Therapeutic Physical Exercises: the Reception of the Swedish Medical Gymnastics in the United States at the End of the 19th and Beginning of the 20th Centuries

This research project delves into the historical reception and adoption of European medical gymnastics in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its role in the emergence of the naturopathic movement. The Swedish medical gymnastics, also known as Swedish movement cure, is a therapeutic system developed by Pehr Henrik Ling, a Swedish fencing master and educator, in the early 19th century. It is considered one of the earliest forms of modern physical therapy.

Swedish medical gymnastics focuses on the systematic application of various movements, manipulations, and exercises to improve physical health, rehabilitate injuries, and alleviate pain. The principal investigator will present his method for interpreting technical texts (production, transmission and reception of body knowledge) as part of fundamental research on the corpus of technical manuals and their English translations. The proposed discussion therefore focuses on the method and implications of modern experimentation with explicit knowledge reconstructed on the basis of the study of a documentary corpus.