Personal hygiene and physical training for women

by Anna M. Galbraith

The great menace to the city is the limited opportunities for healthful play, and over one-third of the population of the United States live in towns. The physical side of the question is the largest, for it involves health, and consequently poise and self-control. It involves a legitimate occupation of surplus energy and its wise direction, and it also involves companionship.

The great object of physical training is then to secure the most perfect development of the body, with the corresponding development of the brain, so that the highest physical and mental efficiency of the individual may be attained.

The possession of a large reserve of muscle and nerve force, ready to be used in any emergency, gives confidence to the individual, increases the spirit of taking the initiative and undertaking grave responsibilities that come into the life of every woman, especially those who are engaged in the business or professional world, and the building up of this necessary reserve force is one of the inestimable advantages of a gymnastic and athletic training.

The Physiology and Pathology of Exercise.—Exercise is divided into active or voluntary and passive.

Passive exercise does not require any exertion of the will power. Massage increases the local nutrition of the parts, stimulates the nerves, and is restful, rather than exhausting, to the overwrought brain and wearied nerves.

Active exercise is further divided into exercise of effort and exercise of endurance. Under exercise of effort are classed all gymnastic feats. The primary object of a gymnastic training or education is to produce a symmetric development of the entire body, while, on the other hand, the training necessary to execute gymnastic feats produces an overdevelopment of one part of the body at the expense of the rest, as is seen in the arm of the blacksmith and the leg of the danseuse. All exercises of effort, whether of strength, skill, or speed, demand and cultivate mental concentration, a rapid response of the muscle to the orders of the will, develop the power to accomplish complicated coördinations, and the knowledge of how these difficult movements may be performed with the least expenditure of nerve and muscle force. Exercising a muscle develops it up to its physiologic capacity, but if a muscle is habitually overworked, pathologic results occur, and instead of a quick, sharp contraction of the muscle, the contractions will be weak and uncertain, and, if carried too far, the muscle may eventually atrophy from overwork.

Exercises of endurance include walking, running, swimming, and rowing—the range of movement in these is much more limited than in exercises of effort. In these, each movement is well within the individual’s powers, yet, by increasing the rapidity of the movements, or by their prolonged continuance, the total amount of muscular work accomplished may be very great. Normally, the contraction and relaxation of the muscles are comparatively slow, so that the poisonous waste matter producing fatigue is continually being removed from the tissues, and not allowed to accumulate; whereas, in exercises of effort, there is no time allowed for the scavengers to work, and fatigue of the most active muscles sets in rapidly.

Fatigue may appear in several forms, depending on the character of the exercise which produced it. When the exercise is sufficiently active, the amount of waste matter thrown into the circulation is greater than can be eliminated by the lungs; breathlessness and palpitation of the heart result; so soon as the equilibrium between waste production and elimination is established, the individual is said to have gotten his second wind. Or, again, a slow pace, too long kept up, will produce exhaustion, so that the products of tissue waste accumulate, the beat of the heart is fast, irregular and weak, the nervous system becomes stupefied, and the muscles fail, to respond to the normal physiologic stimulus. This is a form of fatigue not infrequently found among zealous housewives, in which the demands made upon the nervous system by continual and carking family cares, added to the very strenuous work of the household, exhausts both nervous and muscular systems.

Recovery from this form of fatigue takes a much longer time than the preceding. The individual is too tired to sleep, the night is troubled by disturbed dreams, there is a soreness and stiffness of the muscles and joints which remain for some days. There may be an actual rise in temperature, and the urine passed has a high specific gravity, with sometimes even albumin.

If, now, this overwork is continued over prolonged periods of time, without allowing sufficient time for the necessary recuperation, there follows a slow and profound exhaustion, which is much more difficult to overcome. In this condition the temperature becomes subnormal, the weight decreases, the skin and muscles become flabby, and the skin is pale, the eyes are dull and listless, and the individual is without ambition to rouse herself from her lethargy.