OCR Text |
Show KEEPING HEALTHY Another Branch of Medical Science By Dr. James W. Barton pROM TIME TO TIME we see new branches of medicine being be-ing raised to the standing of the two main branches, medicine and surgery. Within the past few years, for example, psychiatry has reached an equal footing. It may come as a surprise to learn that what is known as physical physi-cal medicine and rehabilitation has now been placed among the branches branch-es of medicine. In the Journal of The American Medical Association, Dr. Frank H. Krusen, Mayo Clinic, Clin-ic, chairman section on physical medicine and rehabilitation, in an address to the last session of the American Medical Association at San Francisco, stated: "It is with a feeling of great pride we physicians physi-cians who have devoted our interest to the combined specialty of physical physi-cal medicine and rehabilitation gather here for the first meetings of this new section of the American Medical Association." What is physical medicine? Physical medicine is the use of the properties of light, heat, cold, water, electricity, massage, mas-sage, manipulation, , exercise and mechanical devices for diagnosis, for research and for physical and occupational therapy ther-apy and physical rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is the use of these methods of helping a patient to adjust himself to his occupation, perhaps learn a new occupation, and learn despite any physical handicaps to take his place as a normal member of the community. We can see at once that a physician physi-cian trained in the various branches branch-es of physical medicine can fit in with the work of the physician trained in other specialties. Dr. Krusen points out whafmost physicians physi-cians already have seen the excellent ex-cellent results obtained in nervous diseases such as paralysis, in psychiatry, where behavior is the important consideration, and in orthopedics where the correction of deformities requires several of the branches of physical medicine. |