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A BRIEF HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF REFLEXOLOGY
The Reflexology has developed in times of need from a deep knowledge of mankind. It's a method both modern and very old as well. From old texts and illustrations, we know that the Egyptians, Indians, Japanese, Chinese and other people used to work the feet in order to keep the good health. Many of these healing principles were kept in a primitive way.
In its beginnings, the therapeutical activity in the feet was traced for the first time in Occident through the work of an American medecine doctor, Dr. William Fitzgerald (1872-1942). He knew that in Central and North America, sick people of different indian tribes had been treated through the feet since ever. Fitzgerald and a group of doctors and therapists interested in the subject, checked and systematized during several years the points in the feet and their equivalences. For this he is considered the founder of the Zone Therapy. In 1917 he publishes a book entitled "Zone Therapy" in which he describes his experiencies and he shows handmade drafts of a division of the human body in ten vertical and symmetrical zones from head to feet that he called Body Zones, embracing the whole human being. This means that each oh these vertical zones that pass by an organ, tissue or organic system has a corresponding reflex zone in the feet in the same longitudinal trajectory, proportionately reduced. Fitzgerald treated his patients using this reticular image that included the feet and discovered inside the different zones a series of valuable interconnections, from a therapeutical point of view. One of his closer coworkers, doctor George S. White stated later that around 1925 the Zone Therapy constituted one of the most famous ways of therapy in the USA. Fitzgerald trained doctors, dentists, chiropractors, gynechologists and published several reports about his therapeutical experiences and proposals.
On the early 30's, Eunice Ingham (1888-1974), American physiotherapist, made contact with these principles of Fitzgerald and oriented her therapeutical activity based on them. Later on she developped a special treatment technique that she called "The Ingham Method of Compression Massage". She had come to the conclusion that every zone of the body can be reached by different points, therefore one can get to those zones by these points easily than by others. E. Ingham draw some maps of the human body and, by matching zones of the body with zones in the feet, she discovered that an incidental pressure on one or several points in the foot has a better therapeutical effectiveness than by working directly over the affected zone, specially when trying to reduce pain.
As a practical implementation in Foot Reflexology, her work found an interested audience. Her two books, "Stories the feet can tell" and "Stories the feet have told" spreaded beyond the USA to European countries where they have been used until nowadays. Today, the Reflexology is spreaded throughout the world.
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