Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/47

Rh shown, even though nearly all of them were temporary ones, indicate the need for better supervision. None worthy of the name is given the school-boy athlete, except in comparatively few preparatory schools and city high schools. Competent trainers are scarce, but medical supervision can readily be had. If the boys were required to pass a preliminary examination by a competent physician and were examined thereafter at intervals of three or four weeks to ascertain how they are standing up under the training, liability to injury would be practically eliminated.

Twenty-two of the sixty or seventy colleges and large preparatory schools to which we wrote furnished lists of their athletes. These lists contained the names of two hundred and sixty men, two thirds of whom responded to our letters. The replies are so similar in tone and so emphatic as regards essentials that I believe the results shown will be confirmed by further investigation involving any number of athletes.