Medical Aspects of Sports

Abstract

Although physicians have been interested in L sports, games, and exercise at least from the time of the Greek Olympiads, athletic medicine as a special field of interest is modern in concept. The growing interest in all medical aspects of sports is characterized by a multiplication of organized professional groups, publications, and conferences devoted to this subject. The effects are being noted favorably in improved coordination of the efforts of medicine with those of athletic personnel and in better standards of care of our athletes. Since ancient times, physicians have been interested in games and sports and in exercises of a gymnastic character as they relate to health. Herodicus, a contemporary of Hippocrates in the fifth century, BC, was the first Greek physician to whom we can trace the use of therapeutic gymnastics. He practiced this form of therapy so enthusiastically that he drew a rebuke from Hippocrates for treating