Only he would recognise, in a room full of students, the important meaning of a patient drumming his fingers on the couch. Geoff was a visionary and an innovator. In the preface Crizotinib to the first edition of Vertebral Manipulation [1964] he recognises “The practical approach to the use of manipulation is to relate treatment to the patient’s symptoms and signs rather than to diagnosis” and that “…it is often impossible
to know what the true pathology is…symptoms and signs [of a disc lesion] may vary widely and require different treatments His vision was instrumental in giving us what are now established competencies, including, “Patient-Centred Care”, the use of mobilisation for pain modulation, and an awareness of “the nature of the person” and its impact on treatment. He highlighted the need for deep and broad theoretical knowledge to support and inform clinical practice.
He advocated the discipline of evaluating everything we do to prove our worth and with this came the use of patient reported and orientated outcome measures [subjective and functional asterisks] and the demand for accurate recording of treatment and its effects. Geoff was also at the forefront of research by Physiotherapists for Physiotherapists at a time when it was seen as the role of the Doctor to report on Physiotherapy and decide which Physiotherapy modalities should be prescribed. Geoff wrote extensively for the Australian Journal of Physiotherapy as well as for other medical and Physiotherapy journals world-wide. He wrote, for example, about 5-FU solubility dmso “Some observations
on Sciatic Scoliosis” in 1961, “The hypotheses of adding compression when examining and treating synovial joints” in 1980 and “Movement of pain-sensitive structures in the vertebral canal in a group of physiotherapy students” also in 1980. Look in any respectable physiotherapy or manual therapy journal and you will see G.D. Maitland cited frequently. Researchers in manual therapy are still referring back to Geoff’s models for practice and using Glycogen branching enzyme his descriptions of examination and treatment techniques as their methodological standards. Geoff was a great believer in quality education for Physiotherapists. In 1965 he ran the first 3-month course on “Manipulation of the Spine” based at the South Australian Institute of Technology in Adelaide. In 1974 this course developed into the one-year post-graduate diploma in Manipulative Physiotherapy and subsequently became a Master’s Degree course currently under the auspices of Geoff’s closest colleagues, Mr Mark Jones and Dr Mary Magarey. Geoff always led from the front. As well as being active on various Physiotherapy Committees and Boards in Australia, he was well aware of the much bigger, International, picture and in 1974 was involved in the foundation of the International Federation of Orthopaedic Manipulative Therapy [IFOMPT], a branch of the WCPT.