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Gymnastics of the organs
The poster reproduced here advertises the fitness training regime of Professor Desbonnet. Edmond Desbonnet (1868-1953), born in Lille, was a health entrepreneur who opened his first school of physical culture in his native city in 1895, and subsequently created a… Continue reading
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The Right to Roam
“I’m a rambler, I’m a rambler from Manchester way I get all my pleasure the hard moorland way I may be a wage slave on Monday But I am a free man on Sunday.” (Ewan MacColl, “The Manchester Rambler”) … Continue reading
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Item of the Month, January 2012: Everard Digby’s De Arte Natandi
As the Olympic Games move ever nearer and as swimming is a sport for which Team GB has high hopes of medal success, we’ve dived into our collections and pulled from their depths one of the most influential works on… Continue reading
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A History of British Sports Medicine
Dr Vanessa Heggie is a Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Here, she describes the background and research to her new book, ‘A History of British Sports Medicine‘. When I… Continue reading
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Pills, spills and the peloton
At regular intervals later this afternoon, 189 young men will launch themselves and their bicycle down a ramp on Rotterdam’s Zuidplein, turn north and explode along the Dordstelaan towards the huge sweep of the Erasmus Bridge, legs pumping and lungs… Continue reading
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This sporting life
Archives and Manuscripts has recently added to its holdings the records of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Medicine (BASEM), founded as the British Association of Sport and Medicine in 1953 to constitute an authoritative body on every medical… Continue reading