Edward M. (Edward Marwick) Plummer

Born in Raymond, Maine, in 1855 or 1856, Edward Marwick Plummer was an American physician and medical writer who also published on the history of sport. Records and library catalogs consistently connect him with Maine and identify him as the author of Athletics and Games of the Ancient Greeks, first published in 1898.

That book remains his best-known work today. It explores Greek athletics, training, and games in a clear, practical way, and its long afterlife in reprints and digital libraries suggests it continued to interest readers well beyond his own time.

Other surviving references show that Plummer also wrote in a medical context, including Intubation, With an Analysis of Fifty Cases, an essay read before the Maine Medical Association in 1896. Some later editions and catalog records describe him as a doctor connected with Boston medical institutions, which fits the wider picture of a physician-author whose interests ranged from clinical practice to the history of physical education. He died in 1924.