David Miller
Former Chair, History & Archives Committee

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.105.17

The Society’s History & Archives Committee (HAC) hosted a seminar at the Wellcome Library on 13 September with over 30 members attending. Our aim was to link up with members who had expressed an interest in aspects of the history of the discipline and of those who have contributed to our science.

The session was introduced by Graham Dockray, the new Chair of HAC. Tilli Tansey, the Honorary Archivist, gave a Brief History of The Society, touching on several strands of the mid-Victorian scene that led to the inaugural meeting in 1876 called by John Burdon Sanderson. The early stages of the transition from dining society to science-based meetings with an associated dinner were delightfully related. Anisha Tailor from Hodgkin Huxley House outlined the broad strands of HAC’s work and its place within The Society’s organisation. I gave a presentation on aspects of my biographical work on Sydney Ringer, emphasising how I have actually gone about researching his life and times. Amanda Engineer, an archives project manager at the Wellcome Library and long-time member of HAC, then provided an overview of the collections at the Library and explained how the online catalogue covers The Society’s archive that is housed there. The group then split into two with one half forming small break-out sessions to consider a few pre-set questions. These were designed to encourage feedback to HAC on aspects of how we can best further our aims to record our history and that of physiologists of note. The other half enjoyed a conducted tour of the Library and a wonderful ‘hands-on’ encounter with a range of photos, letters and other items chosen by Amanda Engineer from our archive. Examining some Grey Books from the first decades of The Society, riffling through Edwardian photos of the great and the good, their labs and colleagues and similar fascinating items was a true novelty for many attending. The two half groups then changed places.

The final session of the meeting was a Plenary Lecture by Vanessa Heggie (University of Birmingham) entitled ‘The History of Elite Performance’. Vanessa revealed that historians have been rather slow to examine the history of sports physiology and sports science. She considered why that might be the case, and discussed the challenges and rewards of writing about this sort of history. Going beyond the usual stories of drugs and training, she outlined the interactions between Western sport and science over the past two centuries, and explained how and why physiologists’ ideas about human performance have evolved. She also showed how sports people have helped to change the way we research, and how we think about our bodies, as well as contributing to the development of space travel, premature infant care, and even public health interventions. It proved a fascinating excursion from the Victorian enthusiasm for ‘Pedestrianism’, extreme long-distance track walking as a public spectacle, right through to the evolution of physiological testing at the Olympics and the present-day preoccupations with drug testing.

The seminar proved a lively and stimulating event. HAC has made an excellent connection to a number of Society members through this first-time seminar under our auspices. We intend to use the feedback from the breakout sessions and individual participants to inform our work and to foster links with a network of those enthusiasts for this route to insight into physiology and physiologists.