It has been at least 20 years that we have become increasingly aware of posture and posturology and, as usual, a market has been created in which even greengrocers offer postural therapies, not to mention the spas, so beneficial to posture! All this results in the end patient receiving a distorted message, in that posturology becomes synonymous with sorcery, thus altogether misinterpreting its real value.
The first studies of our system date as far back as 1700, but one had to wait until 1890, when Doctor Karl Vierordt founded the first Posturology school in Berlin; it was Vierordt himself that, in 1860, began to correlate to the force of gravity, our body in an erect position. In previous decades the study tended to highlight the functioning of our system and to search for a reason justifying our erect position; as Bell affirmed in 1837 “how can man maintain an erect posture or an inclined one in the face of windy conditions? It is evident that he possesses a sense by means of which he is aware of his body’s inclination, and is able the readjust and correct all deviations in relation to the vertical". In 1828 Flourens would emphasise the role of the vestibule, in 1853 Romberg observed that postural oscillations are more pronounced when the vision is obscured but also when the support base is reduced, in 1861 Longet pointed out the role of proprioception of the paravertebral muscles; but it wasn’t until 1916 that French neurologists, through Pierre Marie, acknowledged for the first time the existence of a postural illness. However, we had to wait until the Seventies when LM Nashner, a young Cambridge engineering student, decided to base his thesis on the postural control system, devising equipment capable of recording the centre of gravity’s movements of the patient under examination: in France, this gave rise to the mushrooming of schools of thought all aiming at demonstrating the postural system’s operation. As opposed to the previous century, in which scholars of the subject sought to give a single and sole sense to managing the system, now strong in the newly-acquired concept of cybernetics, an attempt was made to provide a global “reading” of the human body.
Strictly as in computers, the postural system has a reception (sensitive or sensorial), an integration, a motorial programming and a control over the motorial functions through a feedback circuit. The cybernetic action can lead to a programmed variation of the system, or to a casual variation correction, assuring the system’s relative and fluctuating stability. During the Eighties, it was on these premises that different theories were born. The main ones are:

1. The Fine Postural system of Dr. Pierre Marie Gagey, a labour posturology Doctor, who founded the "French Posturology School" in Paris and laid the foundations for stabilometry, the posturology branch that studies man’s balance in the standing position;
2. the Tonic Postural system of Dr. Bernard Bricot, Orthopaedic Surgeon, who founded the "International Centre for Posturology Studies" in Marseille, and who proposes the relationship between the receptors’ unbalance, the asymmetries of the standing position and chronic muscular-skeletal pains.

 
Both of these acknowledge eyes and feet as the system’s main exoreceptors.
In Lisbon, within the same period, Dr. Orlando Alves da Silva, an oculist, together with Dr. Martins da Cunha began studying the variations of the postural system utilising optical prisms; nowadays, Dr. Da Sylva’s school has attained excellent results on dyslexia. Finally, we must mention the theory of Dr. Michel Clauzade who affirms that the head is the starting point of the whole postural organisation, and according to which posture is dependent on the balance between the primeval system (cranio-sacral-mandibular) as well as the compensatory and regulatory peripheral system (Gagey). One can understand that each group tries to enhance its own work, but everything falls within two main theories.
All the above to document the theories that Bell was debating already in 1837: this presupposes that the postural system is continuously adapting in the attempt to withstand the effect of the force of gravity and of the earth’s resistance. The same schools of thought have tried to understand how to condition the postural system in order to balance it and, therefore, correct pathologies such as vertigo and postural instabilities, always searching within the field of the “sine materia” neurological pathologies, taking less into account the muscular-skeletal pathologies. The only scientist that, ever since 1983, had already been hypothesizing that the postural system’s imbalance could be at the base of muscular-skeletal pathologies is Dr. Bernard Bricot; however, no literary documentation can be found to prove this theory. It is not until year 2000 that physiatrist, Dr. Antonio Fimiani in proffering his own different theories and giving credit to Dr. Bricot’s theory, hypothesizing that the different muscular-skeletal pathologies such as the “genu recurvatum” deformity (knee deviations), valgus knees, knock-knees, valgus-flat feet, scoliotic postures, dental malocclusions or idiopathic scolioses could be considered as a result of muscular chain imbalances originating skeletal compensations, started to treat pathologies with absolute receptorial therapies, documenting their evolution over a period with clinical examinations, photographic evidence, videos, X-rays and stabilometric monitoring. Nowadays, Dr. Fimiani is world leader in perceiving the potential capacity that our system has to correct its own deficiencies.