint, for instance by using a cane, long before any thought of replacing it.

Recovery after a stroke leans on which ability of the brain to rewire its own connections?

Neuroplasticity lets healthy regions of the brain take over, at least in part, functions that a stroke has destroyed, and it carries on well into adulthood.