Abstract
ONE of the more valuable after-results of the great wars in the last century was the increased interest aroused in regard to national physique, leading to various measures directed towards its improvement. After the Napoleonic wars there arose the great gymnastic clubs of Central Europe and Scandinavia, which laid the foundations of physical education on a wide scale. The Civil War in America led to the first great demographic survey, the data of which were ren dered public in the report of the Surgeon-General of the Federal armies on the statistics of the recruiting bureaux. The War of 1870 was followed by surveys of the population in Germany, and on a smaller scale in France, which to a large extent formed the basis of our ethnographic knowledge until the present time. The South African War led to the Commission on Physical Deterioration in England and Wales, and to a similar Com mission on Physical Education in Scotland, from the labours of which resulted the introduction of medical inspection and treatment of school children, and perhaps in part also the National Health Insurance Act.
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A Survey of National Physique1. Nature 105, 202–204 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/105202a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/105202a0