Vitrine Four: Suspension Therapy

October 2013

Suspension Therapy Equipment: School of Physiotherapy, University of Otago

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Suspension therapy as a rehabilitative treatment has had a long history. Indeed, Roman medical scholar Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BC – 50 AD) advocated it long ago in his work De Medicina. Francis Guthrie-Smith, 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), orthopedic 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. Here is a range of suspension therapy equipment which has played its part in the time honoured approach to facilitating movement.