Pioneer therapist honoured in Chch

Press, 22 February 1980, Page 4

Pioneer therapist honoured in Chch

Dr James Cyriax pioneered manipulative. therapies, used today by physiotherapists, Orthopaedic surgeons, doc-, tors, and chiropractors all; over the world. i * Everywhere, that is, ex-1 cept in Britain, where he; Jias worked and taught for more than 60 years. • In the Netherlands, his methods are practised by physicians as a matter of course, and he rates New Zealand highly for its up-to-date treatments.. . All over the world students have read, studied and practised his techniques, but in England, he said, they still asked, “Doctor who?” Dr Cyriax, a consultant orthopaedic physician, was brought to New Zealand especially for a banquet dinner in his honour at the International Federation of Orthopaedic Manipulative Therapists’ conference, The conference was attended by more than 260 doctors from 15 countries. ' He was honoured at the banquet by members of the Society of Physiotherapists, the Manipulative Therapists’ Association and the Medical Association. Dr Cyriax began teaching physiotherapy arid orthopaedic medicine at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, in 1929. In those, day there were only osteopaths, who had no knowledge of manipulative techniques. ’•“I had to make up techniques as I went long,” he said. ' ■' ‘ Their treatment of the spine was limited to an understanding of the bones, but they did not appreicate the benefit of muscle and tendon manipulations to conditions such as disc troubles or joint adhesions. “The first 13 years of my career were spent inventing a method of diagnosis for orthopaedic medicine and the next 10 years, finding therapies for the hundreds of

diseases I discovered,” Dr Cyriax said. Therapists began to use manipulation on patients with spine problems, but when Dr Cyriax asked them why, they could not tell him. After years of experiments he developed an elaborate method of diagnosis called “selective tension;”

His book on ■ that and other books on manipulative theories which he developed are now standard 'texts for. physiotherapy students. As manipulative therapy treatment relied heavily on finding pain, he could not use animals in experiments and so had to rely on humans. “A pain reaction was traced to. its source by anaesthetising nerves at different junctions. By a process of elimination I learnt my way found the body,” Dr Cyriax £aid. He recalled a paper he wrote in 1945 on lumbago. He revealed then that lumbago was caused by a disc and not a muscle, as, had been thought. Until then people had treated muscles for lumbago pains.

It was more than 20 years before people took any notice of that discovery, and today many still did not realise the disc had no nerves and could feel no pain. The pain was caused by the disc pinching the central spinal cord, he said. "I first published that paper in 1945. In 1978 I again published the same paper. It was only then people began to sit up and take any notice.” He dismissed acupuncture and chiropractic with a shake of his head and a wry smile. “They are a menace to the real work of manipulative therapists. A chiropractor will manipulate whether a person needs it or not. It is all stuff and nonsense,” he said. Although aged 75, Dr Cyriax might be in the twilight of his career, but he shows no sign of relaxing the pace of the last 50 years. Since his retirement from more than 40 years of work at St Thomas’s Hospital, he has continued to teach students round the world. Every year he holds courses at Yale University and the Mayo Clinic in the United States, and at clinics in Europe. Ths year he will include a course in Australia as well as his visit to New Zealand. “In England, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists regards my work as a menace and they always have,” he said. “After my retirement, I asked them if they would like me to hold classes and courses for their physiotherapy students, but they always declined. “Three weeks ago I went to them again — after not bothering' them for 10 years — and pointed out that my. work was practised everywhere else in the world, but not in England, My words still fell on deaf ears.” '•