Gymnastics allies itself to biometric work. The present academic zeal
for physical development is in great need of closer affiliation with
anthropometry. This important and growing department will be
represented in the ideal gymnasium of the future--First, by courses,
if not by a chair, devoted to the apparatus of measurements of human
proportions and symmetry, with a kinesological cabinet where young men
are instructed in the elements of auscultation, the use of calipers,
the sphygmograph, spirometer, plethysmograph, kinesometer to plot
graphic curves, compute average errors, and tables of percentile
grades and in statistical methods, etc. Second, anatomy, especially of
muscles, bones, heart, and skin, will be taught, and also their
physiology, with stress upon myology, the effects of exercise on the
flow of blood and lymph, not excluding the development of the upright
position, and all that it involves and implies. Third, hygiene will be
prominent and comprehensive enough to cover all that pertains to
body-keeping, regimen, sleep, connecting with school and domestic and
public hygiene--all on the basis of modern as distinct from the
archaic physiology of Ling, who, it is sufficient to remember, died in
1839, before this science was recreated, and the persistence of whose
concepts are an anomalous survival to-day. Mechanico-therapeutics, the
purpose and service of each chief kind of apparatus and exercise, the
value of work on stall bars with chest weights, of chinning, use of
the quarter-staff, somersaults, rings, clubs, dumb-bells, work with
straight and flexed knees on machinery, etc., will be taught. Fourth,
the history of gymnastics from the time of its highest development in
Greece to the present is full of interest and has a very high and not
yet developed culture value for youth. This department, both in its
practical and theoretical side, should have its full share of prizes
and scholarships to stimulate the seventy to seventy-five per cent of