History of sports medicine - 1896-1899

1896

During the 1896 Olympic marathon, medical men followed behind the runners in carts acting as ambulances.

1896

The bicycle ergometer was invented in 1896, when French physician and physiologist Elisée Bouny (1872-1900), a pupil of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904), installed a mechanical brake on the rear wheel of an ordinary bicycle raised from the ground. to quantify the endurance of cyclists. Initially the intensity increase of this 'fixed machine' happened via brake pads, on which several weights were laid. Later they braked with a brake cable.

This made it possible for Bouny to carry out experiments on the Paris cycling track 'Champs de Mars' with an ordinary bicycle, so he carried out the first ergometric field tests.

1898

British surgeon Sir William Henry Bennett (1852-1931) introduced London doctors to massage as a treatment modality for new fractures and he established a massage department at St George's Hospital. However, his most important contribution to medical science was a paper in which he introduced a surgical procedure of posterior rhizotomy for the relief of spasmodic pain in a lower extremity.

1898

In August 1898 a 72-hour race was contested at the Paris 'Velodrome Parc des Princes'. In the picture, caregiver Stein massages one of the participants in this difficult test.

1899

Americans Wilbur Atwater (1844-1907) and Francis G. Benedict (1870-1957) had test subjects do metered work on a bicycle ergometer.

That bike drove a dynamo of which the generated electricity and heating was used as a yardstick for the work carried out. Both also developed the first electromagnetic brake on a bicycle ergometer in 1912.

1899

Ferdinand Hueppe (1852-1938), a German Professor of Bacteriology and Hygiene, but also the first chairman of the German Football Association, wrote the fundamental work 'A Textbook of Hygiene', which covered the entire discipline of exertion physiology from those days. In 1911 he added 'Hygiene of physical exercises'.