Stretch! Stretch! Stretch!, or, The art of physical beauty / F. Meredith Clease.

  • Clease, F. Meredith.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Stretch! Stretch! Stretch!, or, The art of physical beauty / F. Meredith Clease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in each and every case. Being appointed, about the same time, Director of Physical Instruction to the East of Scotland Ladies’ Academy, I found that I was there dealing with a different set of physical conditions and required to aim at a different physical ideal. So while teaching I learned all I could. To the anatomical school at Dundee University College I am indebted for a knowledge of anatomy which has ever since enabled me to prescribe with confidence the physical exercises suitable for every case in which I dare prescribe at all. For there must be cases which should at once be referred for expert medical advice before even the mildest course of physical training can be recommended. Such cases I am qualified to recognize—if the symptoms are properly stated—and I send them off to the doctor at once, and very often he sends them back to me to be cured by a special course of physical exercises under his supervision. A little knowledge is said to be a dangerous thing, but it is very useful, if one does not imagine and assert it to be more than it is. In 1892 I became Physical Director of the Birmingham Athletic Institute (then the largest of its kind in Great Britain), also of the Pupil Teachers’ Centre (Ladies), Birmingham, and of the National Schools and Teachers’ Training Centre at Wolverhampton. Added to these duties I had the difficult task of physically training the students at the Birmingham Deaf and Dumb Institute. At the Athletic Institute, apart from the general all-round class work, I personally had charge of the curative section. My ability in due course secured recognition from the Educational Department, Whitehall, the Athletic Institute receiving a charter to grant certificates to any teacher of physical training in Britain. To-day I believe this is the only institute that possesses such an honour. The Institute, I am proud to say, increased its membership roll by more than 50 per cent, during my directorship. It will readily be seen that