Rehabilitation and touch
This photo, taken in about 1917, is from the University of Toronto Archives, which indicates it’s of physiotherapists in Hart House working with wounded veterans from the First World War.
In Partnership for Excellence: Medicine at the University of Toronto and Academic Hospitals, author Edward Shorter writes, “In 1917, the Military Hospitals Commission established a six-month program using Hart House as its temporary base, called the Military School of Orthopaedic Surgery and Physiotherapy, to train physiotherapists. Thousands of injured veterans were returning to Canada in need of rehabilitation treatment that as yet had not been created.”
The school, led by Lt. Col. Robert Wilson, offered three subjects: muscle function training, gymnastics, and massage and electrotherapy. According to sources that Shorter cites, 250 people finished the six-month course before practising in military hospitals across the country. The course continued until 1919. •