XIV. Labour and Exercise
Motto. "That there may be a sound mind in a sound body."—Juvenal, Satires, x. 356.
[117]: 21. Ferments the humours. It was an old medical notion that in the body there are four humours or fluids,—blood, phlegm, choler, and bile,—and that health depended upon the due proportion and mixture of these humours. This conception influenced popular language, after it was in great part discarded by more accurate medical knowledge. It will be noticed throughout this paper that Addison's hygiene is better than his physiology.
117: 28. Refining those spirits. The name animal spirits was given to a subtle fluid which, according to ancient medical notions, permeated the body and served in some way as the medium of sensation and volition. In its looser and more recent use the phrase means little more than nervous energy or sometimes physical vivacity.
[118]: 3. The spleen was supposed to be the seat of melancholy or fretfulness, hence was often used for the melancholy itself.
118: 5. Vapours. The blues, especially used of women.
[120]: 8. Dr. Sydenham. Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), the most noted physician of his time, surnamed "the English Hippocrates."
120: 12. Medicina Gymnastica, or a Treatise concerning the Power of Exercise, by Francis Fuller, published in 1704.
120: 14. Exercise myself an hour every morning. It may be doubted whether Mr. Addison kept up this healthful practice. At all events, like most of the fat club goers of the age, he gave evidence in his later years of the need of more vigorous physical exercise, and he died at the early age of forty-seven.
120: 23. A Latin treatise of exercises. Artis Gymnasticae apud antiquos, by Hieronymus Mercurialis, Venice, 1569.