A field that almost existed
In 1961, a physician proved that the President of the United States' chronic back pain was caused by his muscles. The national institute that would have followed was never built. FRAME is building it now.
The Origin
The Hans Kraus legacy
In 1961, Dr. Hans Kraus was called to examine President John F. Kennedy. The president suffered from chronic back pain that had never been properly diagnosed or treated. Kraus, who had studied thousands of back pain patients, recognized what others had missed: the president's problem was not structural. It was weakness and stiffness in key postural muscles.
Kraus prescribed therapeutic exercise to gradually strengthen and restore flexibility to those muscles. The president's condition steadily improved. Kennedy was planning to establish a national back pain institute based on Kraus's model of care. Then he was assassinated, and the institute was never built.
What Kraus had demonstrated in his clinical work remained true: the majority of back pain patients had no structural cause, and muscles, when properly treated, respond to targeted intervention. But without institutional support, that knowledge never entered the medical mainstream.