Introduction to - Forbidden Physiology

 This blog is intended to bring to light aspects of physiology that have become hidden from public view through the effect of time and altered fashions in scientific interest.

"Forbidden" refers to the current policy of discouraging students at universities from quoting or using information that is greater than 10 years old.

My personal research as a manual/physical therapist has been focussed on uncovering forgotten, broken or lost threads of scientific enquiry over the last one hundred and fifty years or so.  Much of that research was published in German language.  I am reasonably capable of translation from German into English and I will present the results of my translations, from time to time, in this blogspot. I will make comment and speculation on these translations as well as other aspects.

Some antique research is incorrect or misplaced, some comes under the injunction, "Never take the first right answer." Other discoveries and theories from antiquity were brilliant and unique but have faded from view.  It is only by finding them and examining them that we can discover whether they hold valuable insights that we could use today in 2020.

I first became active in examining older literature after my teacher and mentor Dr Loren Rex urged us, as students, to examine the origins of the techniques we were using.  Many techniques that have stood the test of time in manual therapy have done so for a specific reason, they work.  So, why?

Therapists and doctors in the early 20th century, largely, did not just pick techniques out of the air. It is true that some are derived from purely dogmatic intellectual constructs, but most of those that I am interested in were based on physiological observations from the time they were developed.

Some of those observations were published and discussed and elaborated on at the time, others were observations that were not followed up in any significant way other than the personal publications of the authors themselves.

Through the pursuit of older physiological enquiry, I have greatly added to my repertoire of abilities, even developed my own unique treatments. I have developed a much greater mental framework that I use to examine patients and plan their treatments, which is really the basis of clinical expertise.