Word: guttmann
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Hospital at Stoke Mandeville, Dr. Ludwig Guttmann, a German neurosurgeon who came to Britain in 1939. During the war Surgeon Guttmann became interested in the plight of paraplegics, invalids whose cases were sometimes written off as hopeless by the medical profession. In 1944, Guttmann went to Stoke Mandeville, with one patient, to see if some form of physical activity could help...
...Guttmann's solution was to strengthen his patient's back and abdominal muscles, so that he could use them to move his pelvis. He compares the process to the case of a man walking on stilts, who uses the upper part of the body instead of the leg and lower trunk muscles to get around. With the newly developed muscles, the paraplegic can hold himself erect and move his upper trunk, arms and shoulders. Guttmann found that the best way to keep the muscles strong was to launch a sports program. He invented the Stoke Mandeville swimming stroke...
...Surgeon Guttmann is probably the first man to use athletics as paraplegic therapy, and he is one of the most successful. Since 1944, he has trained 1,000 paraplegics at his hospital; although they will never leave their wheelchairs, 600 of them now live at home, work in offices or even on factory assembly lines...