DEUTSCH | ITALIANO    

Geoffrey Douglas Maitland was born in Adelaide Australia in 1924. He trained as a physiotherapist from 1946 to 1949 after serving in the RAAF (Royal Australian Airforce) during the second World War.
 

His first job was at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Adelaide Children's Hospital, with a main interest in the treatment of orthopedic and neurological disorders. Later he continued working part time in the hospital and part time in his own private clinic. After a few years he became a part time private practitioner and part time clinical tutor at the School of Physiotherapy in the Southern Australian Institute of Technology, now the University of South Australia. He continuously studied and spent half a day each week in the Barr-Smith Library and the excellent Library at the Medical School of the University of Adelaide.

As a lecturer, he emphasized clinical examination and assessment. He stimulated his students to write treatment records from the very beginning, as he felt that “one needed to commit ones self to paper to analyze what one was doing”. In 1954 he started with manipulative therapy teaching sessions.
 

In 1961 he received an award from a special studies fund, which enabled him and his wife Anne to go overseas for a study tour. They visited osteopaths, chiropractors, medical doctors and physiotherapy colleagues whom they had heard and read about and corresponded with in the previous years. In London, Geoff had interesting lunchtime clinical sessions with James Cyriax and his staff. During this tour Geoff Maitland established a friendship with Gregory P. Grieve from the UK. They had extensive correspondence about their clinical experiences and this continued for many years.
 

In 1962 Geoff Maitland delivered a paper to the Physiotherapy Society of Australia entitled “The Problems of Teaching Vertebral Manipulation” in which he presented a clear differentiation between manipulation and mobilization and became a strong advocate of the use of gentle passive movement in the treatment of pain, in addition to the more forceful techniques used to increase range of motion.

Geoff Maitland became a substantial contributor to the “Australian Journal of Physiotherapy” as well as to other medical and physiotherapy journals world wide. In 1964 his work was published in the first edition Vertebral Manipulation which followed by a second edition in1968. The first edition of Peripheral Manipulation was published in 1970.

Over all the years of lecturing and publishing, Maitland continued to treat patients as the clinical work remained the main source of learning and adapting ideas.
 

In 1965 one of Geoff Maitland’s wishes came true and the first three months course on Manipulation of the Spine was held at Adelaide. This course has developed into today's Masters degree course at the University of Adelaide.
He was one of the cofounders, in 1974, of the International Federation of Orthopedic Manipulative Therapists (IFOMT), a branch of the World Confederation of Physiotherapy (WCPT).
 

It was only in 1978, while teaching one of his first courses in continental Europe in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland, that he recognized, through discussion with Dr Zinn, Director of the Medical Clinic and the Postgraduate Study Centre in Bad Ragaz, that in fact his work and ideas were a specific concept of thought and action rather than a method of applying manipulative techniques.

The Maitland Concept of Manipulative Physiotherapy as it became to be known, emphasizes a specific way of thinking, continuous evaluation and assessment and the art of manipulative physiotherapy (“know when, how and which techniques to perform, and adapt these to the individual Patient”) and a total commitment to the patient.

Geoff Maitland is a member of many professional organizations and has been honored with several awards..
In 1992 in Zurzach, Switzerland, the International Maitland Teachers Association (IMTA) was founded of which Geoff Maitland is founding member and inaugural President.
 

All his work would not have been possible without the loving support of his wife Anne, the mother of their two children John and Wendy. Anne did most of the graphic arts for his publications, kept notes, made manuscripts and videotaped may of his courses. Their continuous feedback discipline is one of the very strengths of the Maitlands, who are practically inseparable since they met in England during the second World War.
 

Geoff Maitland's work has laid the foundation for the development of contemporary definitions and descriptions of the physiotherapy process. The great strength of the Maitland Concept lies in the disciplined and continual feedback. It is a concept that is still alive and continues to develop and extend.

Adapted from Maitland’s Vertebral Manipulation, Maitland G.D., Hengeveld E., Banks K., English K., Butterworth, Heinemannn, Oxford, 2001