A Guide to the History of Physical Education

SWEDISH SCHOOL GYMNASTICS IN THE UNITED STATES.

The system of medical gymnastics which we owe to the labors of Per Henrik Ling and his successors at the Royal Normal School of Gymnastics (the "Central Institute of Gymnastics") in Stockholm was brought to the attention of Americans as long ago as the early fifties (see p. 258). By the end of that decade writers on physical education had begun to refer to it under the name of "the Swedish movement cure," and authors of manuals intended for school use were borrowing some of their exercises from this source. But to meet the needs of growing boys and girls Ling had also devised a system of school gymnastics. This had been further elaborated by his son Hjalmar (1820-1886), and teachers trained in the Central Institute, or by its graduates, were everywhere using it in Sweden, in common schools and high schools alike. Of the aims, content, and methods of this branch of the "Ling gymnastics" little or nothing was known in this country until near the close of the eighties in the last century. Hartvig Nissen, a native of Norway and the head of a "Swedish Health Institute" in Washington, D. C., began to use it with teachers and pupils in the Franklin school in that city in 1883, and with students at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, early in 1887. A Swedish gymnasium with its equipment was also shown at the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition held in New Orleans 1884-1885, in connection with the exhibit of the Bureau of Education, and Commissioner Eaton had placed Mr. Nissen in charge of this and other gymnastic apparatus. Other isolated instances might be cited, but it was not until 1889, however, that the claims of Swedish educational gymnastics were brought forward in the United States so prominently and stated with such clearness and cogency as to attract general attention. Boston was the center from which the movement radiated, and its initiation was due to the public spirit and liberality of Mrs. Mary Hemenway (1820-1894) and the executive ability of her assistant, Miss Amy Morris Homans, coupled with the thorough professional training and forceful personality of Baron Nils Posse (1862-1895), the agent who first made their plans effective and afterwards conducted an independent and vigorous campaign of enlightenment until his untimely death.