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GYMNASTICS AND GYMNASIUM , terms signifying respectively a system of physical exercises practised either for recreation or for the purpose of promoting the health and development of the body, and the building where such exercises are carried on. The gymnasium of the Greeks was originally the school where competitors in the public games received their training, and was so named from the circumstance that these competitors exercised naked (-yvv6s). The gymnasium was a public institution as distinguished from the palaestra, which was a private school where boys were trained in physical exercises, though the term palaestra is also often used for the part of a gymnasium specially devoted to wrestling and boxing. The athletic contests for which the gymnasium supplied the means of training and practice formed part of the social life of the Greeks from the earliest times. They were held in honour of heroes and gods; sometimes forming part of a periodic festival, sometimes of the funeral rites of a deceased chief
victor in any athletic contest, though he gained no money prize, was rewarded with the honour and respect of his fellow citizens; and a victory in the great religious festivals was counted an honour for the whole state. In these circumstances the training of competitors for the greater contests became a matter of public concern; and accordingly special buildings were provided by the state, and their management entrusted to public officials. The regulation of the gymnasium at Athens is attributed by Pausanias (i. 39. 3) to Theseus. Solon made several laws on the subject; but according to Galen it was reduced to a system in the time of Cleisthenes. Ten gymnasiarchs, one from each tribe, were appointed annually. These performed in rotation the duties of their office, which were to maintain and pay the persons whogreat Athenian festivals, to exercise general supervision over the morals of the youths, and to adorn and keep up the gymnasium. This office was one of the ordinary Xerrovpyia. (public services), and great expense was entailed on,the holders. Under them were ten sophronistae, whose duty was to watch the conduct of the youths at all times, and especially to be present at all their games. The practical teaching and selecting of the suitable exercises for each youth were in the hands of the paedolribae and gymnastac, the latter of whom also superintended the effect on the constitution of the pupils, and prescribed for them when they were unwell. The aleiptae oiled and rubbed dust on the bodies of the youths, acted as surgeons, and administered the drugs prescribed. According to Galen there was also a teacher of the various games of ball. The gymnasia built to suit these various purposes were large buildings, which contained not merely places for each kind of exercise, but also a stadium, baths, covered porticos for practice in bad weather, and outer porticos where the philosophers and men of letters read public lectures and held disputations. The gymnasium of the Greeks did not long remain an institution exclusively devoted to athletic exercises. It soon began to be applied to other uses even more important. The development arose naturally through the recognition by the Greeks of the important place in education occupied by physical culture, and of the relation between exercise and health. The gymnasium accordingly became connected with education on the one hand and with medicine on the other. Due training of the body and maintenance of the health and strength of children were the chief
The Greek institution of the gymnasium never became popular with the Romans, who regarded the training of boys in gymnastics with contempt as conducive to idleness and immorality, and of little use from a military point of view; though at Sparta gymnastic training had been chiefly valued as encouraging warlike tastes and promoting the bodily strength needed for the use of weapons and the endurance of hardship. Among the Romans of the republic, the games in the Campus Martius, the duties of camp life, and the enforced marches and other hard-ships of actual warfare, served to take the place of the gymnastic exercises required by the Greeks. The first public gymnasium at Rome was built by Nero and another by Commodus. In the middle ages, though jousts and feats of horsemanship and field sports of various kinds were popular, the more systematic training of the body which the Greeks had associated with the gymnasium fell into neglect; while the therapeutic value of special exercises as understood by Hippocrates and Galen appears to have been lost sight of. Rousseau, in his Emile, was the first in modern times to call attention to the injurious consequences of such indifference, and he insisted on the importance of physical culture as an essential part of education. It was probably due in some measure to his influence that F. L. Jahn and his followers in Germany, encouraged by the Prussian minister Stein, established the Turnplatze, or gymnastic schools, which played an important part during the War of Liberation, and in the political agitations which followed the establishment of the German confederation by the Congress of Vienna. The educational reformers Pestalozzi and Froebel emphasized the need for systematic physical training in any complete scheme of education.The later development of the classical gymnasium (when it had become the school of intellectual culture rather than of exclusively physical exercise), and not the original
It was not until near the end of the loth century that gymnastics were recognized in England as anything more than a recreation; their value as a specifically therapeutic agent, or as an article in the curriculum of elementary schools, was not realized. More recently, however, educationists have urged with increasing insistence the need for systematic physical training, and their views received greater attention when evidence of deterioration in the physique of the people began to accumulate. During the first decade of the zoth century more than one commission reported to parliament in England in favour of more systematic and general physical training being encouraged or even made compulsory by public authority. Voluntary associations were formed for encouraging such training and providing facilities for it. Gymnastics had already for several years been an essential part of the training of army recruits with exceedingly beneficial results, and gymnasia had been established at Alder-shot and other military centres. Physical exercises, although not compulsory, obtained a permanent place in the code for elementary schools in Great Britain; and much care has been taken to provide a syllabus of exercises adapted for the improvement of the physique of the children. These exercises are partly gymnastic and partly of the nature of drill
The appliances vary to some extent in different gymnasia, some of the more complicated requiring a greater amount of space and involving a larger cost than is often practic- Oym. able. But where these considerations are negligible, aas'c aRPeratus. substantial uniformity is to be found in the equipment ~' of gymnasia not designed for specifically medical purposes. The simplest, and in many respects the most generally useful, of all gymnastic apparatus is the dumb-bell. It was in use in England as early as the time of Elizabeth, and it has the advantage that it admits of being exactly proportioned to the individual strength of each learner, and can be adjusted in weight as his strength increases. The exercises that may be performed with the dumb-bell, combined with a few simple drill
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Before the end of the 19th century the therapeutic value of gymnastics was fully realized by the medical profession; and a number of medical or surgical gymnasia came into existence, provided with specially devised apparatus for the treatment of different physical defects or weaknesses. The exercises practised in them are arranged upon scientific principles based on anatomical and physiological knowledge; and these principles have spread thence to influence largely the practice of gymnastics in schools and in the army. A French medical writer enumerates seven distinct groups of maladies, each including a number of different complaints, for which gymnastic exercises are a recognized form of treatment; and there are many malformations of the human body, formerly believed to be incurable, which are capable of being greatly remedied if not entirely corrected by regular gymnastic exercises practised under medical direction. The value of gymnastics both for curing defects, and still more for promoting health and the development of normal physique, is recognized even more clearly on the continent of Europe than in Great Britain. In Germany the government not only controls the practice of gymnastics but makes it compulsory for every child and adult to undergo a prescribed amount of such physical training. In France also, physical training by gymnastics is under state control; in Sweden, Denmark, Switzer-land, Italy, Russia, systems more or less distinct enjoy a wide popularity; and in Finland gymnastics are practised on lines that exhibit national peculiarities. The Finns intro-duce an exceptional degree of variety into their exercises as well as into the appliances devised to assist them; women are scarcely less expert than men in the performance of them; and the enthusiasm with which the system is supported produces the most beneficial results in the physique of the people. Inter-national gymnastic contests have become a feature of the revived Olympic dames (see ATHLETIC SPORTS), and in those held at Athens in 1906 a team of Danish ladies took part in the competition and proved by their skilful performance that gymnastics may be practised with as much success by women as by men. The chief work on the ancient gymnastics is Krause, Gymnastik and Agonistik der Hellenen (1841); of more recent
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