Questions Suggested by Dr. Sargent's Article on the Athlete.

It is in eresting to note the growing attention of the medical profession to college athletics and scientific physical development. The last number of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal devotes a good deal of space to Dr. Sargent's article in the November Scribner, and mentions several questions suggested by it:-

"The principle is an excellent one that the young man should labor to strengthen his weak points rather than to develop indefinitely his stronger ones. We do not know that it is desirable that young men should aspire to be 'record breakers' in particular sports. It seems to us better that they should be moderately good in all; but we recognize while human nature is what it is, that many will aspire to special excellence. It would be a curious problem in experimental mechanics to decide just how a man should be built to use his strength to the greatest advantage. Dr. Sargent raises the question, but leaves the answer to time and statistics. There is one very important aspect of the subject that we are glad is not overlooked. It is whether the athlete has the strength of constitution necessary to stand the strain of severe muscular exertion. We notice that in the cases of two of the three foot-ball players and rowing men, the lung capacity is said to be insufficient to support the fine muscular development. Indeed other factors have to be reckoned in the inquiry, and some do not lend themselves to tabulation. There are men whose organs show no defect, but who can not bear the strain of prolonged exertion, especially if severe. Some can not sleep, some can not eat, some have nervous disturbances, all of which suggests that mental qualities are involved, as well as bodily ones, in the production of the athlete. We have heard the statement made, by one who knew what he spoke of, that college men who aspire to success in both studies and athletics suffer in their constitutions. To restrain such from exertions which they can not safely make should be, and is one of the duties of a professor of physical culture.

This topic suggests further interesting and vital questions, of which we can mention only a few. What exercise can be recommended to the hard student? He has, perhaps, no knack for games; the weights and bars are to him as cheerful as a treadmill; he can not afford a horse, even if he knew how to ride. To him a walk is about all there is left. It is cruelty to compel him to do work which he loathes, and he is likely to get little encouragement to learn games that he does not know. On the other hand there are those to whom proficiency in games is an instinct, and the gaudium certaminis a stimulant-almost an intoxicating one. To advise these men to take sober walks that they may avoid over-exertion and broken bones, is an absurdity, but they may accept and profit by advice as to how best to develop their powers. Still, to these the monotony of the gymnasium will in the long run become irksome. The tennis player will admit that his right arm exceeds his left, without caring to correct it. He cannot correct it without taking time from his favorite game, and there by injuring his proficiency. Is it likely that he will make this sacrifice from an abstract love of the symmetrical? And is it reasonable to ask that he should? When we consider the numberless varieties of temperament and disposition; of health and courage, of inherited and acquired tests, we see that the physical education of young university men is a task as difficult as it is important, a task likely to tax the best judgment of the university authorities, as the committee on athletics at Cambridge could doubtless testify.