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The physique of Oxford undergraduates: Relationship With Weight Variation, Schooling and Habits

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2009

R. W. Parnell
R. W. Parnell*
Affiliation:
The Warneford Hospital, Oxford
*
Nuffield Research Physician in the Constitutional Aspects of Psychiatric Medicine. Lately Student Health Physician, Institute of Social Medicine, Oxford.
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In earlier reports on the physique of Oxford undergraduates attending the pilot student health service from 1947 to 1950 emphasis was laid on body shape. Parnell (1952) pointed out the tendency for centrally placed Sheldonian somato-types, that is those with more balanced mid-range body proportions, to occur more frequently in the Oxford sample than in American universities, a tendency incidentally which advances further according to the level of university performance attained. Tanner (1952) emphasized the tendency for Oxford students to show less mesomorphy, that is muscle and bone development, than American students but he reports a comment from Sheldon himself that the distribution at Harvard resembled the Oxford distribution more closely. This approach, by the analysis of body shape, to the problem of physical characteristics accompanying academic selection is of particular interest, but in calculating the somatotype, height is deliberately ignored by being placed as the denominator of all the body proportions employed. Height, however, is an index of body size, as opposed to body shape, and has an importance of its own. This report concerns observations on Oxford undergraduates in which more attention is paid to body size, and particular attention also to variation of weight during university residence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Hygiene , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , September 1954 , pp. 369 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1954

References

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