SPORT PERIL TO WOMEN

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 129, 3 June 1922, Page 14

SPORT PERIL TO WOMEN

MEDICAL ALARM

SEARCHING INQUIRY BEGUN.

"Englishwomen as a race are heading straight for sex extinction, unless there are speedy -and, fundamental changes in the prevailing system of physical educa-> tioii' for the modern girl." This startling statement was made to a London Daily Express' representative by Mr. George Chalmers, secretary of the College of Preceptors, Bloomsburysquare, where a joint committee has been formed, representative of the medical and teaching professions, in an endeavour to stay the peril of this threatened extinction.

-^-."Increasing, numbers of medical men Tand' women, .scientists, biologists, head ; ■mistresses; of ; colleges and high schools and universities,' are coming to the conclusion that,, in. a. generation or so, women as a sex will no longer exist,. if they are further 'develooed in the modern masculine mode of physical instruction," added Mr. Chalmers. -' INVESTIGATION. "JCri view of ;.the urgency of.the situation and the sound scientific and / medical opinion submitted to us, we have formed this joint committee to conduct a thorough ,■; investigation: into the matter 411-over. the. country .. ■ ■ . "The'committee represents the British Medical ; Association; the Royal Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians, the British Medical Women's Association, and includes theimo^t : eminent representatives of the teaching: profession in all its ramifications. Among the members of the committee are Sir Charles Ryall, Dr. Alice Sanderson Clow, and Miss Cowdray, head of the Crouch End School and College. . ..... ADOLESCENCE. ■ "We particularly seek opinions' from teachers and head mistresses oh the physical effects they have observed' on their pupils of gymnastics, with and without apparatus, and especially the effects of such strenuous games as hockey, football, swimming, rowing, horse-riding, foot-racing, and lacrosse. We are also making inquiries in regard to the personal influence exercised by drill and games, mistresses on adolescent girlhood. .■/..' "From medical men and women and • the hospitals we : are anxious to collect statistics of the sterility of the sporting types,.of : women—the typical products of our modern schools for girls. "The medical profession has long had misgivings about our present system of .physical instruction for women, and many of its most distinguished members are continually asserting from their own experience that the functions of motherhood are impaired by these strenuous games, and that they cause incalculable suffering to women in later years. "Added to this, we have had sound scientific opinions submitted to us by ■eminent biologists, pointing, out' that in these strenuous games women are spending all their 'capital,' with the consequence that they jire producing an emasculated lace of men. • ' TWO ELEMENTS. ' j "These biologists also point out that woman has a male as well as a female element in her composition, and that the accumulated effects of the present system of training tend to develop only the ranale in her, with the consequencei that we shall soon have a species of human being who is neither man 'nor woman. "We are working on the assumption that there is a fundamental difference in the organism of a man and woman—that our girls can be tauehf to exercise healthily without blindly imitating the ■violent games of men and boys.

-'"We desire that stress should be laid; on the fact that' this is not an anti.feminist move., ...On the .contrary,.. the most distinguished members of the committee aver that women, as the mothers of the race, are superior to men."