ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter it was argued that, in order to understand the development of sports medicine, it is necessary to examine not only the changing structure of sport and sporting competition, but also to locate these changes within the context of changes in the structure of the wider society and, more particularly, within the context of changes in the structure of modern medical practice. In this regard, it was argued that the process of medicalization has been of particular significance, and that the development of sports medicine can be seen as an aspect of the medicalization of sport. Attention was also drawn to the importance of changes in the structure of modern sport and, in this context, attention was focused, in particular, on the increased competitiveness of modern sport and on the increased emphasis which has come to be placed on winning. It was argued that developments within the structure of medical practice have meant that medical practitioners have been increasingly prepared to make their professional knowledge and skills available to athletes at the very time that athletes, as a result of developments within sport, have been increasingly eager to seek help from anyone who can hold out the prospect of improving their level of performance. The conjuncture of these two relatively autonomous processes, it was argued, has been central to the development of sports medicine. Given the undoubted significance of the development of sports medicine
for modern sporting competition – one writer has suggested that ‘the entire enterprise of elite sport is best understood as a recent chapter in the history of applied medical research into human biological development’ (Hoberman, 1992: 4) – it is perhaps surprising that the development of sports medicine has received scant attention from both sociologists of sport and medical sociologists. The central object of this chapter is to build on the analysis in the last chapter and to examine further the changing relationship between sport and medicine. More specifically, this chapter focuses on two interrelated problems. The first part of the chapter traces in broad terms the development of sports medicine in the twentieth century. The second part of the chapter focuses on some aspects of the increasingly close relationship, particularly since the 1950s, between the development of sports medicine and the development and use of performance-enhancing drugs and techniques.
