Leading the Way in Science, Medicine and Physical Training: Female Physicians in Academia, 1890–1930

Abstract

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the profession of physical education was influenced by the ideas and research activities of physicians interested in understanding the role of physical training in health. Physicians Lilian Welsh and Clelia Mosher were among those physicians who contributed to both curricular developments in hygiene and physical education programmes in higher education and to scientific research that provided the basis for health claims from exercise, while employed by institutions of higher learning. In their decades of service to Goucher College (Welsh) and Stanford University (Mosher), these doctors also used science to diminish the claims of physiological inferiority of women thereby furthering the cause of higher education for women.