Through knowledge he gained in Europe and his own research, Fitzgerald found that if pressure was applied on the fingers,
it would create a local anaesthetic effect on the hand, arm, and shoulder, right up
to the jaw, face, ear and nose. He applied tight bands of elastic on the middle
section of each finger, or using small clamps that he placed on the tips. He
was then able to carry out minor surgical operations using this pressure technique.
In 1915, Dr Edwin Bowers (who was a colleague of Dr Fitzgerald’s) published an article entitled
‘To Stop That Toothache, Squeeze Your Toe!’ in ‘Everybody’s Magazine’, and in 1917 Dr Fitzgerald
published his first book with Dr Edwin Bowers, ‘Zone Therapy, or Relieving Pain at Home’. However, although the practice as taken up by some doctors and dentists, Fitzgerald’s treatment method
remained controversial.
In
the book he related all his important findings on zone therapy. A zone is an
area or part that is marked off, with stated qualities. Fitzgerald diagrammatically
depicted this in his early drawings. He described how he came upon the concept
of zone therapy: “I accidentally discovered that pressure with a cotton-tipped
probe on the mucocutaneous margin (where the skin joins the mucous membrane) of the nose gave an anaesthetic result as though
cocaine solution had been applied. I further found that there were many spots
in the nose, mouth, throat and on both surfaces of the tongue which, when pressed firmly, deadened definite areas of sensation. Also, that pressure exerted over any body eminence, on the hands and feet, or over
the joints, produced the same characteristic result in pain relief. I found also
that when pain was relieved, the condition that produced the pain was most generally relieved.
This led to my ‘mapping out’ these various areas and their associated connections, and also noting the
conditions influenced through them. This science I have named zone therapy".
Fitzgerald established
ten equal longitudinal zones running the length of the body from the top of the head to the tips of the toes. The number ten corresponds to the fingers and toes and, therefore, provides a simple numbering system. Each finger and toe falls into one zone. The
theory is that parts of the body found within a certain zone will be linked with one another by the energy flow within the
zone and the parts of the body can therefore affect one another.
Dr Fitzgerald, Dr Bowers and
another physician, Dr Joseph Shelby Riley developed and refined the theory of zone therapy, but it was Riley’s assistant
Eunice Ingham who probably mad the greatest contribution to the establishment of modern reflexology. She separated the work on the reflexes of the foot from zone therapy in general.
She used zone therapy in her work but felt that the feet should
be specific targets for therapy because of their highly sensitive nature. She
charted the feet in relation to the zones and their effects on the rest of the anatomy until she had evolved on the feet themselves
a ‘map’ of the entire body.
Using a unique method of using the thumb and fingers on these reflex areas she expanded her research
by giving treatments to the residents of Conesus Lake
in the upper New York state of America. Eunice Ingham then took her work to the public and the non-medical community because
she realised that lay people could learn the correct reflexology techniques to help themselves, their families and friends. She was called on to speak at conventions and shared her knowledge with chiropodists,
massage practitioner’s and physiotherapists, naturopaths and osteopaths. She
wrote two books ‘Stories The Feet Can Tell (1938)’ and ‘Stories The Feet Have Told (1963)’.
Zone therapy is considered the basis of modern foot reflexology and most reflexologist use zone therapy
as a useful tool to their work.
