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Science, service, and the professionalization of physical education: 1885–1905

Many of the professional organizations that exist today were created in the late 1800s. One of these is the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (originally American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education), which was established in November 1885. Most historical accounts give only limited attention to the broader contexts in which the AAPE emerged. Wide-ranging concerns about health were a major influence. So were developments in the biological sciences such as have been outlined in historian William Coleman's aptly titled Problems of Form, Function, and Transformation: Biology in the Nineteenth Century. The backgrounds and range of interest of early members were significant. Whereas the majority of the leaders held medical degrees, the field also attracted a considerable number of ‘health faddists’, entrepreneurs and others who were interested in advancing a particular cause. Luther Gulick, MD, Edward M. Hartwell, MD (who also had a doctoral degree in physiology), and George Fitz, MD (who conducted reaction-time and other experiments) were among those who insisted that the field would need to establish its claims for legitimacy on sound scientific grounds and that a respectable number of its members must engage in research. At most colleges and universities departments of physical training were headed by a man or woman (separate units were the norm) who possessed a medical degree, training for which before the 1910 Flexner Report rarely included much, if any, engagement in experimental research. They were occupied with the time-consuming tasks of examining students, prescribing exercises, directing gymnasium work, conducting anthropometric examinations and creating teacher-training programmes in an effort to meet the ever-growing need for large numbers of teachers for schools, colleges and organizations like the YMCA. Service quickly became, and would remain until recently, the dominant, albeit not exclusive, focus of the American physical education profession.