THE MEDICAL VIEW OF ROLLER SKATING IN 1885
During the 1880s roller skating had become enormously popular among American children.1 To counteract the widely-held fear that this pastime was detrimental to the health of young children, the following editorial was published in 1885 in one of our best-known nineteenth-century journals.2
THE MEDICAL VIEW OF ROLLER-SKATING
It seems as if America were peculiarly susceptible to epidemic influences of a mental kind. We hear of no other country so violently perturbed by "waves" of temperance crusading, religious revivals, velocipede crazes, pedestrianism, and, finally, roller-skating, upon which latter pastime the thoughts and feelings of three-fourths of the rising generation are at present centered. In intensity and extent, the roller-skating mania has far exceeded all its predecessors, and it must be inferred, either that the psychological contagium is particularly strong, or that the susceptibility of young America to affective epidemic influences is increasing.
Modern scientists of the "Psychical Research" school are putting forward the theory of brain-waves as a possibly potent element in the production of panic fears and epidemic fashions and feelings. The mind acts "exoneurally," we are told, and the vibrating brain-cells of the enthusiastic roller-skater communicate their rhythmical pulsations to the previously insensitive spectator. Whatever the mechanism, there is certainly at present a morbidly exaggerated passion for, and indulgence in, roller-skating. And the question comes home to the physician, whether it is doing any physical or mental harm.
On the whole, we are inclined to take a rather lenient view of the present craze. Considerable inquiry has failed to elicit any facts showing that roller-skating, temperately indulged in, does any harm to growing children; or produces any diseases and injuries peculiar to the sport.
