Personal hygiene and physical training for women

by Anna M. Galbraith

Physical efficiency stands for initiative, endurance, success; it is the very keynote of modern life and has become one of the burning questions of the day. West Point and Annapolis have always recognized this, and in order that their graduates should measure up to the highest standard of efficiency a most rigid physical examination was and is demanded as a prerequisite for admission; and during the whole of the four years’ course physical training is systematically carried on so as to insure the most perfect physique possible, with the result that in addition to their great powers of endurance and initiative, is their distinguished carriage and elegance of bearing.

To increase the safety of their passengers the railroad companies were the next to demand these same physical examinations to determine the efficiency of their applicants and employees. Other large corporations followed.

So long as women remained in the home, or were willing and content to accept any small wage that was doled out to them, the public did not seem especially interested in their physical condition. But when women, as a large teaching body or in any other public service, began to demand equal pay for equal work, the situation was materially altered, and in 1914 the English Royal Commission summed up the following conclusions: “Where the character and conditions of work performed by women approach those of the work of men, the pay of the women should approximate that of the men, but in so far as the efficiency of men is higher, the salaries of men should remain higher.” This at once changed the complexion of the matter, and physical efficiency for women became a matter of paramount and equal importance to both employer and employee.

Again, from the standpoint of social science, the physical efficiency of women is demanded because they are the mothers of the race, and on them, equally with the fathers, does the welfare of future generations depend, since it is believed that a child inherits equally from its parents—one-fourth from father and mother each, one-fourth from its grandparents, etc. The states are beginning to seriously take up the framing of laws for eugenic marriages, based on fixed standards of physical efficiency of the contracting parties. And the day is not far distant when women as well as men will have to undergo physical examinations to secure or hold any positions of importance.

Then, too, one of the results of the present terrible European war has been to demonstrate that women possess a large amount of latent powers and endurance which only needed for their development the same general physical training that the state gives her sons. Women are now being employed in these countries in all branches of the civil service, as well as in agriculture and the making of munitions, engaging in a vast number of employments and trades hitherto considered unfit for women, because of the great physical strength and endurance which they demanded.

Physical Efficiency as an Exact Science.—Physical efficiency is growing to be an exact science; it is demonstrable in figures. We have standardized percentage tables for measuring the capacity of the lungs, the strength of the heart and muscles, and, added to these, must be a normal condition of the digestion, kidneys, generative organs, sight, and hearing. If the sum total of these amounted to 100 per cent., that would mean capacity for the greatest possible endurance under strain, and so the most effective worker; for there is a direct relation between the percentage standard of physical efficiency and the output of work, both as to quantity and quality.

Marks for Physical Efficiency.—Sir Francis Galton, the great English scientist, was the first to conceive the idea of assigning marks for physical qualifications. They were as follows: Breathing capacity, strength tests, both to be regarded with reference to the height and weight; quickness of response to a signal, made either to the eye or ear; the sense of sight and hearing, and the color sense.

Realizing the usefulness of these tests in measuring the physical efficiency, Professor Sargent included them in the physical examinations of the Harvard students. The strength tests consist of that for each forearm, of the back and legs, the dip, the pull-up, and the lung capacity. The combination of these seven tests is what is known as the intercollegiate strength test, and is the best means as yet devised for measuring the general muscular strength and the respiratory power.

It is obvious that many of these tests would be needed only by men going into the army or navy, or qualifying for civil engineers or professional athletes, etc. So it was considered best to modify these tests to meet the requirements of physical efficiency for women.

For the large number of measurements of the arms, legs, etc., included in the Sargent system have been substituted the rating of the condition of the heart and circulatory system, including the blood-pressure; lung and chest development; digestive and nervous system; the kidneys and generative organs; the muscular system; tests of endurance; ocular and aural tests; with a final impression of the working efficiency.