In 1910 the Carnegie Foundation funded the “Flexnor Report” to enforce in the U.S. longer training and the curriculum common in European medical schools. It called upon American medical schools to enact higher admission and graduation standards, and to adhere strictly to the protocols of what mainstream science proposed in teaching and research.
A repercussion of the Flexner Report was reversion of American universities to male-only admittance programs.
After its publication, nearly half of the medical schools in the U.S. closed their doors. These were mostly shorter programs or ones which included alternative modalities in their curriculum. As a result of new greater expense, time commitment, and restrictive admission policies – what had been a profession possible for women and men of lower incomes, became a profession exclusively reserved for white, upper-class men.
Thus, for women remained the role of assisting physicians, as nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other medical workers with less authority and income than the M.D.’s.
However, massage therapy grew and grew and now is populated mostly by women, who are free to bring their knowledge, skill, enthusiasm and nurturance into healthcare!
Thanks to our exile from the medico-industrial complex, the women and men of massage are free to see clients to amplify and optimize their HEALTH. They are enjoined to relieve many of the stressors that allopathic medicine has left unaddressed in its preoccupation with disease rather than health.
And, as massage is coming of age in terms of the research and training that more greatly assures clinical competence, we find ourselves working more often hand-in-hand with the medical profession.
Massage is proud to have welcomed and provided now for many years an empowering context for women and men who choose an alternative route to providing healthcare. We have feminine energy largely to thank for the growth of our profession and the spreading of its benefits.