George Wells Fitz – America’s Father of Exercise Science

Introduction

George Wells Fitz (1860–1934), stands as a foundational figure in the history of exercise physiology in the United States, often regarded as the father of the discipline in America. Born in New York City, Fitz earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1891. He maintained a private medical practice in Boston while simultaneously serving as a professor and researcher at Harvard, where he made pioneering contributions to the scientific study of physical training, fatigue, and reaction time.

Dr. George Wells Fitz,

Creator of America’s first formal research laboratory dedicated to physical education at Harvard University. Tintype Courtesy of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,

 

George Wells Fitz petitioned Harvard for support to establish a dedicated laboratory for the experimental study of exercise physiology, as none existed in the country. For the first time, a leading university formally recognized that physical training deserved rigorous scientific investigation.  Before Fitz, physical education had focused primarily on measuring bodies, charting growth, and designing apparatus and exercises. There were numerous competing training systems—each built on untested hypotheses, with little hard evidence to support one method over another. At professional educational conferences, Fitz grew famously impatient with endless debates between practitioners over “which gymnastics system is best.” “Show me the evidence,” he’d demand. Until rigorous experiments replaced opinions, he argued, the field would stay stuck in “an intellectual vacuum.”

 

After Wells opened the facility, housed within Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School, a rational, individualized approach guided by controlled methodology. Now, accurate measurements and statistically sound data could be published, guiding the direction that physical training could take in the United States. Data on each student’s strengths and deficiencies, along with respiration rate, heart rate, and fatigue-recovery techniques, before and after training, were analyzed and interpreted.  Questions of heavy versus light apparatus, conscious versus incidental training, length of workout sessions, and the effects of alcohol and tobacco on training.

 

To address the need for standardized equipment for testing and measurement, Harvard employed a skilled machinist, who was assigned to Fitz’s lab to build the unique apparatuses Fitz designed for his research programs.  These controlled and reproducible experiments placed physical education on a firm scientific foundation, replacing speculation with evidence to guide future training and lend it the authority of an established discipline.

 

The Fitz’s program was a groundbreaking shift in higher education, integrating rigorous physiological research with physical education. He created an academic curriculum based on his research findings and established, at Harvard, the first four-year Bachelor of Science degree program in physical education in the country.

 

 

 Fitz’s core message endures: Physical education is rooted in the scientific physiology of the human body. The two are inseparable.

His publications ranged from curing muscle cramps with controlled breathing to debunking overhyped “miracle” fabrics for clothing. Despite his breakthroughs, Fitz’s Harvard program lasted less than a decade. Practical demands—teaching, coaching, administration—crowded out research time. By 1899, Fitz retired from Harvard, and moved to Southold, New York. Here he spent the next thirty years writing several books on human physiology. 

George Wells Fitz died tragically in a 1934 train-car collision. Newspaper reports described the accident as occurring when he was racing to beat the train to the Peconic, Long Island, NY station. The train station housed the local Post Office and Fitz was hurrying to post a letter.

The Microscope Slide Collection of George W. Fitz

The Discovery of George Fitz’s Microscope Slides!

Around 1900, plain pine slotted boxes with matching covers were a common, no-frills way to store microscope slides. Made from inexpensive pine wood, these sturdy boxes featured interior grooves to securely hold exactly 25 standard 1×3-inch glass slides upright, protecting them from dust, breakage, and shifting. Unpainted or lightly finished, with a simple hinged or sliding lid, they reflected the era’s practical, economical approach for safeguarding small collections of microscope slides.

The (above) slide’s label states the specimen as “Kidney of Cat. Injected alum coch. Fitz 12 – 18.”  Similar slides in the group are dated as 1888 or 1889 so is is reasonable assumed as the date the slide was made as 1888. Besides being the kidney of a cat the label also informs the viewer that it had been stained with a dye, “Alum Coch” to reveal microscopic structures such as tissues and cells. “Alum Coch” is an abbreviation of the time for the red stain aluminum carmine or aluminum cochineal. The dye is derived from the exudates of the cottony scale insects, Dactylopius, a relative of aphids, parasitizing prickly pear cactuses in tropical and semitropical climates.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, aluminum carmine was one of the most commonly used nuclear stains in histology, particularly for animal tissues. It was introduced by Joseph von Gerlach in the 1850s and remained the standard nuclear stain until it was replaced by hematoxylin around the turn of the century.

Aluminum carmine strongly stains cell nuclei a deep red to magenta color while lightly staining the cytoplasm and connective tissue a pale pink. In Fitz’s preparation, the glomeruli appear dark red. In Fitz’s preparation the dye was injected into the cat’s renal artery filling the primary blood filtering structure of the kidney with the stain. These twisted ball of yarn like bodies, actually a tangle of capillaries, are the large red spherical structures which are termed the glomeruli. The wider efferent artery brings blood into the glomerulus while a narrower afferent artery carries it away. the constriction in diameter causes a back pressure in the glomerulus forcing blood, the plasma, into the cavity called Bowman’s capsule. some of the water in the plasma is reabsorbed into the blood by a capillary network covering the collecting tubules leading from Bowman’s capsule where useful nutrients, such as sugar, are reabsorbed into the blood. waste products that are left behind forming urine. 

James Colegrove, Hillsdale, Ill. Was a member and treasurer of the American Microscopical Association. Read a paper about the microscopic observation of bacteria at the meeting published in the May 1878 issue of the American Journal of Microscopy and Popular Science, NY. He prepared microscope slides that were occasionally sold commercially.

Minot’s Microtome

John L. Sullivan: Fitz’s most famous subject.

Fitz One of his instruments was an electrical device to measure reaction and reflex timing. Notably, world champion boxer John L. Sullivan trained for three months under Fitz’s direction to improve his speed at the laboratory. The experience was recounted in Sullivan’s autobiography, Reminiscences of a 19th-Century Gladiator. In addition to bringing publicity to his program, the collaboration highlights how Fitz bridged laboratory science with elite athletic performance, revolutionizing training and conditioning methods. Fitz was supported by Harvard as he custom-built devices to measure reaction time, spinal curvature (he invented the scoliometer). His lab worked to supply hard data about how exercise affects blood flow, muscle growth, and overall health. 

The device Fitz designed to measure reaction time became the most famous instrument of his creation when it was used of the World Champion boxer John L. Lewis. At the Cambridge lab, a suspended boxing bag was wired to a timer when hit. A light was lit while the timer was running. Lewis was instructed to hit the bag when the light came on. The interval between the timer starting and when it was turned off by striking the bag was recorded. Fitz called it a “Locarion” a location/reaction apparatus. At the beginning of the training series Lewis’ reaction time was forty-eight one-hundredths of a second. After two months of training, his reaction time was reduced to forty-three one-hundredths of a second. Fitz measured the speed of the boxer’s straight out punch delivery to be twenty miles an hour. 

He built a “location reaction apparatus” to measure how quickly someone could touch an unexpected target, such as another person’s chin, during a boxing match. Here, he became somewhat controversial with his lab enlisting the help of the internationally famous boxer John L. Sullivan.

Authorship of Fitz’s Science Textbooks. 

Fitz was listed as the author for influential physiology texts, even though he contributed only partially to the works. Shifting attributions for books was not truly plagiarism as the authors did not own rights to the books. The publisher held the copyrights and moving names around were a marketing strategy. 

 

Copyright ownership for these volumes was established under standard practices of the time. Henry Holt & Co. compensated H. Newell Martin with advances and royalties, continuing this practice with his estate and Hettie Cary Martin’s heirs, as well as George Wells Fitz. The company retained legal title to safeguard their investment, and there were no recorded objections from any authors regarding this arrangement.

In the 1894 fourth edition, Hettie Cary Martin’s name was removed in accordance with publishing conventions that followed the death of a co-author. Although her contributions remained in the work, it was customary to credit the living or original author, a reflection of gender norms of that time when widows seldom held public authorship in scientific literature.

The inclusion of Martin’s name in the 1898 fifth edition was not intended to deceive. Readers and booksellers at that time understood that revised posthumous editions typically showcased the original author’s name while acknowledging the editor, as indicated by the phrasing “revised by G. W. Fitz.” This practice was similarly seen in works like Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” which continued to carry Darwin’s name even in subsequent revised editions.

Finally, the 1908 reissue under Fitz’s name alone was a clear commercial strategy. Holt aimed to target a different market segment by repurposing existing plates under a new title, avoiding competition with their own backlist. The advertisements for this edition explicitly stated that it was “based on the work of H. Newell Martin, revised and enlarged by George Wells Fitz,” ensuring transparency and clarity in representation.

During his retirement in Peconic NY Fitz continued working in microscopy and developed a device to enable microscopists to physically manipulate needles, probes, knives and even an injection syringe to work on tiny things as small as a single cell. He patented the device and described the working of its mechanism in technical publications such as the journal Science. The optical company agreed to manufacture the micromanipulator and advertised in in their catalogs in the 1930s. The Wells Micromanipulator and its associated literature is not in this collection so what follows in a reproduction of the open access literature. 

The Authorship Team of George and Rachel Fitz

The book “Problems of Babyhood: Building a Constitution, Forming a Character” (1906), co-authored by physician George Wells Fitz and Rachel Kent Fitz, serves as a guide for parents and caregivers. Readers at the time appreciated the book’s dual focus: one aspect emphasizes the physical development of infants from the perspective of a medical doctor, while the other offers insights from a mother’s point of view.

The text covers various topics, including feeding, hygiene, heredity, prenatal care, and character formation. It is interspersed with charming pencil sketches of babies and toddlers by Edward August Bell, an accomplished artist and relative of the authors. Bell, who married Julia Fitz Overton, the niece of George Wells Fitz, provided these illustrations for the 1906 book published in New York by Henry Holt & Co. His realistic style effectively enhanced the book’s practical focus on infant care, depicting child poses and home settings.

The Peconic School was an artist colony founded in the 1880s in Peconic, near Southold. It was co-led by Benjamin Rutherfurd Fitz, the brother of George Fitz, and Edward August Bell. After Benjamin’s death in 1891, Bell became a key figure in the group, which he described as a collection of friends who painted together. The term “Peconic School” was not introduced until 1985 when author and scholar Ronald G. Pisano used it in his book *Long Island Landscape Painting: 1820-1920*, published by the New York Graphic Society.

Edward August Bell married Julia Fitz Overton, the niece of George Wells Fitz. He provided pencil sketches of children for the 1906 book by Rachel and George Wells Fitz, published in New York by Henry Holt & Co. Bell’s realistic style complemented the book’s focus on practical visuals related to infant care, such as child poses and home settings, likely inspired by his integration into the Fitz family through his marriage in the early 1900s.

The book “Problems of Babyhood: Building a Constitution, Forming a Character” (1906), co-authored by physician George Wells Fitz and Rachel Kent Fitz, serves as a guide for parents and caregivers. Readers at the time appreciated the book’s dual focus: one aspect emphasizes the physical development of infants from the perspective of a medical doctor, while the other offers insights from a mother’s point of view.

The text covers various topics, including feeding, hygiene, heredity, prenatal care, and character formation. It is interspersed with charming pencil sketches of babies and toddlers by Edward August Bell, an accomplished artist and relative of the authors. Bell, who married Julia Fitz Overton, the niece of George Wells Fitz, provided these illustrations for the 1906 book published in New York by Henry Holt & Co. His realistic style effectively enhanced the book’s practical focus on infant care, depicting child poses and home settings.

Illustrations for the book

The Peconic School* was an artist colony founded in the 1880s on the North Fork of Long Island near Southold. It was co-led by Benjamin Rutherfurd Fitz, the brother of George Fitz, and Edward August Bell. After Benjamin’s death in 1891, Bell became a key figure in the group, which he described as a collection of friends who painted together.

*The term “Peconic School” was not introduced until 1985 when author and scholar Ronald G. Pisano used it in his book *Long Island Landscape Painting: 1820-1920*, published by the New York Graphic Society.

Edward August Bell married Julia Fitz Overton, the niece of George Wells Fitz. He provided pencil sketches of children for the 1906 book by Rachel and George Wells Fitz, published in New York by Henry Holt & Co. Bell’s realistic style complemented the book’s focus on practical visuals related to infant care, such as child poses and home settings, likely inspired by his integration into the Fitz family through his marriage in the early 1900s.

 Bell’s oil portrait of Henry Irving Fitz as a young boy is a late 19th-century work likely created between 1900 and 1905, since the subject was born in 1895. Henry is the nephew of George Wells Fitz and the son of George’s brother, Henry Giles Fitz (1847–1937). The painting is currently held by the Southold Historical Society. In 2004, the organizaation received a $5,600 grant for conservation treatment and enlisted the services of noted conservator Alexander Katlan to preserve this delicate artwork.

Why Does Fitz Deserve the Title “Father of Exercise Physiology in America”

George Wells Fitz, MD, is easily demonstrated to be the Father of American Exercise Physiology. Records and publications show he was the first scientist in the United States to create and direct an experimental laboratory based solely on systematically measuring the human body’s responses to physical exertion.

Dudley Allen Sargent was the director of Harvard’s Hemenway Gymnasium from its inception in 1879. He was recognized as a pioneer in physical education by striving to standardize methodologies to build strength and endurance in athletes. At the time, various coaches and trainers were using different techniques, with no clear answer as to which were most effective. Arguments proliferated with little consensus being achieved. Sargent understood the need to bring scientific rigor to physical education to validate or discredit the exercise protocols currently in use. Data and hard evidence to settle debates about what different educators were doing, and a pathway for developing new ones. He coaxed Harvard to support the construction of a laboratory solely dedicated to the scientific study of human physiology as the body responds to stress.

In 1891, Dudley Allen Sargent hired George W. Fitz, a newly graduated MD trained under Henry Pickering Bowditch, chair of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School. Sargent, although a pioneer in physical education, was not a physiologist. He needed Fitz to design, administer, and write a curriculum for the new laboratory named the Physiological Laboratory of the Lawrence Scientific School. Sargent needed Fitz to bring rigorous scientific methodologies and analysis to advance the emerging field of physical training. By 1892, Fitz had equipped the new laboratory not only with exercise equipment but also with a complete machine shop. It was more than a gym. In the shop, Fitz could design and build original apparatus for measuring oxygen consumption, blood pressure changes, respiratory exchange, muscular fatigue, neuromuscular coordination during and after exercise, reaction times, and more. Using Harvard students and athletes as subjects, Fitz conducted the nation’s first controlled, quantitative investigations into the acute and chronic physiological effects of exercise. A gym and laboratory that transformed vague speculation into verifiable science decades before similar laboratories appeared elsewhere.

While Sargent, as director of the Hemenway Gymnasium, deserves credit for recognizing the need for science, providing institutional support, supplying thousands of research subjects, and popularizing physical training nationwide, the actual design and implementation of the program, along with its scientific legitimacy, rested on Fitz’s shoulders. Sargent’s contributions remained primarily administrative and instructional. Fitz, by contrast, introduced the scientific method, designed precise instrumentation, and established the research ethos defining modern exercise physiology. When later accounts—often written by Sargent’s admirers—referred to “Dr. Sargent’s laboratory,” they were describing a facility that Fitz had designed, equipped, and directed. Today, physical education historians such as Charles Tipton, Roberta Park, and Jack Berryman consistently identify Sargent as the pioneering figure who gave exercise physiology its scientific birth in America. But the criteria they use focus on the administrator who petitioned for the laboratory’s formation. This paper concludes that the honor should not go to the program’s chief administrator but to the lead scientist who designed and implemented the program that succeeded. The referenced historians do agree that exercise physiology did not begin with Sargent’s Hemenway Gymnasium in 1879 but with the enlistment of Fitz in 1891 as the laboratory’s scientific director. George Well Fitz is rightfully the Father of Exercise Physiology in America.

Fitz wasn’t satisfied with traditional methods of teaching physical education to students studying to become educators. At professional conferences, Fitz was famously impatient with endless debates over “which gymnastics system is best.” “Show me the evidence,” he’d frequently blurt out during meetings.  It was his opinion that until rigorous experiments replaced opinions, the field would stay stuck in “an intellectual vacuum.” His lab supplied hard facts. Fitz’s tools were ingenious. He photographed students from multiple angles on a single photographic plate to track changes in their posture. He built a “location reaction apparatus” to clock how fast someone could touch an unexpected target. His publications ranged from curing muscle cramps with controlled breathing to debunking overhyped “miracle” fabrics for clothing. Despite his breakthroughs, Fitz’s Harvard program lasted less than a decade. 

Fitz’s Self-Summary for the Future of Physical Education. 

Fitz died tragically in 1934 while in his car racing a train going to the Peconic station. The press reported that he was anxious to mail a letter and the post office was in the station.  Fitz collided with the train at the railroad crossing. 

References

Kroll, Walter, and Guy Lewis (1969). The First Academic Degree in Physical Education. The Journal of Health and Physical Education, Vol 40, Issue 6, pp. 73-74

Kroll and Guy provide further confirming evidence: the first academic four-year degree in Physical Education ever awarded was to James F. Jones at Harvard College by George Wells Fitz. Jones began his studies at Harvard in the Department of Anatomy, Physiology, and Physical Training in 1891. He received a B.S. degree with cum laude honors in Anatomia, Physiologica, et Corporis Cultu in June 1893. (Kroll, Guy, 1996)

Berryman, J. W. (1989). The tradition of the “six things non-natural”: Exercise and medicine from Hippocrates through ante-bellum America. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, 17, 1–34.

Chamberlain, Joshua L. (Ed.) Universities and their Sons, University Press, Cambridge. Vol III 1899. (p. 121 Fitz, p. 13 Minot, p.92 Whitney)

Fitz, George Wells (1893). Problems of physical education. The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, 2(5), 1–6.

Fitz, George Wells (1897)A Study in Measurements in Curvature of the Spine. American Physical Education Review, V. 2, 185-187 (scoliometer)

Fitz, George Wells (1895) A Location – Reaction Apparatus, The Psychological Review V. 1 N. 2, pp 37-42

Fitz, George Wells (1908) Principles of Physiology and Hygiene, Henry Holt, NY

Fitz, George Wells (1893)

Fitz, George Wells and Rachel Wells (1906) Problems in Babyhood, Holt & Reinhardt, NY

Hoberman, J. (1992). Mortal engines: The science of performance and the dehumanization of sport. Free Press. Leonard, F. E. (1923). A guide to the history of physical education (2nd ed.).

Kroll, Walter P. (1971) Perspectives in Physical Education, Academic Press, Inc. NY 1971

Kroll, Walter P. and Guy Lewis (1969) The First Academic Degree in Pysical Education. Journal of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, 40(6), pp. 73–74

Lea & Febiger.Park, R. J. (1987). Physiologists, physicians, and physical educators: Nineteenth-century biology and exercise, hygienic and educative. Journal of Sport History, 14(1), 28–60.

Martin, Newel H. and George W. Fitz (1908) The Human Body. Henry Holt, NY

Martin, Newel H. and Ernest G. Martin (1898) The Human Body. Henry Holt, NY

Martin, Newel H. and Ernest G. Martin (1926) The Human Body. Henry Holt, NY

Martin, Newel H. and Hetty Martin (1894) The Human Body. Henry Holt, NY

Park, R. J. (1996). “George Wells Fitz, M.D.: Contributions to the profession.” In J. R. Thomas & J. K. Nelson (Eds.), Research methods in physical activity (3rd ed., pp. 13–14).

Pisano, Ronald G. (1990), Long Island Landscape Painting: 1820-1920, published by the New York Graphic Society.

Tipton, C. M. (Ed.). (2014). Human Kinetics: History of Exercise Physiology. 

Verbrugge, M. H. (2012). Active bodies: A history of women’s physical education in twentieth-century America. Oxford University Press.

Zeigler, E. F. (1975). Dudley Allen Sargent: The great American physical educator and his contributions to the profession. In E. F. Zeigler (Ed.), American sport and physical education history (to 1975): An anthology (pp. 87–102). Stipes Publishing.

Zeigler, Earle, F. (1975) American Sport and Physical Education History (to 1975): An Anthology. Trafford Publishing