The Development of Sports Medicine in Twentieth Century Britain

If it had not been for the vision and tenacious dedication of early pioneers, the difficulties encountered in the creation of the specialty of sport and exercise medicine may not have been overcome. Even so, the journey proved to be a long one, as described in this transcript of the June 2007 Witness Seminar on the history of sports medicine, chaired by Professor Domhnall MacAuley. Setting the scene, the historian Dr Vanessa Heggie suggests that during the first half of the century sports medicine had no clear definition of its boundaries, nor of its content. Sir Roger Bannister’s recollections of the discipline in the 1950s provides a fascinating insight into elite athletics training at the time of his major and iconic feat in 1954 (the first four-minute mile.[Witness Seminar 36 held by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, London on June 29 2007]