SOME ASPECTS OF ATHLETICS AND GYM-NASTICS AT HOME AND ABROAD.

ADDRESS

DELIVERED

By Edward Mussey Hartwell, Ph. D., M. D., Director ofPhysical Training in the Public Schools

of Boston, Mass.

[Reprintedfrom the Proceedings of the American Institute of Instruc-tion, at the AnnualMeeting, July, xBgi. ]

CONCORD, N. H.:Republican Press Association, Railroad Square

iSgi-

SOME ASPECTS OF ATHLETICS AND GYM-NASTICS AT HOME AND ABROAD.

ADDRESS

DELIVERED

By Edward Mussey Hartwell, Ph. D., M. D., Director ofPhysical Training in the Public Schools

of Boston, Mass.

[Reprinted from the Proceedingsof the American Institute ofInstruc-tion, at the Annual Meeting, Jtdy, iBqil\

CONCORD, N.H.:Republican Press Association, Railroad Square.

1891.

ADDRESS.

Mr. President, Ladies , and Gentlemen: I am tospeak to you this evening conceining “ Some Aspectsof Athletics and Gymnastics, at Home and Abroad.” Ishall consider some of the more salient peculiaritiesof school games and school gymnastics, as they are

practised to-day in England, Germany, and Sweden.For the purpose of giving fuller and clearer effect tomy descriptions of schools, play-grounds, gymnasia,and forms of exercise, I shall supplement my re-marks by exhibiting to you a series of lantern-views,which have recently been prepared to illustrate thissubject.

Before entering upon the discussion of specificforms of athletic and gymnastic exercise, I beg to in-vite your attention to a consideration, in a very gen-eral way, of the nature and effects of exercise and ofthe most typical national systems of physical train-ing.

According to modern physiology, the human bodyis an aggregation of a vast number of individual cellswhich differ from one another in lineage, form, andfunction. These individuals are so grouped with

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relation to one another in our various organs, that thebody as a whole is to be considered as a communalstructure, a sort of federal union of tissues and organs.Again, the body as a whole is a machine in which thepotential energy of organized material is transformedinto the work which we see manifested in mo-tion, animal heat, and the chemical actions involvedin nutritive, secretory, and excretory processes. It isestimated that the tissue-changes, of which an adulthuman body weighing one hundred and forty poundsis normally the seat, involve the transformation ofmore than a ton of material in the course of a year.Muscular activity is one of the chief agents in pro-moting tissue-changes in all the bodily organs and indetermining the normal growth and development ofthe organism as a whole.

speaking, the skeletal muscles and theskeleton constitute the working or executive machin-ery of the bodily organism. The most obvious resultof orderly and well regulated exercise is seen in thenormal growth and development of the executive ma-chinery itself. In this connection, it is well to recallthe all-important fact that none of the skeletal mus-cles is a simple organ. Every skeletal muscle ismade up of two conjoined mechanisms : a contrac-tile, executive mechanism, the muscle proper, and astimulating, regulative mechanism consisting of nervefibres and gray matter nerve cells. In other words,the executive machinery of the body is indissolublybound to the nervous system and is animated andgoverned by it. The muscular and nervous tissueshave been well termed the “ master tissues.” In thissense nervous tissue may be characterized as “ the

5masterful tissue.” All other tissues, omitting the in-different and supportive tissues, such as bone and car-tilage, may be classed under the head of “ tissues ofdigestion ” or “ tissues of excretion ”—which are theterms used by the English physiologist, MichaelFoster, who points out that “ the whole of the rest ofthe body is engaged (i) in so preparing the raw food,and so bringing it to the nervous and muscular tissues,that they may build it up into their own substancewith the least trouble ; and (2) in receiving the wastematters which arise in muscular and nervous tissues,and preparing them for rapid and easy ejection fromthe body.”

The muscular system has, then, two sets of servants,its purveyors and its scavengers. The former prepareand serve the master tissues with food-materials, andthe latter clear away the refuse matters which resultfrom the chemical and mechanical processes by whichthe functional activity of the executive machinery issignalized. The digestive and assimilative organsand the arterial section of the organs of circulationand respiration belong to the first class; and thevenous section of the circulatory and respiratory or-

gans, the perspiratory, and the urinary organs consti-tute the second. The purveyor and scavenger tissuesserve each other as well as the master tissues, it maybe remarked, and are, like the muscles, controlled bythe Archaeus of the body, if we may so denominatethe nervous system.

Next to the movements due to muscular action, themost direct and obvious effects of exercise areincreased circulation and ventilation of the blood.The effect of exeixise upon the processes of digestion,

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sanguification, and excretion is an indirect one ; thoseprocesses being modified, so far as muscular activityis concerned, by the changes wrought by it in the vol-ume, distribution, or character of the general blood-stream. But the most important effect of muscularexercise, though it is usually overlooked, is to befound in the structural and functional improvement ofthe nervous system, or rather so much of it as is con-cerned in the regulation and control of the skeletalmuscles. Lack of time forbids my undertaking tofully elucidate this point, though there is abundantand most conclusive evidence that the brain, spinalcord, and nerves depend, for their structural integrityand functional power, very largely upon the normalworking of their executive end organs, the skeletalmuscles.

The effects of exercise upon a single muscle are

chiefly two. On the one hand, there results a generalcondition which may be termed the heightened healthof the neuro-muscular machine, which state of healthinvolves the attainment and maintenance of a nor-mal degree of size, strength, and working power inits structural parts ; and, on the other hand, a more

complex and special effect, viz.,—the acquisition ororganization by its neural parts of proper habits asregards the origination, transmission, and regulationof stimuli. The ends of exercise may be character-ized, then, as the promotion of health and the acquisi-tion of correct habits of action. The first is a hygienicend, while the second is a distinctly educational end.It matters not whether we consider a single muscle,which admits of only a single limited motion, or a

group of muscles, or the communal structure we call

7the human body, or a class of school-children, or a

foot-ball team, or a regiment of soldiers. The ends ofexercise in each case are the same and can only beattained by a combination of hygienic and educationalmeasures.

The main field of education is the nervous s}r stem,and the principles of all forms of physical training,however various and divergent their special ends maybe, are based upon the power of the nervous systemto receive impressions and register them or theireffects ; in other words, upon its ability to memorizethe part it has played in acquired movements, and on

occasion to recall and revive such movements.It is coming to be clearly recognized that the func-

tion of our public and preparatory schools and col-leges is not to fit their scholars to engage as specialistsin either intellectual, commercial, or industrial pur-suits. The same rule holds good as to the kind, orrather degree, of physical training which should beaimed at in our schools and colleges. It is not theirbusiness to train up ball-players, carpenters, clerks, or

professionals of any kind. General bodily training isthe kind demanded ; but training so general that it isvaguely, or spasmodically, or half-heartedly carriedout, or worse still, that is left to run itself in accord-ance with the whim or frenzy of the persons to betrained, will surely and deservedly fall short of suc-cess. Intelligence, system, organization, funds, andpatience are just as indispensable in physical trainingas in the training of engineers, musicians, or philol-ogians.

Pastimes, out-of-door sports, and systematic gym-nastics are the forms of exercise which yield the best

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results in the physical training of school children andcollege students. The plays of the kindergarten, theathletic sports to which British and American youthare so devoted, and the systematic gymnastics of theSwedes and Germans have all developed from one

germ, from healthful play, that is; the vital energy ofthis germ is found in the ineradicable impulse of allhealthy children to play.

In the athletic sports of young men, we see thefullest expression of the play instinct. The essentialdifference between athletics and gymnastics is one ofaim. The aim of athletics, unless of the illegitimateprofessional sort, is pleasurable activity for the sake ofrecreation or rivalry ; that of gymnastics is disciplineor training for pleasure, health, and skill. We havebut to compare the aims, methods, and results of thesetwo departments of exercise and to call to mind thecharacteristics of the nations which have affected ath-letics on the one hand and gymnastics on the other,to perceive that gymnastics are more highly developedand present more features of educational value. Gym-nastics, as compared with athletics, are more compre-hensive in their aims, more formal, elaborate, and sys-tematic in their methods, and are productive of moresolid and considerable results.

I have no disposition to disparage athletic sports.I would that they were more general and better regu-lated than they are in our country. I believe that theyare valuable as a means of recreation ; that they con-duce to bodily growth and improvement; and thattheir moral effects are of great value, since athleticsports call for self-subordination, public spirit, andco-operative effort and serve to reveal the dominant

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characteristics and tendencies, as regards the temper,disposition, and force of will of those whoengage in them. But they bear so indelibly themarks of their childish origin, they are so narrow andvain-glorious in their aims, so crude and unspecializedas to their methods, as to render them inadequate forthe purposes of a thorough-going and broad system ofbodily education. It is well to promote them and itis becoming increasingly necessary to regulate them ;

but it is unwise and short-sighted to consider them asconstituting anything more than a single stage in thebest bodily training.

Gymnastics have been most popular and generalamong the most highly trained nations, such as theGreeks of old and the Germans of to-day. The mostathletic, and at the same time one of the most ill-trained, of modern nations, is the British. I meansimply this : that an Englishman believes, and acts on

the belief, that one comes to do a thing right by doingit, and not by first learning to do it right and thendoing it; whereas the Germans and Swedes leavelittle or nothing to the rule of thumb, not even inbodily education.

It seems to me that the most representative and typi-cal forms of physical training are five in number andmay be styled : (i) the Grecian ; (2) the Mediaeval orKnightly ; (3) the British ; (4) the German; and (5)the Ling or Swedish.

In speaking of the most general features of the fivetypes or national systems under review, it will be con-venient to use the terms agonistic , gymnastic, andathletic, which are derived from Grecian usage. Andycov [agon] meant originally an assembly ; then, an

assembly to witness a contest of some sort. For in-stance, the Olympic games were gymnic agones,being so called because the agonists and antagonistswere yopyoi [gymnoi] or naked. The prizes given tovictorious agonists were termed ahXa [athla], and theterm athlete came to be used to designate a winner,or contestant; later, an athlete, in the worst sense ofthe word, was a prize-fighter governed by professionaland mercenary ends. A gymnast was a trainerprimarily, especially after the agonistic games hadbecome systematized and regulated.

Greek physical training was, then, agonistic, dur-ing the period of its growth, when its main purposewas to afford sport or pastime; it was gymnastic,during the period of its best estate, about the time ofPericles, when its aims were distinctly educationaland ethical; and it became athletic in the worst senseof the word, during the decadence of the institutionsand independent life of the Greeks, when a spiritof mercenary self-seeking and brutal professionalismdominated both gymnasts and athletes.

Using these words in the sense indicated above, weshould term the martial exercises and games of theancient Gauls and Romans agonistic. Out of thesesports and exercises, were developed the physicaltraining of the young page and squire and the chival-ric tournaments and justs, to which the knights ofItaly, France, Germany, Britain, and Scandinaviawere so devoted in feudal times. That training andthose contests were partly agonistic and partly athleticin their nature. The same terms may be applied toBritish sports. They were agonistic and have becomechiefly athletic within the last seventy-five or one him-

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dred years. Athleticism is the dominant note in allBritish jffiysical training, which has but little of peda-gogical aim or method in it and is even less deservingof being called gymnastic than was the mediaeval sortof physical training. German turning is somewhatagonistic in character, though its aims and methodsare gymnastic, in the main. No modern system ofphysical training so well deserves to be styled gym-nastic as does the Swedish system, which has scarcelyenough of the athletic element in it. In the Swedishgymnastics, moreover, we find a high place accordedto medical gymnastics. Indeed, excepting the Gre-cian, no system of medical gymnastics worthy thename is to be found outside of Swedish gymnastics.

For our present purpose, we may take the Grecianand British systems of bodily training as affording themost typical expression of the gymnastic and the ath-letic idea respectively. Although differing widely inmost respects, these two systems are alike in beingdevoid of any admixture of elements acquired throughimitation or borrowing. British sports reflect more

fully, perhaps, than any modern system of physicaltraining, the national spirit of their devotees. Theyare the necessary inherited pastimes of a manly, vigor-ous, self-sufficient folk ; and have never fully outgrownor lost their primitive, not to say pagan, characteris-tics. They have been followed largely for their ownsake and have suffered but slight modification throughthe influence of innovating educators and thinkers,presenting, in this respect, a marked contrast to Ger-man turning and Swedish gymnastics, which, thoughthey bear the impress of national feeling, have beendeveloped chiefly of set purpose on the part of their

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promoters, either as a means for national regenerationor as a remedy for over-refinement and the deteriorat-ing effects of sedentary and urban life. Such modi-fications as are inevitable in British sports are duemostly to efforts to make them more social and general,in short more truly popular. Then, too, the Englishclimate is singularly favorable for the pursuit of athleticsports. The summer is so cool and the winter isusually so mild, in England, that there are compara-tively few days in the year, when one may not, if hewill, engage in out-of-door games of some sort.Indeed, the climate, more than most climates, acts as

an incentive or provocative to active exercise. Mus-cular activity is more conducive to comfort than isquiescence or loafing, in most varieties of Englishweather. Riding is always in season. Foot-ball ispracticable, not only throughout the autumn and win-ter,—in ordinary winters, —but also far into the spring.Rowing may be practised during more than threequarters of the year. Cricket, being dependent on

the state of the turf, is little played but in the springand summer.

The English public schools are peculiarly adaptedto serve as nurseries of the national pastimes. Theoldest of them, Winchester and Eton, were originallyecclesiastical foundations and have served, in a measure,as models for most of the later foundation schools,which as a class have departed less widely from theirmediaeval prototypes than have the secondary schoolson the continent. In England, the public schools,whichare boarding schools for boys from 10 or 12 to 19 yearsof age, enjoy a practical monopoly of secondary edu-cation. On the continent, if we except the French

Lycdes, high class boarding schools for boys are theexception. Moreover, the continental standard of intel-lectual training is higher and the methods of instruc-tion more exacting and severe, so that pupils in aGerman, Swiss, or Scandinavian Gymnasium, or in aFrench Lycee , have much less freedom and leisurethan the boys at Eton, Winchester, or Rugby, wherethe half-holidays average three a week. Force ofpublic opinion generally, and often the rules of theschool, oblige the English boy to take part in theschool games. Owing to the combined influence oftradition, public opinion, and the peculiar organizationof the schools and universities, which set the tone inthe athletic world, British interest in British sports,by reason of its universality, intensity, and intelligence,stands alone. Though teachers and governing boardsare sympathetic and helpful as a rule, British athletics,as an institution, have been shaped chiefly by succes-sive generations of boys and “ Old Boys,” as public-school graduates are wont to be called. It is doubtfulif school and college athletics will ever be properlymanaged in this country, before a generation of teach-ers, presidents, and trustees shall arise, who have en-joyed the advantages of athletic training in their youth.

As regards length of days, British sports come nextto the Grecian games. The tournaments and justs ofthe Middle Ages lasted scarcely 400 years; Germanturning took its rise in the last quarter of the last cen-

tury ; Swedish gymnastics have not reached theirninetieth birthday ; but the history of the Greciangames extends over nearly 1400 years, from the daysof Homer till 394 A. D., the date assigned to the lastcelebration of the Olympic games.

In the breadth and sanity of its aim, in the magni-tude of its proportions, and the completeness of its de-velopment as a national institution, in the perfectionof its organization, in the splendor and solemnity ofits festivals, in its many-sided and abiding influence,as well as in the length of its history and the brilliancyof its record, the physical training of the Greeks hasno parallel. Its history forms a coherent whole, pre-senting wmll marked phases of growth, culmination,and decay and reflecting at every stage the spirit ofthe nation. Athletic contests entered into the worshipof Greek gods and heroes, and the lapse of time wasreckoned in Olympiads to mark the recurrence of theprincipal sacred games. Gymnastics were assignedan enlarged and honorable place in the training, bothfor peace and war, of every free-born boy and youth.The codes of Lycurgus and Solon provided for theorganization and regulation of bodily training; andthe management of it, during its best estate, affordedpositions of honor and emolument to distinguishedand ambitious men. It furnished themes for poets,philosophers, and historians. Sculptors and painterssought the palaestra and gymnasium for their fairestmodels, and even the gi’eatest of Greek physiciansthought it no condescension to study and adopt exer-cises and procedures which had been originated bypaedotribes and gymnasts.

The principal exercises taught in the palaestra andthe gymnasium were: running, leaping, wrestling,throwing the discus, hurling the spear, boxing, andthe pancration, a combination of boxing and wrest-ling. Various games of bail were in vogue, and muchattention was paid to swimming and bathing. The

Greek training was severe, that of candidates for theOlympic games lasting for ten months. It was most-ly conducted in the open air, often under a blazingsun. In their practice exercises and in their matches,the athletes were naked. They were oiled and sandedbefore their exercise and scraped with a strigil, sham-pooed, and bathed after it. Their dietary was alsocarefully regulated ; so, too, were their hours of sleepand practice. In none other of our five national sys-tems of exercise, has “training” been carried to sohigh a pitch or been so well ordered, as it was amongthe Greeks. So far as I know, no especial attention waspaid to dietetic rules by the contestants in eitherknightly or popular games in the Middle Ages ; and“ training,” in the sense in which it is employed bythose who are addicted to British sports, has practicallyno followers in Germany or Scandinavia, outside theranks of professional acrobats and Anglomaniacs.

But the Greek gymnasium was much more thanan aggregation of wrestling pits, running tracks, exer-cise halls, and bathing establishments, surrounded bycolonnades and shady walks. The Athenian gymna-sia were clubs and schools as well, provided withlecture halls and quiet nooks, to which the youngmen and elders of the city resorted for instruction andsocial intercourse. It is noteworthy that, even amongthe Greeks, the word palaestra came to mean aschool; and that the most highly educated of modernpeoples, the Germans, designate the highest of theirsecondary schools by the term gyrjinasium. TheFrench word Lycee , derived from Lyceum the nameof the gymnasium in which Socrates and Aristotletaught philosophy, is used in the same sense as the

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German gymnasium. Antisthenes, the founder ofthe Cynic school of philosophy, taught in the Kynos-arges gymnasium. The masters in art and science,the world over, are content to be styled academicians,in memory of the Academy of Plato, which was oneof the public gymnasia of Athens,

No modern nation has been or is likely to be leav-ened with the Greek leaven. The Grecian type ofphys-ical training has never been reproduced. It mustever remain unique, for the same reasons that forbidus to look for the rise of a new Sparta or a secondAthens. Of modern forms of physical training, theSwedish and the German have more of the broad,idealizing, pedagogical spirit that characterized Greekgymnastics, than has the British. Each of thesenational systems of physical training presents aninteresting and instructive field for study, especiallyas each of them has exerted and still exerts a markedinfluence upon the minds of those who are concernedabout the bodily education of American youth. It iswell to remember, however, that British athleticshave been created by the British boy, who has forcedhis masters to grant him place and time for his sports,sometimes at the expense of the school programme ;

while the school and military gymnastics, whichenter into the training of the Swedes and Germans,have been devised by the teaching class and imposedas school tasks upon the taught. Naturally enough,the American boy, in school and college, is moreemulous ofhis British cousin, than ofhis more remotekindred, the Teutonic or Scandinavian pedagogue.

We come now to a closer consideration of some ofthe more striking features of athletics and gymnastics,

as they are practised in England, Germany andSweden. I will not detain you with any detailedcomparison between Swedish and German schoolgymnastics, as I shall have occasion, in my remarksupon the lantern views which follow, to note thedifferences which characterize British, German, andSwedish methods and usage. I have said nothing ofAmerican systems of physical training, for the reasonthat as yet no comprehensive native system of Ameri-can gymnastics and athletics has been evolved.There are numerous partial and inchoate schemes;but none of them is likely to supplant or supersedeany of the modern national systems of which I havespoken. The American system, when it comes, willprobably be an eclectic system, combining the athleticelement found in British and American sports, thepedagogical principles and procedures of the Swedishschool gymnastics, and certain features peculiar tothe popular gymnastics of the Germans.

A large number of lantern-slides were then shown,for the purpose ofsetting forth the essential differencesbetween athletic sports and school gymnastics.

By means of views, taken from antique statues andvase-paintings, attention was called to the type of men

produced by Greek athletics and gymnastics. Moderntypes were illustrated by means of group-pictures ofEnglish, French, and German school boys. Etonand Rugby being chosen as representative Englishschools, some of their peculiarities as to organizationand management were noted ; the facilities affordedtheir pupils for engaging in cricket, foot-ball, rackets,fives, swimming, and rowing were described ; andtheir most striking features illustrated by views of

grounds, buildings, and players. Rowing, as beingone of the most characteristic of British sports,received especial attention from the speaker, whomade use of a full series of Instantaneous views ofaquatic sports at Oxford and Cambridge, Views ofGerman and Swedish schools, gymnasts, gymnasia,gymnastic exercises and apparatus followed ; and thetwo systems of training were contrasted.

In conclusion, views of several of the most typicalof American college gymnasia were shown. Atten-tion was called to the fact that American educationalauthorities had attempted but little and accomplishedless, toward building up a genuine system of physicaleducation based on sound pedagogical principles andthe best experience ; although they had shown muchzeal and not a little extravagance, especially amongthe in erecting buildings and laying outgrounds for athletic and gymnastic purposes. It wasalso stated that the most expensive and best plannedgymnasia in the world, for the use of girls and women,are to be found in America. The teaching in thebest of the gymnasia for women is in the hands,either of Swedes, or of those who have adopted Swed-ish methods. Just at this juncture, the women’s col-leges and the public schools of Boston, Chicago,Cleveland, and Kansas City are clearly in the lead ofthe schools and colleges for men, as regards the adop-tion of sound and successful methods of instruction inphysical training. There is a crying need, from theprimary school to the university, for genuine teachingin this department. Given well-trained and well-pai'dteachers, and the questions pertaining to brick andmortar and machinery will take care of themselves.