• The medical profession has always been interested in exercise, not only for recreation and as an aid to physical development but also as a prevention against disease. This article introduces a modified symposium on athletics both as sport and for the furtherment of health. The history of physical exercise, especially when reviewed in a medical vein, reveals the logic behind gymnastics as part of the curriculum to strengthen the entire body. Much of physical exercise as we know it today has been, and still is, formulated by the physician, on the basis of sound medical principles.