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THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT SWIMMING

J. Howard Beard, M.D.

Swimming is the “ing of Sports. Its great age, its excellence as
exercise, its world-wide enjoyment, and its rating as big business warrant this
title, Wherever the climate permits, swimming is a leading sport. Football,
with its costly stadium, high salaried coaches, and highly trained publicity
experts pales into insignificance beside the millions invested in an Atlantic
City, the pageantry of a Miami Beach, or the interest in the selection of the
bathing beauty of the year,

If there is the slightest doubt concerning the transcendence of swimming
over other sports, a trip to the “orld's Fair at New York will remove it. There
is no place on the Fair Grounds where a goal can be kicked from the field, nor a
ball driven into the bleachers with all the bases filled, But swimming! Ah -
there is a difference — a colossal difference. An aquacade in which glamorous
girls glide gleefully through the glowing water vursued by ex-Tarzans and ane-men
makes the fans and bubbles of a Sally Rand seem Victorian and cumbersome as a
bathing suit of the Gay Nineties,

Solo swimming, duet bathing, and water "clowns more exhilarating than
seals" both entertain and bewilder. A whole corns de ballet of swimmers go through
geometrical figures to the rhythm of an orchestra, . Between swims there are
parades of pretty girls in Parisian costumes designed by Pene du Bois, They are
set forth in bold relief against a background painted bv so gifted an artist as
Albert Johnson. Swimming, Mr. Chairman, is not only the Ying of Sports, but also
the Sport of Queens.

The date of the return of our ancestors to the water after having left
it for the trees is lost in the mists of the uncertainties of evolution. Some
of them, while swinging from limb to limb in over~confidence, slipped, there was
a splash, and the first stroke was taken: or possibly one of our Neanderthal
gsrandsires, finding himself between a saber-toothed tiger and the deep blue sea,
chose the less of two evils, took to the water, lived to tell of his experience,
and became the first instructor in swimming,

Through the eyes of a doctor, swimming is not only a plunge and a stroke,
but exercise, the cultivation of grace, the promotion of health, the institution
of safety procedures, big business, romance, and art. He sees swan dives,
Australian cravls, blistered backs, drownings, and artificial respiration. Yes,
even "two-piece bathing suits of hand-blocked wool with a pine tree figure,"
symbolizing man's existence in the primeval forest before Eve ate the forbidden
fruit and discovered she was naked, (a fact ascertainable on a modern bathing
beach without taking dessert). When a doctor looks at swimming, he: sees beauty
contests, parades of pulchritude, a trial in Holly ood, a trip to Reno, or, more
happily, a column telling us they lived like doves ever aftervards.

To the physician, even the radio is an important accessory of swimming.
Through it the daughters of Eve are promised creams to match the seashore, or
an ideal tan while the handsome lifeguard takes time out for a coke. They hear
the brevity and low visibility of the latest creations of bathing costumes
extolled by high pressure salesmen with baccalaureate degrees from colleges of
commerce, and learn "puny softies" may acquire form and vigor from vitaminized
cans, sunkist drinks, and rejuvenating cigarettes,