<Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject . You may improve this article, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new article, as appropriate . (May 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject . You may improve this article, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new article, as appropriate . (May 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> Physicians like Hippocrates and later Galen are believed to have been the first practitioners of physical therapy, advocating massage, manual therapy techniques and hydrotherapy to treat people in 460 BC . After the development of orthopedics in the eighteenth century, machines like the Gymnasticon were developed to treat gout and similar diseases by systematic exercise of the joints, similar to later developments in physical therapy . </P> <P> The earliest documented origins of actual physical therapy as a professional group date back to Per Henrik Ling, "Father of Swedish Gymnastics," who founded the Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics (RCIG) in 1813 for manipulation, and exercise . The Swedish word for physical therapist is sjukgymnast = someone involved in gymnastics for those who are ill . In 1887, PTs were given official registration by Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare . Other countries soon followed . In 1894, four nurses in Great Britain formed the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy . The School of Physiotherapy at the University of Otago in New Zealand in 1913, and the United States' 1914 Reed College in Portland, Oregon, which graduated "reconstruction aides ." Since the profession's inception, spinal manipulative therapy has been a component of the physical therapist practice . </P>

Who is considered the founder of physical therapy