ROWING AILMENTS.
I may preface what I have to say about by stating, as emphatically as it can be stated, that every man who proposes to take part in a race ought, before he begins practice, to be thoroughly overhauled by a medical man. I do not believe that any man whose heart and lungs and general constitution are sound can be injured by rowing. On the contrary, I have seen scores and scores of instances in which sound but perfectly developed youngsters were formed and solidified and made into robust men by the exercise. But if a doctor reports of an apparently powerful man that his heart is weak and his circulation defective, or that the state of his lungs is unsatisfactory, no power on earth would induce me to include him in my crew. Race-rowing is one of the severest strains to which a man can submit himself, and only a perfectly sound man can go through it without taking harm.
Coaches arc sometimes ridiculed for the exces sive care they take of their men ; and there are not wanting those who draw the inference that rowing men are peculiarly liable to illness, and suffer, when attacked by it, more than others. Nothing can be further from the truth. If we are anxious, it is because we know that for the special strain involved in racing a man must be in specially good condition, and we desire, above all things, to avoid anything that may keep him back in his training and his work. Moreover, even a slight illness may entail temporary retirement from the crew, and thus necessitate changes in its order which will prevent the men from getting together.
In rowing hard a man should keep a good colour. If you see him turning green and yellow, you may be sure that something is wrong with him, and you must pack him off to the doctor at once. It may turn out that his digestion is in fault, and that a careful attention to diet is all that is necessary to cure him. I have seen only two men actually faint during a race. One of them was a dis tinguished Oxford Blue, who collapsed during a heat of the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley ; the other was a college oar rowing in the Cambridge Fours. With regard to him, we discovered after wards that he had overtaxed his strength by working in the Cambridge engineering workshop for about six hours every day. Both these cases
took place a good many years ago, and in neither has any permanent injury resulted. I have, of course, seen hundreds of men absolutely rowed out at the end of a race ; but, with hardly an exception, they were perfectly fit a few minutes afterwards and, possibly, in the course of a few hours they might be seen rowing in another severe race with unimpaired strength and vitality.
With regard to ailments generally, I cannot do better than quote Mr. Woodgate in the Bad minton book : "A crew should be under strict orders to report all ailments, if only a blister, instantly to the coach. It is better to leave no discretion in this matter to the oarsman, even at the risk of troubling the mentor with trifles. If a man is once allowed to decide for himself whether he will report some petty and incipient ailment, he is likely to hush it up, lest it should militate against his coach's selection of him. The effect of this is that mischief which might otherwise have been checked in the bud, is allowed to assume dangerous proportions for want of a stitch in time. An oarsman should be impressed that nothing is more likely to militate against his dream of being selected than disobedience to this or any other standing order. The smallest pimple should be shown forthwith to the coach "—verily the coach is not only aoc, but roX61-Xac—" the slightest hoarseness or tendency to snuffle re ported, any tenderness of joint or sinew instantly made known." To these golden words I would merely add that in all more serious cases, such as boils, colds, coughs, severe diarrhoea, or strains, it is best for the coach not to attempt any amateur doctoring, but to send his oarsman at once to a qualified doctor. In nearly every large rowing club, and at the Universities, there are to be found doctors who have either rowed themselves, or have had long experience of treating the ailments of rowing men ; and it is far better to take their advice, which, as a rule, does not incline to molly-coddling, than to run the risk of losing a valuable oar out of the crew through one's own quackery.