Folk practices and early management
Pre-criteria management and folk practices — how laxity was accommodated and treated before the modern evidence era. Documented as historical record, not endorsement.
Before modern physiotherapy, management of joint instability centered on rest and immobilization — bandaging, splinting, activity restriction. The clinical consensus has moved the opposite direction toward active strengthening, but the historical record documents what was actually done.
The travelling-show era's "elastic" performers trained and protected their flexibility as an occupational skill — the historical record documents lifestyle adaptation to hypermobility rather than treatment. It is indexed as folk knowledge about living with laxity, not therapy.
Historical management of connective-tissue fragility included dietary measures and general constitutional tonics — the standard pre-specific-therapy response to a poorly understood systemic condition. These are historical objects with no validated mechanism for EDS.