‘Cells or soaring?’: Historical reflectons on ‘visions’ of body, athletics, and Modern Olympism

Abstract

In 1996 Life Magazine produced a special issue dedicated to the Atlanta Olympic games that contained photographs of mesomorphic males and females and the message: by means of intense training Olympic athletes have reached the limits of human endurance and attained ‘the skills and muscles that effect a transformation from mortal to machine’. ‘Mortal into machine’ is quite a different ‘vision’ than the one Pierre de Coubertin aspired to in creating the modern Olympic games. Different, yet co-existing views of athletes appear in scores of publications such as The Olympic Book of Sports Medicine (1984), which contains photographs of graceful skaters and of runners ‘soaring’ over hurdles that are interspersed with schematic representations of myofibrils, axons and motor neurons. By 1887, when the young de Coubertin began his ‘campaign of 21 years’, experimental physiology and other biological sciences were on their way to becoming established disciplines and earlier ways of viewing the body that were grounded in external form were being challenged by mechanistic approaches that delved ever deeper into the body's structures and functions. In 1865 Adolf Fick and Johannes Wislicenus had used a mountain ascent to test German chemist Justus von Liebig's theory of metabolism. Nitrogen balance, cardiac function and other studies of men engaged in a variety of athletic performances soon followed. Writings about ‘the physiology of exercise’ followed two paths: (a) journal articles and monographs such as George Kolb's Beiträge zur Physiologie maximaler Muskelarbeit besonders des modernen Sports (1887) – translated into English as Physiology of Sport (1893); and (b) books such as Fernand Lagrange's Physiology des Exercises du Corps (1888), which is substantially a hygiene text. These differing orientations were fully evident at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, where the Fédération Internationale de Médicine Sportive's gathering focused upon physiological and other investigations of participating athletes. The separate international congress organized by the Dutch Society for Physical Education was planned to include much broader participation. [ 1 ]

Notes

*This essay was originally published in Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies 9 (2000): 1–24.

[1] This paper is based upon my 1999 J. Howard Crocker Olympic Studies Lecture at the International Centre for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario. My sincere thanks to the many faculty, students and staff who made my stay so pleasant, informative and memorable. Thanks also to reviewers for their cogent comments, which helped to better formulate certain points that appear herein.

[2] Three papers published in Landry et al., Sport … The Third Millennium offer remarkable commentaries on the ‘manner in which culture is presented, interpreted and translated through globally televised multicultural performances’: 46. These are: Kang Shin-pyo, ‘The Seoul Olympic Games and Dae-Dae Cultural Grammar’, 49–630; Miguel de Moragas Spà, ‘Spanish Television (TVE) and the Coverage of the Opening Ceremony of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games’, 65–71; and James B. Larson, ‘Commercial Imperatives: NBC's Construction of the Seoul Olympic Games Opening Ceremony’, 73–93.

[3] MacAloon, ‘Olympic Games and the Theory of Spectacle’. See also the detailed historical analyses in MacAloon, This Great Symbol.

[4] An article in the 12 July 1991 Chronicle of Higher Education carried the headline ‘The Human Body and Cultural Conceptions of it Draw Attention of Humanities and Social-Science Scholars’. This literature is now vast. Many sources credit the writings of Michel Foucault with advancing such studies. For example, Discipline and Punish and The Birth of the Clinic.

[5] Among those works that discuss physically dynamic, athletically capable females, Cahn, Coming on Strong merits particular attention. Likewise, the women discussed in works such as Guttmann, Women's Sports are whole, capable, achieving individuals. It could be argued that the now numerous books that discuss male athletes do likewise.

[6] Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture; Hoberman, Mortal Engines.

[7] The term ‘cells’ should be interpreted in the modern biological sense. The author prefers to leave to the reader's discretion the interpretation of the term ‘soaring’ as it appears in this paper.

[8] Views regarding women in the first half of the twentieth century were likely to focus on the reproductive function and most often were shaped by assumptions – stated or unstated – of female incapacity. The entry of the former USSR into Olympic competition accelerated research on female athletes in several former ‘Eastern Bloc’ countries. Puhl et al., Sport Science Perspectives for Women, point to the limited English-language literature that existed prior to the 1972 Women and Sport: A National Research Conference, which called for physiological, biomechanical and other research studies of the female athlete. The Sport Science Perspectives for Women book evolved from a conference sponsored by the United States Olympic Committee Sports Medicine Council in 1985.

[9]‘Naked Power/Amazing Grace’, Life, July 1996.

[10] Hoberman, Sport and Political Ideology, 12.

[11] See Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century.

[12] These are reflected, for example, in debates over works such as Hoberman's Darwin's Athletes.

[13] Channell, The Vital Machine, 8.

[14] Drix et al., The Olympic Book of Sports Medicine.

[15] Galindo, ‘Records Jules Verne Could Not Have Imagined’.

[16] Youlian, ‘What is Sports Biomechanics?’

[17] Leder, The Absent Body, 5–6, 11.

[18] Jokl et al., ‘Sports Medicine in the World’.

[19] The Association Internationale Médico-Sportive, established in 1928, was renamed Fédération Internationale Médico-Sportive et Scientifique in 1933. See Ryan, ‘Medicine’, 628, 631–2. See also the ‘editorial’ by Albert Govaerts (President of FIMS) in the initial June 1961 issue of The Journal of Sport Medicine and Physical Fitness, the ‘Official Journal of the Fédération Internationale de Médicine Sportive’.

[20] Buytendijk, Prolegomena to an Anthropological Physiology, 11, 41.

[21] Frankland had studied with the German chemist Justis von Liebig, an early contributor to studies of metabolism. A very useful analysis of nineteenth-century nutritional and metabolic research is Carpenter, Protein and Energy.

[22] Quoted in Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century, 134. See also: Pavey, A Treatise on Food and Dietetics, 64.

[23] Rabinbach, The Human Motor, 52.

[24]‘Physiological Riddles: How We Act’, Cornhill Magazine 2 (1860), 21–32.

[25] On emerging theories of ‘training’ see Park, ‘Athletes and their Training in Britain and America’.

[26]‘Training in Relation to Health’, Cornhill Magazine 9 (1864), 219–31.

[27]‘Sports, Past and to Come’, Bailey's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes 18 (1870), 191–7; Taine, Notes on England, 48–9.

[28] Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, 37.

[29] Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece.

[30] Wilkinson, Modern Athletics.

[31] Quoted in Jenkyns, Victorians and Ancient Greece, 215.

[32] Hoppin, The Athletic Games and Their Effect on Greek Art.

[33] Cited in Jenkyns, Victorians and Ancient Greece, 221.

[34] Proctor, Strength; and O'Reilly, Athletics and Manly Sports.

[35] White, ‘A Physician's View of Exercise and Athletics’, 1007–33.

[36] Ibid., 1011. Johannes Muller and Herman von Helmholtz were important contributors to several of the physiological sciences; among Emil DuBois-Reymond's contributions was the demonstration that electrical changes accompany muscular action.

[37] For an insightful and very readable account of nineteenth-century cellular physiology see, Harris, The Birth of the Cell.

[38] DuBois-Reymond, ‘Swedish Gymnastics and German Gymnastics’. This was included with other essays and published by the executive committee of the North American Turnerbund.

[39] Langenfeld, ‘Auf dem Weg zur Sportwissenschaft’.

[40] Kolb, Physiology of Sport. Between 1886 and 1890 Kolb had experimented on crews in training at different German rowing clubs. Blood pressures were taken using the sphygmomanometer of Professor von Basch of Vienna and Dr Richardson's sphygmograph; vital capacity by using Waldenberg's apparatus. Cocaine, Kolb determined, had no benefits during the race, but could be useful afterwards.

[41] The significance of the early contributions of German physicians to the eventual establishment of a science of human performance have been discussed in Hoberman's Mortal Engines and in papers that emerged for the conference celebrating the 80th anniversary of the founding of the German Society of Sports Physicians; see Tittel et al., Sportmedizin.

[42] Bonner, Becoming a Physician, 35, 235. These developments were enhanced when the governments of Prussia and Bavarian began to support well-equipped physiological and chemical research institutes that were allied to universities.

[43] See for example, Bonner, American Doctors and German Universities. Edward M. Hartwell, PhD in biology from Johns Hopkins University and MD from the Cincinnati Medical College, and soon to become president of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education spent considerable time in 1889 investigating medical practice and physical education in Germany and Austria. See Park, ‘Edward M. Hartwell and Physical Training’.

[44] Gillmeister, ‘English Editors of German Sporting Journals’.

[45] Hoberman, Mortal Engines, 69–99.

[46] Frank, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, 218.

[47] Marey, La Machine Animale; Zoro, Images de 150 Ans d'EPS, 36, 234–5.

[48] Hoberman, ‘The Early Development of Sports Medicine in Germany’.

[49] Fick and Wislicenus, ‘On the Origin of Muscular Power’.

[50] Carpenter, Protein and Energy, 64–9.

[51] Parkes, ‘Further Experiments’.

[52] Flint, On the Physiological Effects; Pavey, ‘Report of the Analysis of Urine’.

[53] Rubner's insistence ‘that the animal body behaved according to principles that also explained the working of the steam engine’ offered yet another challenge to vitalist beliefs that there was a qualitative difference between living and non-living forms. See Cravens, ‘The German-American Science of Racial Nutrition’, 13l–2.

[54] Atwater and Bryant, Dietary Studies of University Boat Crews.

[55] Carpenter, Protein and Energy, 106–7.

[56] See Park, ‘Athletes and their Training’.

[57] Carpenter, Protein and Energy, 101–14; Chittenden, The Nutrition of Man.

[58] The best account of these matters is Whorton, ‘Athlete's Heart’.

[59]‘The University Boat Races’, Lancet, 1867, 454–5; The Times (London), 10 Oct. 1867, 9.

[60] Morgan, University Oars.

[61]‘Review and Notices’, British Medical Journal, 24 May 1873, 589.

[62] Before the invention of the X-ray and the electrocardiograph the methods available to judge the heart's condition were auscultation, percussion and pulse rate. Many physicians agreed with the eminent cardiologist Sir James Mackenzie, who held that ‘the trained finger’ – taking pulse rates – provided more accurate information than did such instruments, which could not enable the examiner to distinguish hypertrophy from dilatation.

[63] Bradford, ‘Health of Rowing Men’; Meylan, ‘Harvard University Oarsmen’.

[64] Darling, ‘The Effects of Training’ and ‘The Effects of Training: Second Paper’.

[65] Williams and Arnold, ‘The Effects of Violent and Prolonged Muscular Exercise’; Blake and Larabee, ‘Observations on Long Distance Running’.

[66] Hayes was awarded the victory after Italy's exhausted and disoriented Pietro Dorando was disqualified for having received assistance at the conclusion of the race.

[67] Savage et al., ‘Physiological and Pathological Effects’.

[68] Hill et al., ‘The Influence of Oxygen’.

[69]‘Reports of Societies: Medical Society of London’, British Medical Journal 25 (Dec. 1908).

[70]‘Discussion on the Medical Aspects of Athleticism’, British Medical Journal 25 (Sept. 1909), 829–38.

[71]‘School Sports’, British Medical Journal 25 (Sept. 1909), 898.

[72] Geison, Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology, 3, 13.

[73] Quoted in ibid., 13.

[74] Hill, Muscular Movement in Man, 2.

[75] Rous, ‘Foreword’, ix.

[76] Porritt, ‘Medical Science and the Future’. As late as the mid-1990s, editorials in the British Journal of Sports Medicine were lamenting the failure of sports medicine to achieve recognition from either the medical profession or the populace. Sperryn, ‘BSMA and the Recognition of “Sports Medicine”’.

[77] See Park, ‘Physiologists, Physicians’ and ‘Edward M. Hartwell’.

[78] Physical education was a discussion topic at various pre-First World War international hygiene expositions and at events such as Le Troisième Congrès International de l'Éducation Physique de la Jeunesse, Brussels, 1910 and La Conferencia Teórico-Practica sobre Educación Fisica, Mexico, 1911.

[79] Benedict, The Anthropology of World's Fairs; Quanz, ‘The World Fairs of the Nineteenth Century’.

[80] Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture, 3–22.

[81] See for example, Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics, ch. 9.

[82] Coubertin, L'Éducation Athlétique.

[83] In the 1880s and early 1890s, four ‘schools of thought’ vied for favour in France. Although there was considerable overlap in their orientations, the hygienists were more committed to health than to any particular form of exercise. The Swedish and German forms of gymnastics had their adherents; some individuals favoured exercises directed to military needs. De Coubertin's group favoured athletics based upon the English model, with their purported emphasis on ‘manly’ virtues. See in particular MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 136–8 and Arnaud, Les Athlètes de la République.

[84] Coubertin, Une Campagne de Vingt-et-Un Ans, 33–44; Demeny, Procès-Verbaux, Congress International pour la Propagation des Exercises Physiques.

[85]‘The Second Olympiad’, in Coubertin, Olympic Memoirs, 31–7; Demeny, Procès-Verbeaux Sommaires, Congress International de l'Éducation Physique.

[86] Coubertin, Olympic Memoirs, 74.

[87] Juan Antonio Samaranch, ‘Message for the Pierre de Coubertin International Committee’, Comité International Pierre de Coubertin, Lausanne: Secrétariat Général, n.d., 29.

[88] Comité International Olympique, Congress International de Sport, 5–6.

[89] Müller, ‘Après un Siècle d'Olympism’.

[90] Coubertin, Olympic Memoirs, 82; Dépagniat, ‘Introduction’.

[91] Coubertin, The Olympic Idea: Discourses and Essays, 96–7.

[92] Beyer, ‘The International Hygiene Exhibition at Dresden’. The following year the Lancet reported that ‘a committee had been appointed to collect information and to inquire into the question of athletics with a view to putting games on a scientific basis’; however, it would be several decades before any such concerted effort occurred in Britain.

[93] Weissbein and Roth, Bibliographie.

[94] Weissbein, Hygiene des Sports.

[95] This is credited as being the world's first sports medicine organization. See for example, Hollmann, ‘Entwicklung der Sportmedizin in Deutschland’, 240.

[96] Pfister, ‘Sports Medicine in Germany’. See also Hoberman, ‘Sport Medicine in Germany,’ 240–2.

[97] Diem, Die Deutschehochschule für Leibesübungen.

[98] Pfister, ‘Sports Medicine in Germany’.

[99] Berryman, Out of Many, One.

[100] Kieth, The Engines of the Body.

[101] Horvath and Horvath, The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory.

[102]Interested in learning the reasons for American successes in early Olympic games, in 1913 Carl Diem (with three of his countrymen) had visited the United States to observe at first hand the reasons for America's domination in Olympic track and field events. Diem subsequently brought Alvin Kraenzlein (gold medal winner in 1900) to Berlin to give short-term training courses to aspirants for the 1916 games. See Quanz, ‘The Impact of North American Sport’.

[103] Abrahams, ‘On the Physiology of Violent Exercise’.

[104] The original name of FIMS. See, Ryan, ‘Medicine’, 628. The constitution set forth three major purposes: (1) ‘to inaugurate scientific research in biology, psychology, and sociology in relation to sport; (2) to promote the study of medical problems encountered in physical exercises and sports in collaboration with various international sports federations; and (3) to organize international congresses on sports medicine to be held during and at the site of the quadrennial Olympic Games’.

[105] Buytendijk (ed.), Ergebnisse der Sportärztlichen Untersuchungen bei den IX.

[106] J. Van Breemen, ‘Short Review of the Origin of the International Congress on Physical Education and Sport’, Compte Rendu, Congress International d'Éducation Physique et de Sport, Amsterdam, 1–4 Août 1928, Amsterdam: D'Oliveira, 1928, 54–5.

[107] Buytendijk, ‘Conference d'Ouverture’.

[108] MacAloon, ‘Sport, Science, and Intercultural Relations’.