The physical examination and development of public school boys : based upon records of over 40,000 observations : a paper read before the Association on April 4th, 1899 / by Cecil Hawkins.

Hawkins, Cecil.

Date:: 1900

Credit: The physical examination and development of public school boys : based upon records of over 40,000 observations : a paper read before the Association on April 4th, 1899 / by Cecil Hawkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

30/38 (page 24)

$•->4 Tin: rnYsirM. kxaml\ati(>s ash very much uiuleveloped to start with, in tnder tliat he may make an improvement of more tlian '1 or A t-a«les in less tlian a year, and I have very little douht that, in the. great majority of the cases observed, comj)nlsory physical training is directly responsible for the improvement noted. Fig. 7 will illustrate the dilliculty of which 1 have been sjieaking. The diagram rei)resents the mean curves for chest-girth of 5 did’erent sch(»ols. Of these— School A is a large midland town school. „ F) is a large public school with strict su]>erannuation rules, drawing boys from all over the three kingdoms. „ ( ' is a North-country school. .. D is a well-known Scotch school, famous alike for the completeness of its system of i)hysical training, the thoroughness of its hygienic rules, and the excellence of its athletes. The dotted line is the mean curve for all the boys examined except those in School 1). Incidentally, this (uirve illustrates various points already mentioned, the influence of School A upon the })osition and form of the curve being very marked, owing to the large pniportion of observations from that school which were available. esi)ccially at the beginning and end of the period con- sidered. As regards their internal characteristics, the schemes of grades of these schools do not dilfer widely from that of School A, which is shown in Fig. b, and there is but slight difl’erence in the range of variation from the mean in the several schools. There is an apparent similarity between the schemes of Sclu»ols l’> and C’, the difference in form which exists being readily accounted for by insufficient number of observations and other known causes. This a})parent similarity is, however, considerably discounted by the ditferent methods of observation used at the two schools, which ought, api)arently, to be considerably in favour of School H. Of the other two schools, each curve in A’s scheme falls so far below the corresponding curve in H’s, and each$