Was the Ashtanga Primary series 'designed' as Yoga Therapy?

I do find this therapeutic 'design' argument for the Ashtanga Primary series in the recent Sonima article ( link below) puzzeling. The suggestion here is that the Primary series was designed for it's therapeutic benefit...

"Jois called the Primary Series of Aṣṭāṅga yoga “roga cikitsā” meaning disease therapy and “cikitsā vibhāga” meaning therapy section.... The title cikitsā vibhāga, given to the Primary Series, indicates that it’s MAIN PURPOSE (my caps) is disease therapy, especially designed to repair, rejuvenate, and strengthen the system for the purpose of yoga. "

And yet it's clear that Pattabhi Jois merely took Krishnamacharya table of yoga groupings of easy, tricky and ruddy difficult postures (primary, Middle and proficient) and taught them as series for his Sanskrit college teaching gig, rather than as groups and taught them as such - no doubt because he needed a four year syllabus. The Primary group is barely changed from Krishnamacharya's table(see Appendix below), although the Intermediate Marichiyasana D was moved by Jois into the Primary group/series. Pattabhi Jois then took this group of 'Primary postures and called them 'yoga therapy, the second series, again only slightly more changed from the original became referred to as nerve cleansing.

Nor should we perhaps imagine that PattabhiJois 'constructed' the series/sequences of asana in any sense of collaboration with Krishnamacharya, Jois was but a boy, Krishnamacharya a terrifying (by all accounts at this time) court philosopher and yoga teacher. The most that probably happened is that the young Jois shyly passed his teacher his four series and received a curt nod of acceptance.
Krishnamacharya's groups of asana are the same as those listed for ease/difficulty of practice but at some point they received a therapeutic name. Pattabhi Jois may have looked at the asana in these groups/series and thought that combined they had such therapeutic benefits but they clearly weren't designed from the ground up with such an intention.

Pattabhi Jois was barely out of his teens when he began to teach these group of asana as series, he didn't construct them, or design them, or even reorder them that much ( the Advanced series was a different case), he merely tweaked Krishnamacharya's table a little. There is no evidence that Krishnamacharya saw his groups of asana as a series or taught them as such other than perhaps out of convenience as a regular group of beginner postures (this table may have been intended for his assistants, like the young Jois as krishnamacharya may well have been in side rooms with private students and patients teaching them Vinyasa Krama, the tables may also have been used for exam purposes) .

That said Krishnamacharya did give health benefits in his books ( Yoga Makaranda, Mysore 1934, Yogasanagalu, Mysore 1941) for each asana as well as a vinyasa count and indication of breathing, the same health benefits and count that Pattabhi Jois carried over to his book Yoga Mala.
Practice of the Ashtanga Primary series may well have many benefits but to suggest that the series was 'designed' with these benefits in mind strikes me as highly questionable.
Of course we don't know at what point Pattabhi Jois started to refer to and 'promote' Krishnamacharya's groups of asana as yoga therapy

http://www.sonima.com/yoga/primary-series/