HEALTH AND ATHLETICS : A CASE FOR INQUIRY. BY DR.

C. W. SALEEBY.

NO one has said, for no one knows, the last word on the relation of health to athletics : perhaps because, in the first place, no one has yet learnt the last word about what we call health. Here, at least, we shall remember its etymology, which teaches us that it refers to the whole of our being—not muscles alone, nor muscles, heart and lungs alone, nor even body alone, but all we have and are.

Consider how large the problem is—no longer con- cerning only the youth of twenty. He has a sister : what of her ? Young people may become parents : what of the race ? Arc we to ignore the middle-aged ? Are there factors to consider in the case of the growing child which no longer count for the adult ? May we exalt muscle at the expense of mind, whilst young Germans sacrifice eyes and waist line and easy digestion to the mastery of chemical laws and their applications to world-conquest ? But these questions might be added to indefinitely.

We must assuredly agree as to our object, or all dis- cussion must be futile. Do we desire to produce brave soldiers, fine parents, Olympic champions, prodigies of intellect, or superlative combinations of all these ? Probably few of us are sure as to our answer to these questions ; and even if we believe that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, and that future battles must be prepared for, we may be in doubt as to the exact ratios in which, for instance, courage and chemistry will determine their issue. We may all agree with Herbert Spencer that the first thing is to be a fine animal ; and we shall do well .to agree with him, also, that it is not the last. Let us accept' the old tag, mew sana in corpore sano, and consider the chief questions which are involved in the attainment of -that ancient ideal under modern conditions. And, whilst considering them, let us ask ourselves where the answers to them are most hopefully to be sought.

• Let us begin with the more important of the sexes— Nature having entrusted it with the greater part of the burden of race renewal from generation to generation. Various and contrary answers have been given to the inquiry whether athletics injure womanhood. Herbert Spencer's little masterpiece on education, published in 1861, was potent in liberating girlhood from the stifling and pathogenic shackles of prudery—the devil's counter- feit of modesty—and a false ideal of ladyhood. Have we gone to the other extreme with our touring teams of female footballers ? What is the golden mean ? or, better, the vital mean ? Is it true that normal female functions lapse in the case of women acrobats, who perform " twice nightly " in the halls curiously named of music ; and does that most formidable result obtain in the case of prodigious girl scholars ? There is abundance of assertion, but less evidence. The best and most recent known to me comes from Stanford University, California, and most cogently suggests, by good statistical inquiry over many years, that the open-air and sunlit and athletic life, in reason, promotes every part and function of health of body and mind. We should profit much, in this country, by the assembled and articulated knowledge of our great women obstetri- cians, our students of industrial womanhood, our leading school-mistresses. (It is tempting, but would perhaps be invidious, here and in what follows, to suggest actual names.) To their experience might well be added that of the Girl Guiders, and the women who perform the important tasks of direction at the Polytechnics and similar institutions.

In this present year special experience is being gained by those in charge of the crews and teams and indi- viduals on whom we are to rely for our prospects in the Olympic Games. It may be questioned, however, whether we have yet learnt, in this country, to invoke the medical and physiological knowledge which is really required before opinions on the question are likely to be valuable, and whether there is the faintest chance of our ever winning the Games until such knowledge is brought to bear as extensively and intensively as in the United States.

We cannot usefully discuss health and athletics unless we mean athletics under healthy conditions. But what are those conditions ? We have in this country the greatest living authority on all those problems of respiration, ventilation and clothing which are involved, but I very much doubt whether we have ever used him and his knowledge as we should, whether to win Olympic Games or to promote the healthy recreation of industrial workers.

If and when we do consult him as we should, he will tell us, I am very sure, that the athletics (or anything else, for that matter) which is to be most healthy should be in the open air ; that clothing is, in general, dangerous and often deadly ; and that the unquestionably enhanced health of young women in our time is associated with the much reduced bulk and area of their clothing, and with their much freer and more frequent range of bodily movement.

What is the fate of the athlete in after life ? The question cannot be answered in one word, and the answers are probably reassuring and extremely dis- concerting in different cases. A heart hypertrophied. from whatever cause is a possession which may, indeed, be necessary—as when the hypertrophy compensates for a leaking or contracted- valve—but must always be a cause of concern. Is it worth while to be in your 'Varsity boat at twenty and die of the after effects of•

rowing heart " in your 'forties ? Or is the -innuendo in

• that question unwarranted ? We need such evidence as could be afforded by insurance companies, and by medical men of -long experience who have been leading athletes in their time and have often been consulted by such. On general or a priori grounds I, for one, find it very hard to belieNie that the state of collapse sometimes witnessed at the end of the boatrace and of other races, can really be regarded with equanimity if we care to consider the duration. and quality of the contests of very different kinds in which the young warrior is expected to engage in coming years.

And this raises the question : Which are the best kinds of athletic "events," and which are the best games, duly appraising the physical health factor as well as the psychical and social considerations involved ? Are those girls' schools right which have abandoned hockey and substituted netball ? Is mixed hockey apt to be too strenuous for girls ? Was the present inquirer right when, at school in Edinburgh, he strove to prevent the introduction of golf, to the probable detriment of cricket, on the ground that the Northern game is too slow and too selfish for the young ? In short, is golf really a game or a treatment ?

Games may be considered not only in their first and best aspect as means of joy, not only as direct instru- ments of physical health, not only as, in such cases as cricket and football, teachers of the team-spirit and esprit de corps, but also as counter attractions to mischief or vice. In a recent paper in this place,* I tried to discuss them in that aspect. We should know more about this matter. What have our students of venereal disease to say in addition to the evidence adduced in that paper ; and what have our magistrates and police court missionaries to tell us of the relation between athletics and juvenile delinquency ?

Last, though very far from least, we need more evidence than we yet possess regarding the relation between athletic and intellectual prowess. This is a case where exceptions do not prove the rule. We can all quote marvels who excelled in everything. Fortunately endowed are they ; but it is precisely because they are rare and outstanding that we remark upon them. What is the rule for the ordinary man ? Has he the energy and the recuperative power to do well all round, or must he rob Peter to pay Paul ? Surely our modern psy- chologists, whose science has made such rapid strides in recent years—no less signal than those of physics or physic—could teach us much, and are called upon to learn more, as to the relations between athletic and mental development. And if the psychologists be thought too academic to be trusted alone—as certain fantastic results of alleged tests for mental development might suggest—let us ask the masters in our schools, and not only our great public schools, what, as men of judgment and experience, they do " really and truly " find to be the facts of this subject. For myself, I know only one thing for certain about it—that egregious and evident nonsense often passes current for wisdom upon this as upon all other topics. Of course Aristotle was right, and our task is to find the golden; the more than golden, the vital mean.

- We want neither the consumptive student, nor the nocturnal, alcoholic poetaster, on the one hand, nor the " flannelled fool at the wicket " on the other. We must hold the balance justly between body and soul, for the sake of both. Progress, as I ventured to define it long- ago, is the emergence and- increasing dominance of mind-; the body is the most admirable and marvellous -of all material things ; • it is the organ of organs ; nothing is too good for it ; its laws must be learnt and obeyed ; but it is nought in itself ; its worth is only in and for the organist who plays it from within and whose music we call the life of the Soul.

• • "The Hygiene of Recreation," 'the Spectator, April 5th, 1924.