History of sports medicine - 1909

1909

French Professor Augustin Nicolas Gilbert (1858-1927) started a physical therapy course at the Hôtel Dieu in Paris. This training, reserved exclusively for doctors, was a huge success, with the first year enrolling just seven hundred participants. That enormous number made practical training almost impossible, which is why afterwards, further paid courses were arranged to complete the practical training.

1909

In 1909 Robert Tait McKenzie (1857-1938) published his 'Exercise in Education and Medicine'. McKenzie was a Canadian born American sculptor, athlete, physician and scout leader. From 1891 to 1904 he taught at the McGill Medical School and from 1904 to 1931 he was head of the Department of Physical Education and professor at the Medical School of Pennsylvania University in Philadelphia. During World War II, McKenzie served with the British Royal Army Medical Corps. His sculpture career started at a later age. His most famous sculpture is The Ideal Scout, which can be seen in many American cities. The small version dates from 1915, the life-size version from 1937. In 1932 he won the bronze medal in the category 'relief and medallions' in the Art Contest at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. The Joseph B. Wolffe Collection of McKenzies sculptures of athletes is housed on the campus of the University of Tennessee.

1909

'Closed circuit' respiration device of the American physiologist Francis G. Benedict (1870-1957).

1909

Due to the enormous advances in physics, biochemistry and histology, physiology also developed rapidly. At the University of Copenhagen a chair in Anatomy, Physiology and Theory of Movement Studies was even started, where August Krogh (1847-1949) started his career. The Dane was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1920 for his research into pulmonary gas exchange.

1909

Scottish Professor Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton (1844-1916) wrote with a series of contemporaries:

"We do not hesitate to say that we find school and cross-country competitions of more than a mile totally unsuitable for boys younger than 19 years, because the continuous load that goes with them causes probably permanent damage to the heart and other organs."

1909

In 1909, during the opening of the second 'Congrès de Physiothérapie des médecins de langue française' in Paris, French physician Horace Stapfer (1848-1913) welcomed the audience with the words:

"It is a physiotherapist who welcomes you ... The word physiotherapy of which I am the second father after Auguste Georgii (1808-1881) .... In addition to the characteristics of the various physiotherapeutic methods, the ethical and physical problems are discussed, the unlawful exercise and the feeling of physicians-physiotherapists that they are discredited by their colleagues because of the poor image of the manual, exhausting and time-consuming medicine."