Terry Glyn Moule

Abstract

In the early 1960s osteopathy in the UK was still regarded as a rather outlandish form of treatment. Its wider acceptance and slow rise to respectability (the 1993 Osteopathy Bill conferred statutory recognition on the profession) was due, in part, to its increasing popularity amongst professional sportsmen and women, many of whom were treated by Terry Moule, who has died suddenly of coronary thrombosis aged 62. Terry, who had graduated as a naturopath and osteopath in 1963, did much to take osteopathic principles to the sporting world. He combined this with an enthusiasm for performance cars by acting as an adviser to the motor and aircraft industries on seat design. It was a chance encounter with the footballer Gerry Francis in a London nightclub that helped to establish Terry Moule's reputation in sports medicine. Francis, the England and Queen's Park Rangers football captain, had been troubled by a recurring back injury and was scheduled for surgery, with only a fifty-fifty chance of recovery. Terry, using a combination of neuromuscular technique and osteopathic manipulation, was able to get him back on the field in a matter of weeks and keep him match-fit for some years to come. Terry went on to work with many top athletes and sporting personalities including Sebastian Coe, Steven Redgrave, Fatima Whitbread, Les Ferdinand, and Roger Uttley who was the England rugby captain at the time. He and Uttley became partners in a sports therapy centre at Hemel Hempstead for several years. Terry also became closely involved with Hertfordshire County RFC and acted as an adviser to the English Table Tennis Association and the Australian Davies Cup team, including Paul McNamee and Peter McNamara, who won several Wimbledon titles. Terry made a point of not charging younger people with international sporting potential and, on this basis, estimated he had made a contribution of over half a million pounds to British sport. In recent years, Terry extended his sports medicine interests to the animal world, treating racehorses with osteopathy and advising on their rehabilitation. He and his family moved to Bicester to be nearer the Millrace Stables, run by Alan Jarvis (Fig. 1). A lifelong interest in cars led him to apply his osteopathic expertise to car-seat design for the Saab Motor Company and Vauxhall Motors. When Saab named him, in national press advertisements, as their osteopathic adviser, it was frowned upon by the elders of his professional association because, at that time, osteopaths were not allowed to advertise. More recently he was working on an entirely new concept in seating designed to avoid impediments to blood flow and reduce pressure on the ischial tuberosities. MouleTec seats are now being used in aircraft and the automotive industries. Terry Moule was born in Wolverhampton, the son of the naturopath, Tom Moule, who, in 1957, had taken over the directorship of the Champneys nature cure clinic near Tring from its founder, Stanley Lief. Lief had pioneered the neuromuscular technique as an indispensable adjunct to manipulative treatment and, while still a student at the British College of Naturopathy and Osteopathy, in Hampstead, London, Terry received a thorough grounding in this as he served an apprenticeship in the treatment rooms at Champneys—a world of carrot juice, colonic irrigations, and sitz baths. Champneys was a Mecca for the chronically sick in the middle decades of the 20th century and many were successfully treated by its regimen of fasting, fruit and vegetable diets, and physical therapy. Working with this at first hand enabled Terry to understand the great relevance of naturopathic nutritional principles to fitness for athletic endeavour and they became an integral part of his approach to sports medicine as well as to general health. This is reflected in his two books, ‘Fit for Sport’ and ‘Cancer—the Healthy Option’. Terry lectured and broadcast extensively on naturopathic topics and served as President of the British Naturopathic Association from 1996 to 1999 (Fig. 2). He is survived by his wife, Patsy, whom he married in 1965, their daughters, Tania, Stefanie, and Katrina, son Justin, and seven grandchildren. He also leaves his sister, the osteopath, Judy Clark, and their mother.