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Medicina Gymnastica, or, A Treatise Concerning the Power of Exercise, with Respect to the Animal Oeconomy, by Francis Fuller. Printed in London by John Matthews for Robert Knaplock, 1707. Lower Library, K.11.21

Francis Fuller (1670–1706) was a medical practitioner born in Bristol and educated at St. John’s College in Cambridge. He suffered from dyspepsia and cured himself by riding on horseback; this led him to publish in 1705 Medicina Gymnastica, a book dedicated to the medical properties of physical exercises.¹ Specifically written in English for everyone to read, the book was a true bestseller;² a second edition was published within the same year and then several other editions followed, until a ninth and last in 1777.³

Fuller thought that people were too reliant on drugs and medicines, always hopeful that ‘the quantity of a few drops, shall charm away their evils’, and believed that ‘the power of recovering their health was in their own hands’,⁴ thanks to physical activity.

Like Mercuriale, Fuller was heavily influenced by Galen and considered the body a composition of fluids and solids; when the two were out of balance diseases would form. Fuller thought that through motion it was possible to restore this balance and cure the illnesses that affected the body.

The best type of motion, according to the author, was horse riding, to which a whole chapter is dedicated. This sport represented the perfect balance between exercise (the lower parts of the body, clutching the animal) and rest (the upper parts relaxed, while holding the reins). Apparently riding was especially useful in case of indigestion and diarrhoea, as Fuller had experienced himself.⁵

Fuller also ‘had the merit of recommending the regular use of “chafing”, or massage’,⁶ when patients were unable to move by themselves.⁷

Leaving aside some of his most curious remedies (we don’t advise the use of millipedes for the treatment of rheumatism), there are a few passages on the importance of exercise that we found are still relevant today.

It is in vain, when exercise is really necessary, for a person to complain after the first tryal, and say, I’m tyr’d, my bones are sore, my head akes, I’m ready to faint, or the like; for all this must be endur’d, and upon patiently repeating the motion, tho’ no abatement appear for some days, yet the reward will come at last: and as these symptomes go off, the strength of the sick person will encrease.⁸

The success of this work shows us how much society had changed its attitude towards gymnastics, from spurning care for the physical body in the Middle Ages, to commending the benefits of sports and moderate exercise for everyone in the modern era.

Gymnastics reborn << Health in our hands >> Struggle in stone

1. Norman Moore, rev. Michael Bevan, , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–2024), online.
2. Aris Safarianos, , Representations 91 (Summer 2005): 58–83.
3. Moore, ‘Fuller’, online.
4. Francis Fuller, Medicina Gymnastica, or, A Treatise Concerning the Power of Exercise (London, 1707), 43.
5. James Kennaway and Rina Knoeff, , in Lifestyle and Medicine in the Enlightenment, eds. James Kennaway and Rina Knoeff (London: Routledge, 2020).
6. Moore, ‘Fuller’, online.
7. Fuller, Medicina, 66.