University oars : being a critical enquiry into the after health of the men who rowed in the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race from the year 1829-1869, based on the personal experience of the rowers themselves / by John Ed. Morgan.

  • Morgan, John Edward.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: University oars : being a critical enquiry into the after health of the men who rowed in the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race from the year 1829-1869, based on the personal experience of the rowers themselves / by John Ed. Morgan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    excellent. My arm is the only damaged part.” These words are confirmed by one of his friends, who remarks : “ I feel certain that the Putney race alone would not have brought on the inflammation that ensued. C. was a man who had never had any rest from hard training and racing for at least two years previous to his being put into the eight; besides going in for every race at the University, he was always at Henley with his College crews, and so he entered upon the University training in an already exhausted state.” Had C. given up rowing when he first experienced pain in his elbow-joint, it is probable that inflammation of so severe a type would not have supervened. I shall next consider the cases of six old Oars who have died since their rowing days—five of them from consumption, and one from heart disease. How far they suffered from their labours on the river it is not very easy to decide, but it will be seen from the fol- lowing extracts from letters which I have received from some of their nearest surviving relatives, that more or less grave suspicions are entertained that the diseases which carried them off were originally induced by their over exerting themselves in rowing during their College days. Generally speaking, they do not appear to have been men of that physical vigour which a long Boat- Race necessarily requires. Such a man, I should imagine, was D., who pulled in one of the early races, and died not many years ago of consumption ; it is said of him that “ His ill- health and delicacy were certainly supposed to have arisen originally from the bursting of a blood-vessel through his exertions in rowing, either in the practice for the Inter-University Race or in the race itself.” Some of these contemporaries thus refer to his physique;