““Given the fact that the goal of rehabilitation was to find disabled men gainful employment, it is noteworthy that the United States did not take the path of the St. Dunstan’s Hostel in London, where blinded soldiers were retrained to work as masseurs and employed by the Crown.16 Despite such examples, the US Medical Department, and orthopedic surgeons more specifically, opposed the idea of training men as physiotherapists.17 Orthopedists never made their rationale for hiring female physiotherapists explicit. They knew, of course, that the military needed men on the front lines and could not spare too many of them for hospital work. They also knew that women were cheap.””
