ence them toward the maintenance of health and the prolongation of life; and the business of the general public is to give an intelligent assent and a ready obedience, based upon that assent, to the rules laid down for their guidance by such experts. But an intelligent assent is an assent based upon knowledge, and the knowledge here in question means an acquaintance with the elements of physiology.

From our point of view it is quite as necessary, though in a different degree, for the educator, as for the hygienist and the physician, "to know the range of these modifiable conditions" to which Professor Huxley alludes. Those who contemn or ignore the knowledge of such conditions and the means of influencing them, contemn or ignore that fundamental attribute of human nature which renders man capable of self-improvement and perfectibility through the exercise and training of his faculties. We may, and too often do, lose sight of the interde pendence of the mind and body; but none the less is it impossible to separate the two and train either independently of the other; for, as was well said by Sterne, "The body and mind are like a jerkin and its lining. If you rumple the one you rumple the other."

CONCLUDING REMARKS AND SUGGESTIONS.

OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE.

We have now considered the peculiar features of the origin and development in American schools and colleges of physical training in its three principal branches, viz., gymnastics, military drill, and athletics, and have endeavored to indicate the nature and extent of the instruction undertaken in the science of personal hygiene. The present condition of affairs is such as to lead us to hope for even better results than those attained within the last twenty-five years. College authorities and patrons are very generally awake, or are awakening, to the necessity of providing better instruction and facilities for the physical training of the youth of either sex. With a very few, but very marked, exceptions, however, our colleges have not emerged from that stage of development in which the needs of physical training are supposed to be met by the construction and furnishing of a fine gymnasium building. Even in such institutions as have placed their gymnasia and their gymnastics under the charge of a medical director, only a beginning has been ef fected toward organizing the department on a broad, scientific, and thoroughly educational basis. It is a good thing to have taken the control of college gymnasia out of the hands of ignorant and low-toned trainers and athletes. Laudable results have already been brought to pass through putting the department of physical education into the hands of educated medical men. But a much more liberal outlay of imagination and money than has yet been expended in any of our colleges is indispensable to render such departments thoroughly and efficiently adequate to the demands that may fairly be made upon them.

QUALIFICATIONS OF A DIRECTOR OF A COLLEGE GYMNASIUM.

The director of a college gymnasium should possess sufficient academic and professional training to entitle him to a place in the Faculty, and to insure him the respect of his colleagues. The supply to meet even the present demand for such men is not large. The director's duties should be. mainly those of a friendly medical, or rather hygienic, adviser of young men in regard to their habits of study, exercise, and recreation. He should be expected to make a close study of the bodily and mental peculiarities of those under his charge, not only for the purpose of diagnosis in individual cases, but also for the purpose of contributing the results of his observations toward the determination of the physical and mental constants of the student class. The director should have a sufficient staff of assistants subject to his orders to provide safe and graded instruction in the principal gymnastic and athletic specialties. It should be within the director's province to forbid men to take part in contests and exhibitions, when, in his judgment, on account of insufficient or improper training, or because of structural or functional weakness, such participation would be likely to prove injurious. He should also, by lectures or otherwise, give regular and genuine instruction in personal hygiene.

PROPOSED SCHEME FOR ORGANIZING A COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF PERSONAL HYGIENE AND PHYSICAL TRAINING.

The following may serve to indicate what, in the opinion of the writer, should be the ends aimed at in the establishment and maintenance by a college or university, whether for men or women, of a department of personal hygiene and physical training.

Three special ends are to be subserved in such a department:

Firstly, The instruction of students in the laws of health, such instruction to be based upon an exposition of the modern doctrine of the human body.

Secondly, The guidance of students in a systematic attempt to attain sound bodies and vigorous normal functions by means of gymnastic exercise, the use of developing appliances, and the non-abuse of athletic sports and scholastic work, such guidance being based upon a careful examination into and study of the bodily endowments, constitutional peculiarities, and mental habits of the individuals under guidance. The counsel and direction of the director should be seconded by the instruction of special teachers in the principal branches of gymnastics and athletics, such teachers to be subject to his control and supervision.

Thirdly, The scientific study of the natural history of the student class. Toward the furtherance of these ends a well-equipped gymnasium and

ample and conveniently-arranged play-grounds are indispensable, and the director should be expected to give

(I) Instruction (a) by means of lectures; (b) by marking out a course of reading; (c) by anatomical and physical demonstrations; (d) by holding examinations. Undergraduate students should be required and other students allowed to attend such instruction.

The lectures might be grouped advantageously as follows: (1) on the nature and needs of the human body, in connection with demonstrations (a) on the skeleton, (b) with anatomical preparations, and (e) by means of physiological apparatus; (2) on the theory and practice of exercise and training; (3) on selected topies in public and personal hygiene; (4) on the aims and means of modern medicine, with hints as to the selection of medical advisers.

(II) Guidance, by means of personal suggestions, advice, and di rection. Each undergraduate student should be required, and all others encouraged, to undergo a physical examination by the director, in order that he may be enabled to prescribe such exercises and the use of such developing appliances and measures as may be appropriate to the special needs of each individual. Each student should be examined at least twice a year, and the results of such examinations should be carefully recorded and tabulated.

(III) By making statistical and scientific reports of observations and experiments. The director should record, analyze, and discuss the results of his observations, measurements, and examinations; and be encouraged to investigate the problems appertaining to the development and maintenance of normal bodily and mental functions in members of the student class, to the end that physical education may be put upon a rational basis.

It is only through a wise combination of gymnastic training and athletic sports that the best results can be hoped for or attained. Athletic sports can, if wisely managed and supervised, be made most serv iceable in securing manliness and self-control to those engaging in them. The abandonment of them as a general "elective course" to the unregulated control of unripe and inexperienced youth is, to say the least, unwise. He who shall consider intelligently and critically, in the light of our present knowledge of brain and nerve and muscle physiology, the various games and sports which are deservedly popular, and shall show wherein they are valuable as a means to manly and womanly development, cannot fail of contributing greatly to the advancement of pedagogical science.

So dense is the present ignorance, not only of the mass of the people, but also of a large section of the educated portion of the community, concerning the elementary truths of biological science in general and of psycho-physical science in particular, that it would be well-nigh hopeless to attempt to institute and administer any thorough-going system of physical training as a part of the system of public instruction

in even the most enlightened States of the Union. Until the modern doctrine of bodily exercise is more generally apprehended, we can only look for sporadic efforts and fragmentary and discordant results in so much of the field of physical training as the richer and more advanced colleges and universities may occupy. The German, Swedish, and French systems of physical training and of educating teachers in gymnastics are well worth studying; but the greatest present need is to educate trustees, committee-men, teachers, and physicians in physiology and hygiene..

DU BOIS-REYMOND ON EXERCISE.

One of the pioneers and masters in modern physiology, Professor Du Bois Reymond, of the University of Berlin, has given an admirable statement of the physiology of exercise. He says:

By exercise we commonly understand the frequent repetition of a more or less complicated action of the body with the co-operation of the mind, or of an action of the mind alone, for the purpose of being able to perform it better. We seek in vain in most physiological text-books for instruction respecting exercise; if it is given, only the so-called bodily exercises are generally considered, and they are represented as merely exercises of the muscular system; therefore, it is not strange that laymen in medicine, professors of gymnastics, and school teachers, generally believe that. Yet it is easy to show the error of this view and demonstrate that such bodily exercises as gymnastics, fencing, swimming, riding, dancing, and skating are much more exercises of the central nervous system,-of the brain and spinal marrow. It is true that these movements involve a certain degree of muscular power; but we can conceive of a man with muscles like those of the Farnesian Hercules, who would yet be incompetent to stand or walk, to say nothing of his exerting more complicated movements. Thus it becomes clear, if proof were needed, that every action of our body as a motive apparatus depends not less, but more, upon the co-operation of the muscles than upon the force of their contraction. In order to execute a composite motion, like a leap, the muscles must begin to work in the proper order, and the energy of each one of them (in Helmholtz's sense) must increase, halt, and diminish according to a certain law, so that the result shall be the proper position of the limbs and the proper velocity of the center of gravity in the proper direction. Since the nerves only transmit the impulses coming from the motor-ganglion cells, it is evident that the peculiar mechanism of the composite movements resides in the central nervous system, and that consequently exercise in such movements is really nothing else than exercise of the central nerve-system. This possesses the invaluable property that the series of movements, if we may speak thus, which take place in it, frequently, after a definite law, are readily repeated in the same order, with the same swell and ebb and intricacy, whenever a singly felt impulse of the will demands it. Thus all the bodily exercises we have mentioned above are not merely muscle gymnastics, but also, and that pre-eminently, nerve gymnastics, if for brevity we may apply the term nerves to the whole nervous system.

Still, something else than the control of the muscles by the motor-nervous system comes into consideration in most composite movements. The sight, the sense of pressure, and the muscular sense, and finally the mind, must be prepared to take in the position of the body at each instant, so that the muscles may be in a proper state of adjustment; this is plainly shown in the exercises of fencing, playing billiards, ropedancing, vaulting on horses in motion, or leaping down a mountain slope. Thus not only the motor, but the sensor nervous system also, and the mental functions, are capable of being exercised, and need it; and the muscles again appear to acquire a deeper

importance in gymnastics. What is said here of the coarser bodily movements applies equally to all skilled work of the highest as well as of the lowest kind. Although a Liszt or a Rubinstein without an iron muscularity of arm cannot be thought of, and although, likewise, the movements of Joachim's bow during a symphony may correspond to many kilogram-meters, still their power as virtuosos resides in their central nerve-system. When Lessing asked whether Raphael would have been any the less a great painter if he had been born without hands, he perceived this truth. Is it necessary to add that the same principle applies to all the movements as well as to those of the hands? that, for example, vocal culture rests upon no other one?

The modern ideal of manly excellence is more nearly related to the Greek ideal than to the monkish or even the knightly. When modern methods for the realization of the modern ideal are perfected, they will doubtless as far surpass the methods of the Greeks as the physiology of Du Bois Reymond surpasses that of Plato. Meanwhile, the true end and aim of physical training in America is the same that Plato enunciated, namely, that the bodies of the trained may, better than those of the untrained, minister to the virtuous mind.

And once more [to continue in Plato's words], when a body large and too strong for the soul is united to a small and weak intelligence, then, inasmuch as there are two desires natural to man, one of food for the sake of the body, and one of wisdom for the sake of the diviner part of us, then, I say, the motions of the stronger, getting the better and increasing their own power, but making the soul dull and stupid and forgetful, engender ignorance, which is the greatest of diseases. There is one protection against both kinds of disproportion,-that we should not move the body without the soul, or the soul without the body, and thus they will aid one another and be healthy and well balanced. And therefore the mathematician, or any one else who devotes himself to some intellectual pursuit, must allow his body to have motion also, and practice gymnastics; and he who would train the limbs of the body should impart to them the motions of the soul, and should practice music and all philosophy, if he would be called truly fair and truly good.

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