Gait analysis: past, present, and future

Abstract

Humankind has always been fascinated by the concept of depicting and recording human motion. During the Renaissance, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, a student of Galileo, was among the first scientists to analyse motion while developing his theory of muscle action based upon mechanical principles. Early static interpretations of morbid anatomy by Da Vinci and Vesalius were ‘brought to life’ by the discovery that electricity caused muscle activity, as described by Luigi Galvani in 1791. The first scientific, systematic evaluation of muscle function was conducted by Duchenne who described the function of individual muscles of the human body in a monumental work, Physiologie des Mouvements, published in 1867.