Suspension Therapy in Rehabilitation

1958

Private Collection

London: Ballière, Tindall and Cox

Advocated by Roman medical scholar Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BC – 50 AD), in his work De Medicina, suspension therapy as a rehabilitative treatment has a long history. Olive Frances Guthrie Smith (1883-1956), a British trained physiotherapist at St Mary’s Hospital, London, was largely responsible for realising the therapeutic potential of suspension therapy in physiotherapy. To this end, Guthrie Smith and Arthur Porritt (1900-94), orthopaedic surgeon and former Governor General of New Zealand, published a paper in the British Medical Journal (1931) describing the use of suspension therapy in rehabilitation for conditions such as poliomyelitis (polio) and fractures.