Footnotes

[222] Horace Mann (1796-1859), secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education 1837-1848, in the annual reports of the Board and in the ten volumes of the Common School Journal which he edited (1839-1848) had much to say of school sanitation and the importance of instruction in personal hygiene. In pp. 56-160 of the sixth report (1843) he attempted to vindicate the title of a study of physiology and hygiene to “the first rank in our schools, after the elementary branches.” Perusal of successive reports of the annual meetings of the American Institute of Instruction from the first (1830) to the thirtieth (1859), and of the Massachusetts Teacher from 1850 to 1860 (Vol. 3-12) and Barnard’s American Journal of Education 1855-60 (Vol. 1-8) reveals a cumulative interest in the problem of physical education as the end of that period approached. A. A. Livermore’s article in the North American Review for 1855 (81:51-69), Dr. D. W. Cheever’s in the Atlantic Monthly for 1859 (3, 529-543), and Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s series which began in the latter magazine in March of 1858 (afterwards collected and published under the title “Outdoor Papers”) point in the same direction, as do also the twenty-first and twenty-second reports of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1858 and 1859), that of the Boston School Committee for 1859 (pp. 52 ff.), and a report to the New York State Teachers’ Association in the same year. “Tom Brown’s School Days,” first published in April of 1857, presented an attractive picture of vigorous boy-life; and the fourth chapter (Physical Education) of Herbert Spencer’s “Education” (New York, 1860), which had already appeared in the British Quarterly Review of April 1, 1859, was certain to attract attention. The following were the recent manuals available:

Paul Preston’s Book of Gymnastics (Boston, Munroe & Francis, 1842). A new edition, revised, was published in 1861 (New York, Charles S. Francis).

Walker’s Manly Exercises, revised by “Craven” (Philadelphia, John W. Moore, 1856).

P. A. Fitzgerald, “The Exhibition Speaker” (New York: Sheldon, Lamport & Blakeman, 1856). Pp. 223-268 are devoted to “Gymnastics and Calisthenics.”

N. W. Taylor Root’s “School Amusements” (New York, A. S. Barnes & Co., 1857). Pp. 95-143 have to do with gymnastics.

R. T. Trall, “The Illustrated Family Gymnasium” (New York, Fowler & Wells, 1857).

George Forrest (John George Wood!), “A Handbook of Gymnastics” (London and New York, G. Routledge & Co., 1858).

Perhaps we should add that literary and pictorial curiosity, Henry de Laspée’s “Calisthenics, or the Elements of Bodily Culture on Pestalozzian Principles” (London, Darton & Co., 1856). A second edition was published in 1865 (London, Charles Griffin & Co.).

[223] “The Biography of Dio Lewis,” prepared at the desire and with the coöperation of Mrs. Lewis by Mary F. Eastman. New York, Fowler & Wells Co., 1891.

[224] The oldest gymnastic society (Turnverein) of the German type in the United States was the Cincinnati Turngemeinde, organized November 21, 1848. By October of 1853 there were at least seventy in existence, and by September of 1856 ninety-six societies, with a membership of about five thousand, had united into a national body and at least twenty more were known to have been formed. At the outbreak of the Civil War there were a total of one hundred and fifty-seven societies, in twenty-seven states of the Union. See pp. 290 and 291.

[225] The beginning of rowing clubs in the United States goes back to 1833 and the few years following, and in the decade 1850-1860 interest in the sport spread all over the country. Baseball, starting in the forties and fifties, did not become a truly national pastime until the period immediately succeeding the Civil War. The “Caledonian games” of Scotch immigrants, forerunners of our track and field athletics, had been shown in Boston in 1853 and Hoboken in 1857, but did not become widely popular till the later sixties and seventies. Football existed only in its primitive form.

[226] At the fourth commencement exercises of his Normal Institute for Physical Education, March 18, 1863.

[227] See also the “Lectures Delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at Boston, Mass., August 21, 1860, including the Journal of Proceedings, and a List of Officers” (published under the direction of the Board of Censors. Boston, Ticknor & Fields, 1861). The references to Dio Lewis occur on pp. 19-21, 23-25, 45 and 46, and 77 of the Journal of Proceedings. Another report of these sessions is printed in the Massachusetts Teacher, 13, 378-393 (October, 1860).

[228] Lewis had himself published articles on “Physical Culture” in the Massachusetts Teacher for October and November of 1860 (13, 375-377 and 401-406), and in the latter month issued the first number of a monthly periodical, Lewis’ New Gymnastics for Ladies, Gentlemen and Children, and Boston Journal of Physical Culture. Vol. 2 (1862, January-November, with one extra number) bore the title Lewis’s Gymnastic Monthly and Journal of Physical Culture.

[229] It has already been noted (p. 157) that under Branting’s directorship of the Central Institute in Stockholm (1839-1862) foreign physicians began to be attracted by the new system of treatment, and among them Mathias Roth of London. Roth afterwards published “The Prevention and Cure of Many Chronic Diseases by Movements” (London, 1851), a translation of “The Gymnastic Free Exercises of P. H. Ling, Arranged by H. Rothstein” (London, New York, and Boston, 1853), and “Handbook of the Movement Cure” (London, 1856). The first American physicians to write at length on the subject were the Taylor brothers of New York, George H. Taylor “An Exposition of the Swedish Movement Cure” (New York, Fowler & Wells) in 1860, and Charles F. Taylor his “Theory and Practice of the Movement Cure” (Philadelphia, Lindsay & Blakiston) a year later. Bayard Taylor spent the late winter and spring of 1857 in Stockholm, visiting the Central Institute regularly as a “patient,” and described his experiences in letters to the New York Tribune and in his volume “Northern Travel” (London and New York, 1857. Consult pp. 202-206).

[230] George Barker Winship, born at Roxbury, Mass., January 3, 1834, and died at the same place (of heart disease) September 12, 1876. He was educated at Harvard University (A.B. 1854, M.D. 1857), and in June of 1859 gave his first lecture on physical training, with an exhibition of heavy lifting, in Music Hall, Boston, repeating these afterwards in many places throughout the northern states and Canada. In the sixties and early seventies he conducted a private gymnasium on Washington Street, Boston, next door to the Boston Theater. See his “Autobiographical Sketches of a Strength-Seeker,” in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1862 (9, 102-115), an article on “Physical Culture” in the Massachusetts Teacher for April, 1860 (13, 126-132), and an item in the latter magazine for April, 1861 (14, 159). Among the literary announcements of Ticknor & Fields in the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1862, a book on “Health and Strength” by Dr. Winship is mentioned as “in press,” but it seems never to have been published.

[231] Aerztliche Zimmer-Gymnastik, oder Darstellung und Beschreibung der unmittelbaren, keiner Geräthschaft und Unterstützung bedürfenden, daher stets und überall ausführbaren heilgymnastischen Bewegungen für jedes Alter und Geschlecht und für die verschiedenen speciellen Gebrauchszwecke, entworfen von Dr. med. Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber, pract. Arzte und Vorsteher der orthopädischen und heilgymnastischen Anstalt zu Leipzig; 45 xylographische Abbildungen enthaltend, Leipzig, Friedrich Fleischer, 1855. The third German edition of this work was translated by Henry Skelton and published by Williams & Norgate, London & Edinburgh, in 1856, with the title “Illustrated Medical Indoor Gymnastics, or a system of medico-hygienic exercises requiring no mechanical or other aid, and adapted to both sexes and all ages, and for special cases.”

[232] Das Hantel-Büchlein für Zimmerturner, von Dr. Moritz Kloss, mit 20 in den Text gedruckten Abbildungen. Leipzig, J. J. Weber, 1858. Lewis’s translation is made from the second edition.

[233] Das Pangymnastikon, oder Das ganze Turnsystem an einem einzigen Geräthe ohne Raumerforderniss als einfachstes Mittel zur Entwickelung höchster und allseitiger Muskelkraft, Körperdurchbildung und Lebenstüchtigkeit. Für Schulanstalten, Haus-Turner und Turnvereine, von Dr. med. D. G. M. Schreber, Director der orthopäd und heilgymnast. Anstalt zu Leipzig. Mit 108 Holzschnitten im Texte und 107 auf Tafeln. II. Theil der “Aerztlichen Zimmer-Gymnastik.” Leipzig, Friedrich Fleischer, 1862.

[234] See the “Catalogue and Circular of Dr. Dio Lewis’s Family School for Young Ladies, Lexington, Mass., 1867” (Cambridge: Welch, Bigelow & Co., 1867).

[235] Described in his “Gypsies” (Boston, Eastern Book Co., 1881).

[236] Lewis’s published works include, in addition to those already mentioned, “Weak Lungs, and How to Make Them Strong” (1863), “Talks about People’s Stomachs” (1870), “Our Girls” (1871), and “Five-Minute Chats with Young Women” (1874), “Talks about Health” (1871), “Chastity” (1872), and “In a Nutshell” (1883). In 1864 Amherst College conferred on him the honorary degree of Master of Arts.

[237] Dr. E. M. Hartwell, in his first report as Director of Physical Training in the Boston Schools (School Document No. 22, 1891), pp. 35 and 36.

[238] Report of the Commissioner of Education—1891-1892 (Washington, 1894), 1, pp. 517 and 518.