Research Board for the Correlation of Medical Science and Physical Education

The collection comprises records and reports of the Board, including sub-committees on maternity and child welfare, education and recreation, physical education in the armed forces and industry. Complete runs of minutes do not appear to have survived for most of the committees, but information can in some cases be gathered from the draft minutes (A.12) or from the circulated copies of minutes, which can be found in the individual files for each sub-committee, panel, etc.

1937-1960

8 boxes

The collection is divided into sections as follows:

A General meetings 1942-1956

B Finance 1944-1956

C Policy Committee 1937-1956

D Research Committee 1943-1950

E Research sponsored by Board 1944-1960

F Miscellaneous

These records were collected by the library at Wellcome Collection in November 1986 from the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries of London, which had accommodated the Board.

Established 1943, closed down 1956. Records and reports of the Board, including sub-committees on maternity and child welfare, education and recreation, physical education in the armed forces, and industry, 1942-1960.
The idea of studying the inter-relationship between health and physical education was addressed at an Inter-Allied Conference in 1942, and the Research Board was set up in 1943. Its aims were "to ensure more general recognition of the need for health and physical education in the widest sense" in the hope that "the lessons of war would, in the field of health and physical efficiency, become the accepted standards of peacetime and reconstruction". Two major reports were published, Medical Science and Physical Education (1944), covering maternity and child welfare, education and recreation, and the armed forces, and Medical Science and Physical Education in Industry (1946), containing far-reaching recommendations, especially on occupational health and rehabilitation (C.10). Special projects were funded and grants awarded for relevant studies, and the Board administered the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust Hyde Prize. The Board closed down in November 1956.

The records were in considerable disorder, and sorting has involved reconstruction of files where bundles and loose sheets appeared to relate to one another, and amalgamation of correspondence files where two sides of the same correspondence were found in different files.