Eunice Ingham

From SkepticWiki

Eunice Ingham (1889-1974) was the founder of Reflexology.

Having trained in the 1920s as a masseuse and physiotherapist at the Washington School of Massage and the Columbia Institute of Physiotherapy, she worked from 1926 for one Dr Riley, a practitioner with unconventional interests including chiropractic, osteopathy, and zone therapy. This last technique involves stimulating various zones in the body with massage, and with mechanical and electrical devices.

Eunice Ingham simplified the theory and practice of zone therapy by confining her attentions to just one "zone", the feet, and by limiting her techniques to conventional compressive massage. In 1938 she published her first book Stories the Feet Can Tell, detailing what was at first called the "Ingham Reflex Method of Compression Massage", but which acquired the snappier name of "reflexology".

In 1942, at the age of 53, she married Ray Stopfel, who willingly played a supporting role as assistant to his wife's cause.

Her second book, in 1945, was originally entitled Zone Therapy and Gland Reflexes. It woulld be republished in 1951 under the title Stories the Feet Have Told.

From 1946 to 1969 she toured the USA annually, giving seminars and promoting her books and methods. When she retired in 1969, her nephew Dwight Byers took over her lecture tours.

She died aged 85 in 1974. It is undoubtedly Eunice Ingham's own personality—her combination of self-confidence, tireless energy, organisational ability, and public speaking skills—that more than anything made reflexology the success it is today.