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Physicians, Scientists, Exercise and Athletics in Britain and America from the 1867 Boat Race to the Four-Minute Mile

2011; Routledge; Volume: 31; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17460263.2011.554716

1746-0271

Roberta J. Park,

Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

Interest in studying the social, cultural, political and economic history of athletics and other physical activities has grown extensively during the last four decades and a growing number of academics have come to realize that there is much to be learned about the salience of 'sport' in human societies. With few exceptions it is only recently that historical studies of what now are referred to as 'exercise science' and 'sports medicine' have begun to appear. To better understand why – and how – these emerged and evolved it is important to attend to what Thomas Neville Bonner stated in his 1995 book Becoming a Physician: Medical Education in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, 1750–1945: look beyond 'exclusively national terms' and try to understand how 'national differences' have effected developments. It is no less important to give due attention to values that were an integral part of modern sports as these developed in different countries from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. In 1953, when Americans already had become quite interested and involved in the 'scientific' study of many parameters of athletic performance, Sir Stanley Rous would reiterate what Archibald Vivian Hill (co-recipient of the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine) had stated more than two decades earlier: 'For a people to whom sport is a serious matter, the British go about their games in a surprisingly unserious way … [W]ho cares what effects [running] has on the chemical structure of a certain muscle.' This article endeavours to shed much-needed light upon these and related matters.