{"id":629,"date":"2015-07-28T13:27:04","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T13:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/?p=629"},"modified":"2022-09-21T11:12:07","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T11:12:07","slug":"the-1890s-brain-risks-confirmed-in-american-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/?p=629","title":{"rendered":"The 1890s: Brain Risks Confirmed in American Football"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brain Injury in American Football: 130 Years of Knowledge and Denial<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 1890s: Cerebral Risks Confirmed on Gridiron<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part One in A Series<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Matt Chaney<\/p>\n

Posted Tuesday, July 28, 2015<\/p>\n

Copyright\u00a0\u00a92015 by Matthew L. Chaney<\/p>\n

As American football officials tell the story today, brain injury among players is a fledgling issue, identified only in recent years, the 2000s.<\/p>\n

Administrators, coaches, trainers, doctors, and researchers of contemporary football say they have only begun to grasp brain risk for players, while otherwise declaring no need for alarm. Officials say parents and children must not worry because dangers are exaggerated and countermeasures are in place.<\/p>\n

The game embraces \u201cconcussion awareness\u201d as never before, committing unprecedented dollars to research and prevention. \u201cHeads Up Football,\u201d for example, the program said to teach headless hitting to youths, is a household term for its $45 million in development and publicity funded by the NFL and players union.<\/p>\n

But are traumatic brain injuries [TBI] and policy-making actually newfound for the collision sport?<\/p>\n

Is the football institution\u2014generations of administrators, coaches, trainers, doctors\u2014really just comprehending TBI among players and what might be done? That\u2019s the official claim, anyway, especially for legal defense against lawsuits filed by former players and families.<\/p>\n

Historical events tell a different football story, meanwhile, in an extensive review of news databases by this investigator. Generally, the factual past conflicts with official versions proffered today.<\/p>\n

Because the dilemma of head injuries inherent for tackle football\u2014brain \u201cconcussion\u201d foremost, broadly defined for varying states of severity\u2014has reared regularly in public since the Victorian Era. Periodic controversies have spanned three centuries and affected most decades of the game, including the 1890s, 1900s, 1920s, 1930s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 2010s.<\/p>\n

Along the way, football has seen every type of brain trauma in players, consistently, predictably. Countless cases publicized since the 1800s have ranged from debilitating headaches to fatal hemorrhaging, and officials have tried much for preventing casualties while managing \u201creturn to play\u201d of injured athletes, if never realizing success.<\/p>\n

Several outright failed initiatives have been recycled, repackaged and promoted anew in periods over the continuum\u2014like old \u201chead up\u201d theory, publicized in 1899 but\u00a0presently sold\u00a0as cutting-edge, Heads Up \u201ctechnique.\u201d<\/p>\n

ChaneysBlog presents a series on the history of football collision, brain injury, and policy, with this first article examining football in its formative phase, the latter 1800s\u2014when officials made promises of safety reform that echo yet.<\/p>\n

So-called protective helmets, rule changes, medical supervision, proper coaching, and safer colliding have been promoted for a\u00a0century<\/em>\u00a0and longer<\/em>\u00a0in American football.<\/p>\n

1892: Gridiron Violence, \u2018Flying Wedge\u2019 Ignite Public Furor<\/strong><\/p>\n

As American football\u2019s first injury crisis festered in 1892, the Harvard University team stoked controversy, unveiling its \u201cflying wedge\u201d blocking formation against rival Yale during the most publicized game of the year.<\/p>\n

Returning a kickoff, two wings of Harvard players sprinted downfield on the attack, leading the ball carrier. At last instant 10 Harvard men converged in a V-wedge, \u201cflying into Yale\u2019s right wing like a crimson simoon,\u201d a writer recounted. Twenty yards were gained on the return, a substantial run for grinding \u201cmass\u201d football of the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a grand play!\u201d proclaimed The New York Times<\/em>, for \u201ca half ton of bone and muscle coming into collision with a man weighing 160 or 170 pounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trick was so pretty that even the Yale men were disposed to applaud,\u201d reported\u00a0The New York Evening World<\/em>. Yale \u201ccoachers\u201d pronounced the latest wedge scheme \u201cas one of the finest plays ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics of football, in turn, deplored the flying wedge as epitome of gratuitous violence in sport, and on behalf of higher education no less.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fatal twisting of the neck of a football player and several other horrifying details in the football news\u2026 add to the growing demand that unless the leaders of the game themselves will \u2018regulate\u2019 the playing as they promise and profess to do, the police shall,\u201d\u00a0The Boston Advertiser<\/em>\u00a0editorialized. \u201cThe public cannot stand these harrowing casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat the rules governing intercollegiate football must be changed seems to be the general opinion of the sporting public and those college graduates who are making a constant study of the great game,\u201d asserted a national commentary. \u201cThe increased opportunities for accidents and the brutality which has marked many of the recent big games have made radical changes necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Football supporters laughed, contending dangers were exaggerated, led by Harvard dean of engineering Nathaniel S. Shaler, a former player. \u201cI have never known a single man, personally, to be killed or permanently hurt in the game,\u201d Shaler said. \u201cThe death rate in football is way down.\u201d By comparison, Shaler noted that horse transportation and boating had killed nine of his friends.<\/p>\n

The Charlotte Observer<\/em>\u00a0editorialized \u201cthat there is a good deal of humbuggery in all the recent clamor about the dangers of football,\u201d continuing that boys \u201care liable to get hurt at almost any game in which they engage\u2014unless it be croquet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis question of football is a matter of family government rather then the public\u2019s business,\u201d the newspaper continued. \u201cIf the parents are willing for the son to play football and take chances, it is none of the public\u2019s affair. After the player passes 21, it is nobody\u2019s business but his own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Football advocacy did not impress many Americans. Some wanted \u201cfoot-ball\u201d banned from college campuses that hosted it in pursuit of financial gain and prestige, a quarter-century after students organized the game at eastern universities.<\/p>\n

Opposition flourished in higher education and the popular press, pressuring game policy-makers to act, particularly Walter Camp of Yale University, the coach, referee and rule-maker who would be known as the Father of American Football.<\/p>\n

Camp headed the Yale coaching staff enamored with mass plays like the flying wedge, but he knew football suffered for its image as a sanctioned brawl. \u201cThe protest\u2026 by the faculties of a large number of colleges is having its effect,\u201d he acknowledged.<\/p>\n

The game\u00a0was<\/em>\u00a0dangerous and barbaric at eyesight, and no one could calculate the casualty numbers, undoubtedly high, as football expanded west through schools, colleges, and athletic clubs.<\/p>\n

The sport had begun as an \u201copen\u201d game of rugby sprints and passes, but rule changes led by Camp in the 1880s established a line of scrimmage between opposing teams of 11 men each, and ball possession for one side at a time. Possession was retained for gaining five yards in three \u201cdowns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rules legitimized \u201cinterference,\u201d or blocking for a ball carrier, then \u201clow\u201d tackling. Offensive planning evolved to emphasize brutish players for \u201cmomentum\u201d starts, clustered in walls and wedges, to make running strikes at a defense.<\/p>\n

Analyst\u00a0Michael Oriard observed that the rule allowing tackling below the waist \u201cvirtually eliminated open-field running, led to increasingly brutal (and boring) mass play, altered the very shape of football players by tilting the advantage overwhelmingly toward sheer bulk, and necessitated the development of padded armor to protect the newly vulnerable players.\u201d<\/p>\n

A news writer panned the Harvard-Yale game in 1893, complaining that \u201cthe great battle did not bristle with interesting plays. There was a constant pile in the middle of the field, from which it was half the time impossible to pick the man with the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hazardous tactics created repulsive scenes. Players pushed and pulled their ball carriers for yardage, inflicting injury. Elbowing abounded, along with grabbing, tossing, trampling, and punching. A New York reporter noted a \u201crule disqualifying a man who uses his clenched fist is strongly advocated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe players on the line often sparred with one another, shoved, or even slugged one another before the snap of the ball,\u201d wrote historian John Sayle Watterson. \u201cGuards and tackles could take up positions in the backfield because the rules did not specify the linemen had to be at the scrimmage line.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce a player left the game, he could not return. Hence, injured players often staggered around the field until they collapsed or asked to be taken out of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

At end of the 1893 football season, officials could dally no longer on reform. \u201cThere is quite a popular demand for the abolition of the flying wedge and other dangerous mass plays in football,\u201d stated a Kansas writer.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0editorialized: \u201cA game in which some of the players are almost certain to be knocked senseless is a game in which some of them are very liable to be maimed for life or even to be killed outright.\u201d The Times<\/em> pegged injuries as mere elemental byproducts, proclaiming \u201cno game so extremely perilous should be permitted to be played.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camp weighed in, as supreme powerbroker of football\u2019s maturing enterprise at American universities. Camp said daily practice sessions posed higher risk than games, but he voiced support for new rules to \u201cremove the so-called brutalizing character\u201d of competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no doubt that the game as played the last year or two has been attended with a great deal of danger to the players,\u201d Camp stated. \u201cIn improving from the old [Rugby Union] game we have admitted the interference [blocking], which is the element of danger in the game. The Englishmen look upon our style of playing with a great deal of abhorrence. Yet it is just that style that has commended the game to the American people and aroused such a great interest in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camp suggested a \u201cconvention\u201d of football representatives from colleges could address the questions, and thus it materialized.<\/p>\n

Newspapers soon announced \u201cfive football experts\u201d would gather to discuss, draft, and ratify new rules. The 34-year-old Camp was named to the committee, obviously, while the others were likewise young \u201cfootball men\u201d and former players of the universities represented, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Pennsylvania, and Wesleyan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe football reform movement at last begins to assume a tangible shape,\u201d noted\u00a0The Evening World<\/em>, optimistically.<\/p>\n

The anointed experts released their new rules in spring 1894, football\u2019s first in the mission of safety for players. Among changes, a kick receiver could signal \u201cfair catch\u201d for avoiding contact; there would be \u201cless use of hands and arms obstructively\u201d; piling on a man when down would be penalized; and a \u201clinesman\u201d was added to field officials.<\/p>\n

The focus of attention was Rule 30 (c.), reading as follows: \u201cNo momentum mass plays shall be allowed.\u201d An enthusiastic news commentator said \u201canxious parents, friends and companions\u201d of players could now rest easy, as if football\u2019s dreadful \u201cwedge\u201d action were eliminated.<\/p>\n

But that depended on definition and interpretation. \u201cA momentum mass play is where more than three men start before the ball is put into play,\u201d stated a news report. \u201cNor shall more than three men group for that purpose more than five yards back from the point where the ball is put in play.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public expected much from anti-wedge policy, yet football\u2019s safety code produced negligible results during the 1894 season, with collisions still violent and injurious throughout. Critics howled in derision of officials.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0New York Evening Post<\/em>\u00a0editorial ripped the incorrigible violence of college football, chiding the hypocrisy\u2014or calculated rhetoric\u2014of organizers and supporters who tried to label boxing the only barbaric pastime.\u00a0The Post<\/em>\u00a0opined:<\/p>\n

There is one characteristic of the new football which all those who promise us its reform seem to overlook, and that is that it is the only athletic sport which brings the whole bodies of the players into violent collision.<\/p>\n

In short, is not the distinction between the ring and college football as played Saturday a distinction without a difference? Is not the attempt to make a [perceived] difference a bit of sophistry of which the champions of the game ought to be ashamed? It is true [the boxer] plays a game which consists in wasting his adversary\u2019s strength so that he can no longer resist.<\/p>\n

But how does this differ from college football? Is not the slugging of the enemy\u2019s best men so as to close their eyes, strain their hips, break their noses, and concuss their brains, and thus compel them to withdraw from the field, exactly the pugilist\u2019s policy?<\/p>\n

Chicago Tribune<\/em>\u00a0editors denounced alleged\u00a0gridiron reform. \u201cThe Football Slugging Match,\u201d the newspaper headlined after Harvard versus Yale. Brutality was \u201cthe conspicuous feature of the game,\u201d the report began.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was played under new rules, but the new rules were formulated not so much to make the game a test of skill, agility, and endurance as to invite personal encounters and increase the opportunities for slugging. That they worked well is shown by the list of maimed victims. Seven men were more or less severely injured.\u201d<\/p>\n

North of the U.S. border, The Winnipeg Tribune<\/em> followed American debate over tackle football as the sport was introduced in Canada. \u201cAnd the game is seriously threatened,\u201d the newspaper editorialized, \u201cfor it is impossible to ascribe the violence of the contest to any special kind of tactics.”<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year the flying wedge and momentum players were made the scapegoat for all the accidents of football. The public was easily deceived\u2026 The papers are asking the university authorities what they propose to do about the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Chicago preacher wanted impact changes, Rev. J.J. Tobias, who denounced amoral football and collegiate administrations before his Episcopal congregation. \u201cIs football essential to manly sports? Certainly not for physical culture…,\u201d Tobias scoffed, \u201cfor our gymnasiums and athletic clubs afford every facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[Football] is called a science\u2026,\u201d he continued from pulpit, mocking Walter Camp\u2019s frequent claim, \u201cyes, the science of disabling, wearing out, or killing by violent personal concussion of the antagonist. It is the science of brute force.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rev. Tobias doubted the courage of universities for standing up to the “football associations” so affluent and omnipotent on campuses nationwide, backed by exploding fan base.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a lack of real moral manliness on the part of the governing powers,\u201d he decried. \u201cThere is a mania and rivalry for large numbers on the campus rolls which makes presidents timid and under a compromising policy. It is a betrayal of a holy trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWill they be brave enough to face the howling mob, or do they shift responsibility?\u201d<\/p>\n

1894: Talking Points in Official Denial of Football Injuries<\/strong><\/p>\n

If health reform fell short of protecting football players, the official talk and committee meetings proved to protect the game itself. Policy-making could hardly alleviate risk and casualty for individuals, but rhetorical spin, committee posturing, and suspect cures would ensure survival of the football system.<\/p>\n

Cultural historian Michael Oriard analyzed the politics and communication in play, a century after Walter Camp seated himself to direct young coaches and rule-makers he anointed as \u201cexperts\u201d for reversing the bloodshed.<\/p>\n

\u201cFewer than a dozen young men, all representing elite universities and relatively privileged classes, controlled the game during those crucial early years of its development,\u201d wrote Oriard, an English professor and former player in college and the NFL, for\u00a0his book analysis titled\u00a0Reading Football<\/em> [1993]. \u201cThe creators of American football seem to have had power but little control, as they revised the rules again and again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unavoidable injuries stalked officials who were hapless to find legitimate solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe chronicle of rules made, broken, amended, circumvented, amended again, abused again, in endless cycle, seems to reveal a game that developed without intention, by simple necessity after an initial accident,\u201d Oriard concluded of the football\u2019s first half-century, after his research of Golden Press newspapers and magazines.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce the scrimmage line and the five-yard rule were instituted (by young men unable to anticipate the consequences), subsequent revisions were required to guarantee them, then to modify them as they became unworkable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials\u2019 revision of injury information also occurred, involving early incidents of brain trauma.<\/p>\n

A rash of athlete calamities befell Yale football in 1885. Aspiring player John Arnot Palmer collapsed and died of a brain aneurysm, one day removed from football practice. Most doctors at autopsy believed \u201cviolent exercise\u201d of the sport led to the blood vessel\u2019s bursting, according to first news. Yale physician\u00a0William O. Ayres<\/a> contested their conclusion, however, dismissing football as a factor; the pathology findings instead indicated that kidney disease spurred Palmer\u2019s cerebral bleed, Ayres announced to press.<\/p>\n

Following the death, two Yale players collided with \u201cfearful force\u201d at practice, injuring one. Halfback W.R. Crawford was \u201cknocked off his feet, landing heavily on his back and head,\u201d reported The Chicago Inter Ocean<\/em>. \u201cHe was removed to his room and medical aid summoned.\u201d Crawford lay \u201cunconscious for about two hours,\u201d the newspaper continued. \u201cHe is reported\u2026 as being all right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yale football officials, headed by Camp, were described as \u201creticent about the affair.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camp, if never experiencing brain trauma himself in football, evidently saw the condition as a player, coach, and referee. Writing of his freshman year as Yale player, 1876, Camp recalled \u201cstunning\u201d an opponent with his tackle, causing momentarily unconsciousness. Thirteen years later, Camp refereed a college game in New York when a Wesleyan player was \u201cknocked insensible\u201d and continued competing. Moreover, numerous Yale players and opponents were publicly identified as concussion casualties during Camp\u2019s decades at the university.<\/p>\n

Evidence suggests Camp understood both danger of brain injury and potential ramifications for tackle football. A recorded game incident of TBI ended up omitted from his 1894 book,\u00a0Football Facts and Figures<\/em>, which Watterson [2002]\u00a0ripped\u00a0as \u201ca resoundingly pro-football polemic\u201d containing \u201ca barrage of football propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who read Camp\u2019s book, especially the introductory excerpts, might come away wondering what all the critical fuss was about. According to the \u2018facts and figures\u2019 so authoritatively interpreted, no one suffered permanent injuries, and all but a cranky handful agreed that football\u2019s virtues outweighed its shortcomings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camp had solicited input from players, and one recalled suffering brain trauma. Former Penn captain William Harvey wrote to Camp that he suffered \u201cserious injury\u201d during a game in 1883, when \u201cI was knocked insensible but recovered in about fifteen minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Harvey\u2019s record of brain concussion was ignored for publication of the book,\u00a0which would be \u201ccited for decades as reliable evidence supporting continuation of the game through controversy and reform,\u201d observed modern researcher Emily A. Harrison.<\/p>\n

\u201cHarvey\u2019s response was included in\u00a0Football Facts and Figures<\/em>, but only in part,\u201d Harrison revealed of her investigation. \u201cOn his original letter, preserved in Camp\u2019s papers at Yale University, Harvey\u2019s description of his head injury has been blatantly crossed out in crayon.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one could control football violence, but public perspective could be shaped, and a template of official rhetoric was printed in concert with Camp\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

Eugene Lamb Richards, Yale math professor whose sons starred in football for the university, writing for\u00a0Popular Mechanics<\/em>\u00a0in 1894, outlined the talking points of safer football that endure today, including the following assurances:<\/p>\n

Qualified trainers and doctors will patrol sidelines.<\/p>\n

State-of-art medical care will treat the rare grave casualties.<\/p>\n

Injury tracking will cut rates already in decline.<\/p>\n

Coaches will properly train players.<\/p>\n

Players will be medically prescreened.<\/p>\n

Experts will research and ratify rules.<\/p>\n

Referees will enforce rules of the experts.<\/p>\n

Players will follow rules of the experts.<\/p>\n

Richards\u2019 timeless essay of football advocacy channeled further assertions of Camp:<\/p>\n

News media exaggerate gridiron injuries.<\/p>\n

Football teaches teamwork and courage, builds mind and body.<\/p>\n

Football is part-and-parcel of a complete education.<\/p>\n

Football saves urban or underprivileged boys from the streets.<\/p>\n

Football teaches manhood to boys everywhere.<\/p>\n

Football provides healthy catharsis for male aggression.<\/p>\n

Serious casualties are genetically predisposed to injury, too weak in their resistance.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Richards also penned the introduction to Camp\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

\u201cWalter Camp worked with fellow supporters of football to stave off critics and to create a climate of opinion favorable to the college game,\u201d Watterson wrote.<\/p>\n

Harrison critically noted: \u201cCamp and the [rules] committee set to work saving the game through persuasive selection of evidence, technical reform, and pressure on college administrators and faculty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yale football men apparently exerted campus clout at New Haven in 1894, for a football revolt over the notorious game with Harvard. The Associated Press reported anonymous members of the Yale faculty said \u201cpugilistic brutality of the game must be stopped,\u201d adding they would ensure cancellation of the university\u2019s pending game with Princeton.<\/p>\n

Campus football leaders immediately refuted the story, announcing Princeton remained on schedule. \u201cCaptain Hickey of Yale and his football [teammates] are back to hard practice again,\u201d newspapers stated. \u201cThe report that was circulated, saying the Yale faculty would forbid the game with the Tigers\u2026 is denied.\u201d<\/p>\n

1890s: Football Brain Risks Documented in News<\/strong><\/p>\n

Camp\u2019s description of TBI symptoms in an opponent he tackled in 1876 stands among earliest reported incidents of American football, according to texts available in electronic search. Newspapers publicized \u201cconcussion of the brain\u201d in football stories by 1885, such as the year\u2019s aforementioned incident at Yale, the practice collision that concussed a\u00a0player.<\/p>\n

In period lexicon, the term concussion could mean anything from cerebral dysfunction to lethal hemorrhaging. Journalists routinely attributed concussion to players who were rendered comatose or killed, but many doctors knew the condition typically presented with\u00a0symptoms such as headaches, confusion, memory loss, \u201cdelirium,\u201d and temporary unconsciousness, if any.<\/p>\n

Organized medicine of the late 19th<\/sup> century encountered concussed football players galore. The gory spectacle achieved wide appeal for its colliding combatants, fighting headlong over a ball\u2014\u201ccontact ballet\u2026 annihilation hanging in the balance,\u201d Oriard wrote\u2014constituting\u00a0a fertile culture for brain impacts that likely topped horseback riding, among riskiest endeavors.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the idea of the modern football captain\u2026,\u201d intoned The San Francisco Morning Call<\/em>, praising the game, \u201cis to fling such a force upon the holder of the ball that [the ball carrier] shall be knocked down, and probably knocked senseless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEIGHT PLAYERS KNOCKED SENSELESS,\u201d blared a newspaper headline in 1891, after Purdue University defeated Wabash College, 44 to 0. During another game in Indiana, a football-playing college professor \u201cfell on his head and was knocked senseless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Men and boys were \u201cknocked senseless\u201d in football from Manhattan Island to the Hawaiian Islands, newspapers revealed, and many more were medically diagnosed with \u201cmild\u201d or \u201cslight concussion,\u201d such as Harvard captain Bert Waters in 1893. The star guard was injured against Yale and removed from the game, then sidelined for his team\u2019s season finale versus Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

A Minneapolis football crowd of 1894 witnessed a \u201cpeculiar feature\u201d when University of Wisconsin quarterback Theron Lyman bumbled around behind center, forgetting signals and directions, beset with his repetitive brain injuries. \u201cHe did the same thing at Chicago, and it is due to a concussion of the brain some time ago,\u201d reported The St. Paul Globe<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That season\u2019s infamous Harvard-Yale game\u2014with Camp serving as umpire\u2014produced a \u201cslight concussion\u201d for Fred Murphy, a Yale tackle rendered unconscious for hours. Murphy returned to football practice within days and played in the next game.<\/p>\n

Many if not most head injuries in football\u2019s plodding scrums occurred of rips, falls, kicks, and crushes. In 1895, Central University halfback Will Lyon took a foe\u2019s foot to his head and was transported by coach ambulance to the team hotel. \u201cThere he lost consciousness and did not regain sensibility until about 7:30 o\u2019clock last evening,\u201d reported the Sunday morning\u00a0Louisville Courier-Journal<\/em>. \u201cIt is thought he suffered slight concussion of the brain, but will be able to leave for Richmond today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many doctors loved football and medical schools fielded teams nationwide. In 1896, the \u201cfootball eleven\u201d of the Chicago College of Physicians and Surgeons met Beloit College for a brawling contest in Wisconsin. The Daily Tribune<\/em> described the game as \u201cone of the wickedest in the matter of slugging that was ever played anywhere,\u201d continuing:<\/p>\n

The doctors outweighed Beloit and seemed to want to kill someone and do it quickly and so began slugging from the start and it was not long before the rough work was not confined to one side by any means. \u2026<\/p>\n

As the [scoreless] game was drawing to a close Hansell, one of the doctors, who had put up a fine game as left half-back, began to act queer and was taken off the field, when he became unconscious and lay in that condition for several hours, but is recovering now. Some think he suffered from concussion of the brain.<\/p>\n

The Yale team doctor diagnosed at least one concussion casualty that season, halfback Hamilton F. Benjamin, who was flattened against Princeton and \u201ckicked in the forehead,\u201d stated a news report. Benjamin \u201creceived a contused scalp and slight concussion of the brain, injuries not necessarily serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

A headshot rocked a Chicago schoolboy quarterback in 1899, causing \u201ctemporary insanity,\u201d per a report. \u201cHe raved several hours before he could be calmed. It is feared he suffered concussion of the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medical authorities referred to a \u201csecond consciousness\u201d for victims of brain concussion. Doctors said the injury was \u201cfrequent in football, when a player is sometimes knocked out, apparently recovers, plays out the game, and comes to himself only after a considerable period, remembering nothing in the interval,\u201d reported\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

1900: Do Football Helmets Cause or Prevent Trauma?<\/strong><\/p>\n

By 1893 in New York City, capital of football universe, \u201can epidemic\u201d of long-haired men struck a fashion statement. \u201cOn the streets, in the theatres, in cafes, and everywhere where people gather together, may be seen flowing locks adorning the heads of men of all kinds,\u201d The Boston Post<\/em> relayed. \u201cThis capillary profusion is particularly noticeable in the case of young men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Football players with press popularity had started the trend, although initially not for looks; they simply believed that growing hair long protected them from head injuries on the gridiron. \u201cFrom the time he begins practice early in the fall until the last goal has been kicked in November, the collegiate player does not indulge in the luxury of a hair cut,\u201d stated The New Orleans Times-Picayune<\/em>. \u201dThis hirsute matting does not add to his personal attractiveness, but it protects the player’s head from cold and injury.\u201d<\/p>\n

Princeton All-American quarterback Phil King drew media attention for his blonde curls\u2019 covering ears and eyes like \u201ca huge chrysanthemum.\u201d King bragged to writers he could \u201cbutt a stone wall\u201d without concern of skull fracture or brain concussion.<\/p>\n

Hair padding aside, football already favored firmer countermeasures for protection above neckline. Harvard players wore the patented Cumnock nose mask, designed of rubber by a former team captain, and the material had been taken further by a contemporary player, Charles Mackenzie at Princeton, a talented, injured backfield mate of King.<\/p>\n

The speedy Mackenzie was attempting a football comeback from brain trauma, after a physician sidelined him a year for \u201ca severe blow on the head\u2026 which if repeated the doctor fears might result seriously,\u201d newspapers reported. Mackenzie now donned \u201ca head protector made of hard rubber and can go into the thickest of the fight without fear of any serious result.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other types of football \u201cheadgear\u201d or helmets were developing too, but protection for ramming athletes remained elusive.<\/p>\n

In 1896, for example, the University of Kansas football team added William Baine, a Sioux Indian recruited\u00a0away from Haskell Institute. Baine was stocky, fast, intelligent, but at KU he suffered multiple brain injuries.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 31, Baine was \u201claid out by a fierce tackle\u201d against the Kansas City Medics, stated a news report. \u201cAfter that he did not know what he was doing. The doctors said he was in a bad way and feared concussion of the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baine\u2019s symptoms of \u201cslight concussion\u201d persisted the next week, recalled the Kansas quarterback decades later, Dr. Bert Kennedy, a dentist. The KU coaches were former players at Princeton, where padded \u201charness\u201d to cover head, ears, and nose had been constructed for years. Kennedy said \u201cwe fashioned a padded canvas headpiece to protect [Baine].\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the first football helmet I ever saw.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Saturday Kansas met rival Nebraska and Baine scored his team\u2019s first touchdown. Then KU played to hold the lead: \u201cWe were trying to stall and I called a right end run merely to get the ball in the middle of the field,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cThe Indian protested that his head ached and he couldn\u2019t run. But he traveled 60 yards to a touchdown so fast the Nebraskans never laid a hand on him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kansas squad beat Nebraska but unfortunately would experience a worst-case scenario of repeated brain injuries in football\u2014victimizing an opposing player, Bert Serf of Doane College.<\/p>\n

Serf was trampled by a Kansas \u201crush line\u201d on Nov. 14, attempting a goal-line tackle. He did not regain consciousness and died that night. \u201cThe injury was to the back of his head, and concussion of the brain doubtless caused his death,\u201d reported The Lawrence Weekly World<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe attending physicians are confident that [Serf] died largely from the effects of a previous injury. It is known that in a game at Tarkio, Mo., he was seriously hurt, and from that time he should have been taken off the gridiron.\u201d<\/p>\n

Serf apparently played without headgear despite his \u201csimilar concussions<\/a>,\u201d but Baine\u2019s helmet could not have shielded his repetitive trauma, either.<\/p>\n

Baine played college football almost a decade for various institutions, often as a mercenary athlete\u2014and with a progressively \u201cprimitive temper,\u201d observed historian\u00a0Tom Benjey<\/a>. Once Baine was ejected from a game for raging and throwing the football at a referee\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

Baine died at 29, while firing a pistol during a drunken binge in his native Fort Sisseton, S.D.; a night watchman shot him to death. \u201cWilliam Baine\u2019s short, but eventful, life ended violently,\u201d wrote Benjey [2008]. \u201cOne cannot wonder if his \u2018mild concussion of the brain\u2019 had anything to do with his end.\u201d<\/p>\n

A football death in 1897 refueled debate over brutality. University of Georgia player Von Gammon died of brain injury sustained in a game, incurring outrage of football critics. The Pittsburgh Daily Post<\/em> opined:<\/em><\/p>\n

A conservative medical journal, the Philadelphia \u201cMedical Record,\u201d makes a weighty deliverance against football. The \u201cRecord\u201d holds that the game as now played ought not to be allowed, on the grounds that it can no longer be viewed in the light of innocent recreative amusement, with harmless and healthful athletics as its object; but that, even with “slugging” ruled out, it is “productive of the greatest variety of surgical injuries to every part of the body,” and that the effect of such injuries is life-long in a large proportion of cases.<\/p>\n

The Georgia legislature hastily passed a bill to ban football, which the governor considered for a month before declining to sign it. The governor said his decision finalized on letter from the dead player\u2019s mother, imploring him to keep football alive for the state.<\/p>\n

The next year, a helmet manufacturer released a model that \u201ccompletely protects the head and ears,\u201d announced a news item. \u201cThe crown of it is made of tough sole leather, filled with air holes and lined with soft felt.\u00a0It is believed that the helmet will be generally worn by members of all the big teams this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

But TBI\u00a0continued on football fields, and coaches and doctors clearly understood the gravity of such injury, if not the biological mechanisms. And \u201cprotective\u201d equipment only exacerbated health risks, with adoption of stiff leather helmets and metallic masks, along with hard pads for shoulders, elbows, hips and knees<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been charged that these things have been brought into use not so much to provide protection for the wearers as to inflict injury upon opponents, and there is a general cry that there have been more injuries and bruises this fall because of this armor than ever before,\u201d\u00a0The Fort Wayne Daily News<\/em>\u00a0reported in 1900, continuing:<\/p>\n

Cameron Forbes and Ben Dibblee, Harvard\u2019s leading coaches, say that a good headpiece gives to a man increased confidence and tends to make him strike an opponent with his head instead of his shoulder in bucking the line.<\/p>\n

The Princeton coaches, on the other hand, favor all kinds of helmets and harness. They argue that headpieces are necessary because the injuries to the head are generally of a far more lasting and serious nature than those received in other parts of the body.<\/p>\n

As the 1890s brought American football\u2019s first crisis over brutality, the turn of the century would mark \u201cThe First Concussion Crisis,\u201d which is title of Emily A. Harrison\u2019s ground-breaking review for\u00a0American Journal of Public Health<\/em>\u00a0in 2014. Harrison researched the article while completing her doctorate degree in science history at Harvard.<\/p>\n

\u201cContrary to popular opinion, concussions are not a recent discovery in football, and this recent upwelling is not the first coming of the concussion crisis in American sports,\u201d Harrison cautioned. \u201cIt emerged more than a century ago, in the very first decades of football.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matt Chaney is an author, editor, and consultant on public issues in sport, specializing in American football. Chaney, MA in media studies, is a former college football player and coach whose books include <\/em>Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, self-published in<\/em> 2009<\/a>. Chaney’s study for graduate thesis, co-published with the University of Central Missouri in 2001, analyzed print sport-media coverage of anabolic substances\u00a0in football from 1983-1999. Email him at <\/em>mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com<\/a> or visit the website for more information.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brain Injury in American Football: 130 Years of Knowledge and Denial The 1890s: Cerebral Risks Confirmed on Gridiron Part One in A Series By Matt Chaney Posted Tuesday, July 28, 2015 Copyright\u00a0\u00a92015 by Matthew L. Chaney As American football officials tell the story today, brain injury among players is a fledgling issue, identified only in … Continue reading The 1890s: Brain Risks Confirmed in American Football<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[260,3,4],"tags":[124,162,18,179,226,40,255,62,257,253,15,251,246,58,215,89,243,242,249,92,98,252,250,244,248,256,87,55,5,59,46,36,254,199,39,6,240,245,241],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ywFp-a9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4399,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions\/4399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}