History of sports medicine - 1948

1948

In 1948 American Henry Harrison Clarke (1902-1995), Professor of Physical Education at the University of Oregon and himself a gifted athlete, was the first to use a tensiometer for force measurements, because tensiometers according to him were more accurate than strain gauges, spring scales or dynamometers. Tensiometers measure the tension in a cable or wire when a force is applied to it.

1948

In Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Nordrhein and Bremen, the first national associations for sports medicine were established in 1948, followed in 1950 by Lower Saxony, Westphalia, Hessen, Bayern, Westberlin and Rhineland-Pfalz.

1948

The American Physiological Society, with Professor of Physiology Wallace O. Fenn (1893-1971) at the University of Rochester as its chair, started the publication of the Journal of Applied Physiology (JAP). The journal published high-quality research in exercise physiology.

1948

French physician Jean-Edward Ruffier (1875-1965) developed stress tests and a method of physical education that bear his name. He had a gym in Paris, where he offered his clients orthopedic and medical gymnastics in combination with hydrotherapy and massage. In 1909 he published his first book 'Soyons forts' about bodybuilding. Then a treatise on medical gymnastics (1921) and one on massage (1925). His doctrine was based on the simple and well-known physiological rule 'every fully functioning organ develops, every functioning organ does not degenerate and does not atrophy'. In 1940 he was appointed as a physician at the 'collège national de moniteurs et d'ahlètes d'Antibes' (CNMA), which in 1945 was renamed 'École militaire d'écrime et de sports de combat' (EMESC). In 1948 he opened a physiotherapy institute for children and adolescents in Cannes de Bocage.