[9] “The process of training that has to be undergone by athletes nowadays is reduced to hard-and-fast rules. That these rules are not so good or scientific as could be wished is a matter for regret. The work of training is left to ‘trainers,’ and they are men who, learning from their predecessors whatever facts were known to them, build up a code of rules framed largely on imperfect experience, and added on to by what they themselves have believed to be useful. Medical men of reliable knowledge and sound professional attainments have seldom lent themselves to consider seriously the subject of training, and so place the subject on a sure scientific footing.... Many a man breaks down in training from being made the subject of some imperfect or unsuitable régime.”—Dr. James Cantlie, in “The Book of Health.”
[10] “To-day we take baths as a matter of course. Apart from the pleasure of washing and of having washed, we know that soft warm water can remove ‘the dried-up epidermis or scarf-skin, the deposit of sweaty and oily matter, to say nothing of the dirt and impurities derived from the air and the particles rubbed off from our clothing.’ But ‘we realise with difficulty that the bath was but rarely met with in houses built even forty years ago. Bathing in those days, and therefore, of course, swimming, formed no portion of the school curriculum, the gradual introduction of first one, and then the other, being among the salutary results of recent educational development.’”—Dr. Malcolm Morris, in “The Book of Health.”
[11] An open-air treatment can now be had at “Broadlands,” Medstead (Hampshire).
[12] “Many think with Herbert Spencer [who, however, holds that ‘imperfections of nature may be diminished by wise management’] that education is useless or almost powerless; that human evolution is ruled by heredity.... This modern conception, which accords to heredity a power at least equal to that ascribed by ancient poets to Fate, is assuredly excessive.... Education may supervene efficaciously; it succeeds in giving birth to artificial instincts capable of balancing the hereditary instincts, and even of suppressing them; in short, of substituting for innate ancestral habit an acquired individual habit.”—Professors Proust and Ballet.
[13] “In the earliest times of the human race ... to prompt people to take exercise meant only to induce them to do their daily work. In later times, however, and especially in the world of to-day as we know it, the multiplication of industries has placed many classes in such a position that exercise is something independent of, and has to be added on to, their daily employment.... The clerk at his desk and the merchant at his counter; the tailor in his crooked position and the milliner at her seam; the printer setting up type from morning till night; the workers, or rather watchers, at manufactories ... have one and all forgotten that their lower extremities are meant to carry them about.... Every departure (from the physically active life) may be an intellectual advance, but a muscular retrocession—a social gain, but a physical decline. Such being the case, it is evident that a great change either in the physique, or in the means of obtaining exercise so as to maintain that physique, must have taken place; and when we come to look at it we shall find that but few of the employments of the present day carry with them a sufficiency of exercise.”—Dr. James Cantlie, in “The Book of Health.”
[14] In America the Y.M.C.A. Clubs are, we believe, almost invariably athletic, if not primarily, at least essentially.
[15] “There is method in walking, method in running, method in raising a burthen with as little effort as possible. The [correct] practice of an exercise leads then to a diminution of muscular expenditure, to an economy of work, whence results an apparent increase of the strength of man who does the work.”—Dr. Fernand Lagrange, in “The Physiology of Exercise.”
[16] “After a certain period of study difficult exercises have been learned, and may then become automatic. Their effects will then be very different. Is it not quite a different thing to amuse oneself with dancing from occupying oneself with learning dancing? Dancing, riding, rowing, even running, when they have long been practised, need no more [conscious] brain work than walking, which is above all an automatic exercise.... It actually needs an effort of will to oppose an action which has become unconscious and to change an acquired pace.... We see at the first glance the great hygienic superiority [as increasing the oxygen in the system, removing waste products, relieving the brain fatigued by intellectual work, &c.] of exercises which can be performed automatically, with economy of nervous energy, complete [?] repose of the brain, absolute [?] inaction of the psychical faculties. The work of the human system is then performed by the coarser parts of the machine, and fatigue is first felt by the subordinate agents of movement.
“But for certain bodily exercises the period of apprenticeship is indefinitely prolonged, and the movements need an increasing guidance on the part of the nerve-centres and the conscious faculties, because these movements cannot be constantly identical, and unforeseen emergencies occur. Fencing can never become an automatic exercise, notwithstanding the tendency exhibited by certain parries and thrusts to become habitual actions and to be performed instinctively; the movement cannot always be performed in the same manner and follow always the same order, for they are subordinated to those of the opponent.” Dr. Fernand Lagrange, in “The Physiology of Bodily Exercise.”
[17] Of the value of exercise as a cure, the French nerve-specialists, Professors Proust and Ballet,[*] speak most emphatically. What they say about neurasthenics will apply in general to those who feel disinclined to move:—