Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/129

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ETHICS OF B0X1NG AND MANLY SPORT.

the triumph has been purchased by a life of mediocrity or apathy.

It was noted in ancient Rome that the athletes were short-lived, liable "to rupture of blood-vessels, to apoplexy, and lethargic complaints;" and it has been charged that even the training of our American college athletes, at least in the past, has had an injurious effect on their health.

Still, it must be admitted, in favor of training, that the greatest athletes known in modern times were not short-lived.

From the results of the training adopted at the English universities, it would appear that the constitution is even strengthened, the intellect sharpened, and lift; lengthened. Dr. John Morgan ("University Oars," 1873), collected statistics of the subsequent health of those who have rowed in the university races since 1821), and he found that, whereas at twenty years of age, according to Farr's life tables, the average expectation of survival is forty years, for these oarsmen it was forty-two years. Moreover, in cases of death, inquiry into its causes exhibited evidence of good constitutions rather than the contrary, the causes consisting largely of fevers and accidents, to which the vigorous and active are more exposed than the sick.

And it was certainly not at the expense of the