The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1907-01-04
ATHLETES LIVE LONG.
RECORDS FOR HALE A CENTURY
AT YALE.

Per Cent. Among Those Engaged in
SpOrt--NOt Necessarily Due to Ath-
Ietic Training, Though.
William G. Anderson, director of the
Yale gymnasium, has been investigat-
ing the subject of longevity among ath-
letes and other college students, and
has come to the conclusion that the ad-
vantage is with the former. He says,
however, that there is nothing to prove
whether this is due to the mans orig
NAL strength or to his development as
an athlete. Discussing the subject in
the Yale Alumni Weekly, he writes:
THE question has been frequently
asked in these days of the prominence
of college sports: is the college athlete
a sounder man in after years and
man Of longer life than his non-ath-
letic brother? 1t is a generally accept
ed fact that some form of exercise or
athletic sport is necessary for the prop
er development Of the growing human
body. Statistics prove beyond a doubt
that the man in college, or out of it, is
better for consistent exercise of Some
sort But it Is not so certain that the
man whose enthusiasm for and prof.
cheney in some sport brings him to the
highest recognition in his college is cor
respondingly benefited.
"A good many people claim that the
highly developed athlete has more
muscle and more lung power than he
can use when he graduates and takes
up his long apprenticeship in some
sedentary occupation. If he is not
careful the very power of lung and
heart which made him a force in the
long four mile pull, If he be crew
man, becomes a danger to him, because
there is no call in his everyday life
for the abnormal development he ae-
quired in college. If he does not keep
up some pretty vigorous exercise out
side Of Office hours the lung tissue de-
Veloped in his college life falls into
disuse and may be the indirect cause of
consumption, or the heart, forced to do
loverwork in the strain Of the compete
ton in the big sports and overdevelop-
ed, may retallate in after life by re-
fusing to do its work in some great
stress, like pneumonia, for instance.
RECORDS OF HALF A CENTURY
80 claim the opponents of high ath-
letics. But frequently conclusions Of
this sort are drawn from Individual
cases. and are of no value The only
records ever gathered at Yale which
bear on the question are those of Y
men from 1855 to 1905. These records
were gathered by Professor FRANKLIN
B. Dexter, and were by him turned
over to John Gaines, '96, who made a
report on them for use by an insurance
! company, and to the writer.
by these records it seems to be
proven that the highly developed attn
lete, in spite of themany notable ex-
ceptions which may. be quoted, lives
longer than his non-athletic college
mate. Whether this Is because he is
an athlete or whether he is specially
selected man from specially selected
group Of American yo9th, such as q
college or university is supposed to rep
resent, Is not shown The only way to
get at such a result would be to take
the highly specialized athletes in after
life and compare their longevity with a
specially selected group of their con-
temporaries, which would be an almost
impossible thing, is
But if not conclusive the figures on
the longevity Of men for the last
ifty-five years are highly interesting
and are at least pointer to the value
of specialized athletics The record
covers the lives of S07 athletes in the
four major sports, beginning witt the
crew In 1855, and taking up football,
track and baseball as those games came
to have a place in the college calendar
of outdoor sports.
"The attention is at once arrested by
the fact that among the S07 athletes
who won the distinction of Y, and
who may be considered the highest
type of trained athletes, only tifty-eight
deaths have occurred in the last hall
century. OF these eighteen were crew
men, the largest number, as might be
expected, since rowing Is the earliest
sport recorded; sixteen were football
PLAYERS, thirteen were track and clever
were baseball men. When the average
Of years in the life of the sport Is strucl
lit Is found that the mortality Wa'
greatest among football men, Grew
men were second, track third and base
ball men We're fourth, with an extreme
ly low average Compared with the Sc
llect mortality tables of the Actuaria
society, which are made up from tn
mortality averages of thousands o
lives all over the country, the Yale ath
n Iletes show remarkable longevity.
Comparisons of the mortality of spe
= cialized athletes with the general grad
" uate who has not distinguished himsel
in athletics to the extent Of winning tn
G Y still shows in favor of the athlete
% OF 1922 students in academic an
"a Sheffield classes from 1855 to 1905, in
\ elusive, ,406 are dead and 0,516 living
is The percentage Of deaths here is IL
per cent. OF the SO7 athletes from 49,
to 1905 only SIS are dead, a percentas
of ~, or only little over half of tn
general graduate OF course the CON
parison here, as it was in the genera
1t mortality table, is somewhat misleao
ing, in favor of the athlete, for it mus
,s be remembered he is a triply selecte
man, first by his membership in co
1t lege, second by his membership in tn
st athletic group and third as the pick {
te the athletic group.
NO UNDUE STRAIN IN ATHLETIC
Judging from the Investigations,
70 is reasonable to say that there is II
m undue strain put on the athletes viii