Physical education / by Archibald Maclaren.

  • Archibald MacLaren
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physical education / by Archibald Maclaren. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/586
    PREFACE TO THE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION. It is now more than thirty years since the demand for systematized Physical Education began to make itself heard in this country; but the sense of its importance, radiating from the centres of Oxford and Aldershot, has since spread throughout civil and military England, till to-day there is scarcely a town or a depot which does not possess its properly equipped gymnasium. The arrival of the first detachment of non-commissioned officers who, under Major (now General) Hammersley, went through a half year’s course at the Oxford University Gymnasium in 1861, proved the beginning of a system which, under that officer and subsequent inspectors of mili- tary gymnasia, has been the means not merely of materially benefiting the physique of the army, but of giving an impetus to physical education generally, for which as a nation we cannot be sufficiently grateful. Fortunately it is unnecessary, writing at this date, to dwell on the value of gymnastics to all classes of society, and on the necessity of devoting a certain part of the day to the development of the body as well as of the mind. Their value, and the appreciation of their value by the public generally, is sufficiently testified to by the fine