Medicine: Physical Therapy

Physical therapy comprises the use of physical, chemical and other properties of heat, light, water, electricity, massage and exercise. Until after the War U. S. doctors left those useful means of treatment largely to quacks who did so much ignorant mischief that the regular practitioners were obliged to form the American College of Physical Therapy. Last week the College met in Chicago.

As usual at such meetings there were dozens of clinical demonstrations and batches of talks—to wit:

X-ray (in proper hands) eases pain and helps cure boils, carbuncles, cancer, neuritis, neuralgia (Dr. Roy Fouts of Omaha). Heat can remove tonsils without surgery, by cutting off their blood supply (Dr. Frederick Louis Wahrer of Marshalltown, Iowa).

Excess fat may be a disease, like appendicitis or measles, and then should not be fought by diet or massaging machines (Dr. Maxmilian Kern of Chicago).

Ultraviolet rays are useful against pernicious anemia and leprosy (Dr. David Israel Macht of Johns Hopkins) and stimulate mental activity (Dr. Victor Emanuel Levine of Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha).

A burthen of many addresses was—and Dr. Norman Edwin Titus of Columbia repeated it when he was inducted as the College’s president—the warning that artificial sun lamps, vibration machines (electrical or mechanical) and all the things which the skilled physical therapist uses, can do more harm than good if they are not controlled and practiced by graduate physicians trained in physical therapy.