History of sports medicine - 1911

1911

In Dresden, German sports physician Arthur Mallwitz (1880-1968) opened the first institute for sports research, involving many well-known doctors and physiologists, such as René Du Bois-Reymond (1863-1938), Friedrich Kraus (1858-1936) and Georg Friefrich Nicolai (1874-1964). In this laboratory radiological, ergometric and anthropometric studies were performed on athletes. The laboratory was located in the immediate vicinity of a stadium with athletics track, swimming pool and tennis courts, so that the athletes could be examined immediately after their training or competition.

1911

The respiration device from the Finnish physician Georg von Wendt (1876-1954)

1911

The English physiologist Claude Gordon Douglas (1882-1963) developed the Douglas Bag named after him, in which he received air during an exertion test to calculate oxygen consumption. The main criticism for the collection of exhaled air was its permeability to carbon dioxide through the use of rubber. Douglqs solved this by coating the inside of the bag with silver paper and then vulcanizing it.

Through this airtight bag of 100 or 200 liters, the exhaled air of a test subject during muscular work could be guided in such a way that several bags coupled one after the other collected the air at precisely controlled times. During emptying, the contents of the bag was measured with a gas meter.

Previously, a sample of air had been taken via a small tube for the chemical analysis of the O₂ and CO₂ content, first with the gas analyzer of the Scottish physician John Scott Haldane (1860-1936) and later via that of the Swedish physiologist Per Frederik Scholander (1905-1980).

1911

Respirator of the German physiologist Eduard Pflüger (1829-1910).

1911

In 1911, Claude Lauraine Hagen filed a patent in the US for a ‘training-machine’ which featured a treadmill belt. The patent was eventually granted in 1913 and is surprisingly detailed and forward-thinking for the time.
For example, Hagen had envisaged his machine as having the ability to be folded up, allowing it to be easily transported. He accounted for users of varying heights by including movable side rails and even made efforts to reduce the noise the machine would make by attaching four outer posts to essentially raise the belt off the ground – this also allowed the incline to be adjusted.

1911

Swiss physician Wilhelm Knoll (1876-1958) was one of the pioneers of Sports Medicine in his own country. In the context of physical education, he examined the physical growth changes. He presented the results of this study, begun in 1906, at the Hygiene-Ausstellung in Dresden.