Mental Health, Gender, and the Rise of Sport

Neurasthenia, a mysterious nervous disorder first identified in the United States in 1869, produced symptoms ranging from lassitude to outright hysteria. Psychosomatic in nature, it was thought to deplete the body's finite nervous energy, leaving sufferers constantly fatigued and mentally listless. Against this backdrop of widespread psychological strain, organized sport began to take hold across American society, offering a crucial outlet from the pressures of a rapidly modernizing world.Gerald R. Gems's Mental Health, Gender, and the Rise of Sport sets out to explore this largely overlooked historical connection. By bringing together mental health, gender dynamics, and the rise of organized sport after the Civil War, Gems examines a vital intersection rarely studied in depth. While modern research often highlights the physical benefits of exercise and the psychological rewards of sports fandom, less attention has been paid to how the growth of sport in the nineteenth century coincided with the widespread emergence of neurasthenia. Gems convincingly and substantially draws the link by identifying how these developments arose side by side, ultimately suggesting that as sport gained prominence in American life, it helped ease the psychological strains that found expression in neurasthenia, serving as “an effective antidote to stress and psychosomatic illness” (178).Building on this historical perspective, Gems reveals the connection as part of a broader continuum, noting that “stress has been a near constant accompaniment to American culture and American history” (167). While sport cannot resolve deep political divides, he argues, it can ease the stress that accompanies them and “promote a sense of normalcy that induces healing” (167). Modern studies on the psychological benefits of participation and spectatorship support this link, suggesting that sport can provide a vital outlet for a society grappling with deep, unresolved trauma. It is a clear testament to the “power of sport” (161) that Gems describes—a force that continues to offer solace and stability in uncertain times, and one that, like religion, can produce “mystical and phenomenological experiences,” offering people not just diversion but profound meaning (176).In Mental Health, Gender, and the Rise of Sport, Gems delivers a compelling account of how sport and physical activity became a crucial site of resistance and transformation in the fight for gender equality. Viewed through this lens, sport emerges as not just a form of leisure but a battleground for feminist progress, deeply entwined with the broader struggle for autonomy, visibility, and self-determination. Nowhere is this more vividly demonstrated than in chapter 5, “Cycling: Upsetting Gender Norms,” where Gems tells the story of how the bicycle became more than a simple mode of transportation: It was a vehicle for social change that propelled women beyond the narrow confines of domestic life. Figures like Frances Willard, head of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, championed the bicycle as a tool of “liberation” (87), while Susan B. Anthony went even further, declaring that the bicycle “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. It makes her feel as if she were independent” (88). By highlighting how female cyclists and pedestrians undertook endurance challenges, once deemed beyond women's capabilities, Gems captures a pivotal moment in feminist history and exposes the ways these achievements disrupted long-standing beliefs about women's physical and social limitations. Set within the broader narrative of feminist history, the book highlights women who defied expectations and shaped their era. Though their names have not always endured, Gems brings attention to these figures, granting them the credit their achievements warrant. It stands out as one of the book's most compelling chapters, intertwining sport, gender politics, and cultural transformation.Few sports fans, whether they have played or simply watch on TV, likely ever pause to consider how organized sport emerged or how ideals of physical vitality first took hold. Gems's book helps close that gap in understanding. While it may naturally resonate most with sport historians, its reach extends far beyond. Gems's extensive research spans modernization, class tensions, race, gender, and the shifting social dynamics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He also demonstrates how sport is deeply tied to these broader currents, shaping and reflecting the cultural and social transformations of its time.Equally impressive is how Gems develops his narrative. One of the book's most striking aspects is its scholarly rigor. The sheer depth of his research sets a benchmark for what a careful, comprehensive study looks like, reminding us of the diligence required to produce truly substantive scholarship.Overall, Gems's strengths reveal a larger truth: While his central aim is to link the rise of sport to the concurrent spread of neurasthenia, his work extends far beyond that, illuminating how sport became entwined with the ways Americans managed psychological strain, navigated shifting social roles, and forged new senses of identity. In this light, the book's insights feel especially timely, given how the COVID-19 pandemic upended daily life and strained mental health. Just as sport once helped counter nineteenth-century neurasthenia, it continues to offer comfort and stability amid uncertainty.A final quote from Gems serves as a fitting conclusion to his volume and this review: “In a country divided, then as now, by race, religion, social class, and politics, sport had and has the power to bring unity and healing” (178). The histories he recounts are not mere relics, but threads woven into our present—proof that sport still carries a rare promise to help mend what fractures us.