Manual Therapy (2000) 5(1), 1

# 2000 Harcourt Publishers Ltd

DOI: 10.1054/math.1999.0222, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Editorial

Welcome to the 5th volume of Manual Therapy and to this

new Millennium. The coming of the New Year, the New
Decade and the New Millennium oers a time for reection
on events passed, current issues, future pathways, future
aspirations and on future strategies.
As Manual Therapists, we should reect on what our
professions have achieved in such a short time frame with
the physiotherapy profession being founded in the UK in
1865, the osteopathic profession being founded by Andrew
Taylor Still in 1874 and the chiropractic profession founded
by D.D. Palmer in 1895. We are still very young but
growing professions.
All three professions have witnessed the growth of
undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, and in the
number of clinicians attracted to undertake research degree
programmes. We have also seen the rise of manual therapy
philosophies of clinical treatment and management, the
growth of a discrete and underlying body of scientic
evidence and the growth in manual therapy related
research.
We should pause to reect and contemplate on the way in
which individuals have contributed so greatly to the growth
and development of each of the manual therapy professions
during the latter part of the last millennium; names such as
James Cyriax, Gregory Grieve, Freddy Kaltenborn, Martin
Littlejohn, Georey Maitland, Robin McKenzie, James
Mennell, D.D. Palmer, Alan Stoddard and Andrew Taylor
Still come to mind. Such individuals have provided the
building blocks and the fundamental concepts on which
manual therapy and its three major philosophies had their
beginnings.
And so it was clinicians who sowed the seeds of manual
therapy development and with such an inspirational lead
from the manual therapists of the last Millennium it is a
tribute to their work that many of our current colleagues
have gone on to develop related frameworks of therapeutic
philosophies. Additionally there has been a rapid and
expansive growth in research activity within the basic and
applied elds of manual therapy practice. As we move
forward into the new Millennium we must continue to take
responsibility for any new developments and place them
rmly in a scientic framework. As we discover new
techniques, we must test them out, rene them, test them

again and when we are sure that we have a strong scientic

rationale for their use, then we can condently disseminate
the new techniques to the world.
And so we celebrate the key manual therapists of the last
Millennium for having given us our clinical heritage. These
persons have inspired an army of exponents who have
broadened the clinical base of manual therapy and our
scientic body of knowledge. If the last Millennium was
marked by the growth of clinical prowess in manual
therapy then this new Millennium will surely see the
proliferation of the clinician researcher and of single
minded researchers in general who, with their research
activity, will underpin manual therapy principles and
practices. Many manual therapists of this new Millennium
began their work in the 1980s and the 1990s and as they
grow in maturity and productivity, their responsibility is
clear. They must prove it or not use it.
As Editors of this Manual Therapy Journal, our
responsibility is also clear. We must focus attention on
new knowledge and on the promulgation and dissemination of sound, scientic evidence. We must assist in
quenching manual therapists' thirst for knowledge to the
best of our abilities. We note with enthusiasm that
beginning with this issue, Manual Therapy will be
published electronically in the IDEAL online journal
library. IDEAL is the International Digital Electronic
Access Library which contains, at this stage, the full text
of almost 200 journals. This resource will bring the journal
to the desktops of around 8 million researchers, teachers,
students and practitioners worldwide. The electronic
publication will be of great advantage to authors whose
work will be more widely disseminated and which will be
published earlier via the online version. We invite you to
visit our newly constructed web site at www.harcourtinternational.com/journals/math for the latest information on Manual Therapy.
We begin the new Millennium with pride noting the
inclusion of Manual Therapy in Index Medicus and
welcome you all to the beginning of an exciting new era
of manual therapy clinical practice, science and research.
Ann Moore and Gwen Jull
Editors