be well to summarize from experience the internal workings and relations of various agencies in a state where the state university is the center of all educational movements.

To create interest1 there was organized or rather reorganized under the joint management of representatives of the athletic boards of the leading institutions of the state a State Intercollegiate Athletic Association; there was also organized, under the joint management of a student and a high-school principal or city superintendent from each town or city, a State Interscholastic Association, which insisted not merely on clean sport but on such age and weight classification of teams and contestants as would insure the least possible danger of strain, and required a well-defined amount of preliminary training under care of a physical director; a State Physical Education Society was organized as a section of the State Educational Association to discuss those matters vital to the development of physical education in the state. There was brought into its membership leading city superintendents, principals, and teachers, to discuss the real problems of the health and strength of the average boy or girl, as well as the supervision of the athletic few, and the matter of interest in physical education took care of itself, for the meetings of the physical education section were crowded. People can be interested in a practical thing; a further means of increasing interest was thru lectures by the physical director on the university extension plan.

The interest created was naturally met by the organization of a thoro course in physical education in the university. This course was taken in conjunction with undergraduate work leading up to the degree of B.S. The electives allowed to undergraduates covered the two solid years allotted to this course. The same kind of course should be introduced into all our state normal schools as well as universities.

Three years of pressing home the ideals of physical education thru the foregoing agencies resulted in a general demand for thoro training in physical education on the part of teachers turned out by the State University. At the end of the fourth year of such a campaign, out of the 150 applications to the department of education in the University of Nebraska for teachers, but six applications failed to lay especial emphasis upon the knowledge of physical training as a qualification of the teachers sought.

The foregoing items deemed essential can only be secured thru the development of a national system of physical education, working down from a national university thru state universities, normal schools, high schools, and public schools. This is the only answer to our needs. It succeeds in Sweden, Germany, and even the youngest sister among the nations-Japan-is fast perfecting a more thoro system than obtains in this country.

Such a movement must be developed from above downward, and from below upward: From above downward, by the establishment of a national institute of physical education as a part of our national university at Wash

1 Vide Hastings, Manual for Physical Measurements, 1902.

ington, a place for research in the physiology, hygiene, and psychology of exercise, and where its adaptation as a preventive agency and as a curative function may be investigated by advanced students, a place for the final preparation of directors of physical education for state universities, state normal schools, and for public-school supervision in large cities.

In each state normal school there must be provided a course of three or four years of solid work for the training of physical directors of public and high schools, who shall serve as assistants under the general supervisors of physical education in large cities. These normal schools must, in addition, require thoro training in physiology and hygiene of all teachers, and enough practical work to keep the prospective teacher in health, and enable her to give all the practical work to be taught in grammar-school grades.

From below upward, the fruit of this systematic training in public schools will result in an increasing number of teachers with healthy, well-trained bodies, to whom the practical gymnastics is not wearisome labor, but enjoyable exercise. The prospective teacher must not be a member of the awkward squad made over for self-development or philosophical interest, but a healthy, well-trained, well-poised, wholesome individual, having grown up in this work.

With a thoro corps of teachers with solid training, theoretical and practical, from above and from below, and with effective organization and supervision thru a national bureau of control, national health is an assured fact.

But we have no national system of physical education; we have no national correlation of forces responsible for the organization of either the content of such a system or for the supervision and adjustment of the relative function. of departments.

This movement does not demand so much expenditure of money as good executive handling and energy.

The chief essentials are a model gymnasium, a well-outlined course in physical education, the employment of experts from all over the United States for technical lecture courses, in addition to the work of the regular university faculty in the national university at Washington, the employment of special lecturers for university extension work in various states, and above all an efficient director of physical education to plan and execute the whole.

An appropriation by Congress for this gymnasium and a few thousand per year judiciously spent would in ten years change our hit-and-miss methods into the beginnings of a very respectable national system.

To summarize: In order to prepare teachers for the successful prosecution of this work, the following agencies are essential:

1. Regular courses in physical education of from two to four years in the curriculum of every state normal school and in leading private normal schools for the training of public- and high-school physical directors and for the health and training of the average teacher.

2. Similar courses in every state university and in leading private

universities for the training of college and preparatory-school physical directors.

3. A National Institute of Physical Education connected with the National University at Washington, for research in physiology, hygiene, and psychology of exercise, and in the adaptation of exercise as a preventive, curative, and developmental agency, where directors of physical education for universities, normal schools, and for the public schools of large cities may be trained.

4. The development of a strong department of supervision and university extension under the Bureau of Education at Washington, with an energetic departmental head, who shall act also as head of the National Institute of Physical Education, and plan and execute the whole movement.

In closing, allow me to move the appointment of a committee to memorialize the next United States Congress, presenting the urgent demand for governmental action in securing national health and vigor thru a national system of physical education.

SHOULD THE

TEACHER OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN
PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAVE THE TRAINING OF A PHYSI-
CAL DIRECTOR AND INSTRUCTOR IN HYGIENE OR
THAT OF A PHYSICIAN?

DUDLEY ALLEN SARGENT, M.D., DIRECTOR OF HEMENWAY GYMNASIUM
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

No one can fail to recognize today the tremendous changes that are taking place in the popular mind as to the exact function of education and the province of the medical and clerical professions. In the recent meeting of the American Medical Association in Chicago the president in his address took the ground that "a new duty of the medical profession was the education of the public in scientific medicine." At the same time a large assembly in Boston, mostly clergymen, the so-called Emanuel Church movement, were advocating the value of prayer and auto-suggestion as a means of alleviating the mental and physical ills of mankind. Health in education, for education, and by education, has long furnished a series of diversified themes for educational conferences. It would be futile for me in the brief time allotted to this paper to attempt to trace the causes that have led to these great changes in the fundamental conceptions of health and disease. As long as sickness, suffering, and death were regarded as dispensations of Providence-which only the intervention of the priest or the medicine man could relieve-all efforts toward the prevention of disease were of little avail. The people of the past were overawed by fear, superstition, and ignorance-and in many cases the ministers and physicians knew that they were powerless to help them. With the knowledge that has come to us thru the advancement of science, more particularly through the discoveries of the microscope, all this has been changed. We now know the cause of much of our ill-health and inefficiency and the origin of very many diseases. The responsibility can no longer be shifted on

to Fate or Divine Providence. It rests largely upon the enlightened members of the community, and educators, ministers, physicians, and the professions generally are morally bound to take their share. The question for us to decide today is, How shall this responsibility of health in education be divided? In other words, "Should the teacher of physical education in public schools have the training of a physical director and instructor in hygiene or that of a physician ?"

As an aid to the solution of this problem, let us turn again to the discoveries of science and the records of experience. From an educational point of view the objects of employing either a physical director, instructor in hygiene, or a physician in the public schools are presumably the maintenance of health, the elevation of the normal standard of living, and the prevention of disease and premature death. The causes that are most likely to interfere with health and invite disease and death may be divided into two great classes that occur with about equal frequency. These are termed (1) intrinsic or constitutional, and (2) extrinsic or environmental. The intrinsic causes or the diseases that arise from within may be due to the defective structure of one or more parts of the body inherited or acquired, or they may be due to the failure of one or more organs properly to perform their functions. In either case we may have rheumatism, gout, scrofula, etc., occurring on account of defective structure, or we may have defective structure and consequent disease arising from feeble digestion, poor circulation, disordered liver, or weak lungs. Where a feeble structure or imperfect apparatus is inherited, this may lead to a constitutional disability which is very difficult to overcome. It may take generations of right living to do away with a family taint or weakness.

What our schoolboy athletes often do when left to themselves is to test or try out those who are constitutionally strong, and separate them from those who are constitutionally weak. Yet it is in the perfecting of structure, the improvement of function, and the building up of constitutional vigor-as I shall hope to show-that the great opportunity for the physical director lies.

The extrinsic or environmental causes of diseases arise, as the name implies, from external conditions. These may be anything or everything that occasion accidents—as heat, cold, fire, water, wind, storms, blows, falls, and poisons. The principal causes of the diseases of extrinsic origin are now known to be germs that invade the system from without. Such is the origin of smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis. Now it is the province of the hygienist to acquaint himself with all the agents of health, the nature and scources of food, water, and air, and inform us of the best location for schools, habitations, the best methods of lighting, heating, ventilating, plumbing, and what occupations are beneficial or injurious to health, while it is more particularly the province of the physician to inspect the school children and look for the first signs of disease which his experienced eye may detect. The examination of the skin, eyes, ears, teeth, and throat may not only lead to the discovery of local and functional defects which are impair

ing a child's mental and physical efficiency, but it may lead to the discovery of a case of scarlet fever, or diphtheria which if not speedily removed may be the beginning of an epidemic. The child so afflicted should not only be removed from school, but the source of the disease, as far as possible, should be traced to its fountain-head. When discovered, a further responsibility rests upon the physician and the board of health, to see that the disease does not spread thruout the community. Here then would seem to be a natural division of labor in a very large subject—a subject that touches the lives of all the people and the occupations of the farmer, the manufacturer, the tradesman, the architect, the builder, the transportation agents, and very many Indeed the subject of hygiene in all of its ramifications is so vast that no one man can begin to master its details.

more.

We have said that the causes which occasion disease and death may be divided into two great groups-constitutional and environmental. But we know that men of a vigorous constitution do not always succumb to conditions and diseases due to environment, while those who are weak or have a feeble constitution are not only the first to contract the diseases that enter the system from without, but are also the first ones to succumb to diseases that arise from within. This complicates the problem. Inasmuch as the children of the public schools represent the weak as well as the strong, come from homes that may be sanitary or unsanitary, and live in communities that may be active or indifferent to the requirements of public health, the health specialist, be he a physical director, hygienist, or physician, must broaden his field of observation. In other words each of these specialists must know something of structure, something of disease, and something of environment, in order to comprehend and meet intelligently the problems that arise in his own sphere of action.

The chief province of the physical director should be to make the weak strong, the crooked straight, the timid courageous. He should strive by every means within his power to develop harmoniously all parts of the body. He should improve as much as possible the functional capacity of the vital organs and internal mechanism—including heart, lungs, stomach, brain, and nervous system. He should increase the power of the neuro-muscular system for selfpreservation, skilled labor, and for educability in the arts and sciences. Finally he should endeavor to increase the constitutional vigor of his pupils, and augment their power to withstand fatigue and resist disease. In order to accomplish these manifold results, some of them appearing to be almost antagonistic, the physical director should have a broad and liberal education. He should be well grounded in English and have a reading knowledge of French and German. He should be familiar with elementary physics, chemistry, zoology, and botany. For professional studies he should have taken courses in anatomy, physiology, histology, personal and school hygiene, and the hygiene of occupation, anthropometry, physical diagnosis, applied anatomy, remedial and corrective gymnastics, and massage. He should know how to meet emergencies