ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an historical overview of those individuals from antiquity to the present century whose experiments have demonstrated the intimate connection of medicine, physiology, exercise, and nutrition. Building on these seminal linkages, it urges the creation of a cross-disciplinary academic field to be known as Exercise Nutrition. Nutrition as applied to exercise and sports originated before the Golden Age of Greece. Greek thinkers utilized “scientific” ideas about food, medicine, and treatment of sickness that came from Egypt and other cultures. The Olympics lasted from 776 B.C. to 393 A.D. when the Christian Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I abolished them. During this period, paidotribes advised their athletes about food and exercise. New ideas formulated during the Renaissance exploded almost every idea inherited from antiquity. Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press disseminated both classic and newly acquired knowledge. Leonardo Da Vinci dissected cadavers at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and made detailed anatomical drawings.
