Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1887 — The Physical Training of Girls. [ARTICLE]

The Physical Training of Girls.

It is not uncommon for members of the medical profession to inveigh against the world-wide neglect of the important elements of amusement and physical training in girls’ schools. That so Tittle has been accomplished in the direction of correcting the evil is probably to be attributed to the fact that those who have treated of the subject publicly have for the most part contented themselves with portraying and condemning the existing state of things, and have made very few definite or practical proposals for remedying ~itr~'37striking excepfloins to be found in an address lately read before the Gloucestershire branch of the Brit sh Medical Association by Dr. Hynor W. Batten, senior physician to the Gloucester Infirmary. The speaker did not restrict himself to tracing the increased prevalance of amemia and the like largely terthe neglect of girls’ physical education, but outlined what seems to be a very practicable and attractive scheme for providing school girls with a due amount of open air exercise having the character not of a perfunctory routine, but of wholesome and invigorating sport. He would have at least two half holidays a week devoted to games played in a large open space, and, in the absence of special reasons to the contrary, every girl required to take part and to wear a suitable costume. He properly lays stress on the need of varying the games, and justifies the requirement by calling attention to the lack of symmetrical developments' "in the devotees of any one form of ex-

excise, specifying “the contracted chest and stoop of a mere cyclist." Among the exercises that he would have practiced are swimming, fencing, cri -ket, foot-ball, fives and tennis, and such games of speed and endurance as prisoners’ base, cross-touch, etc. Dr. Batten thinks that the governing bodies of the higher schools should first be led to move in the matter, and he urges that it is the duty of medical men to seek by all means to influence them to do so.— -New York Medical Journal.