the American Long-distance Walker.
If, after you have observed the rules of hygiene to the extent indicated you have cold feet and limbs and indigestion and a tendency to vertigo, plunge your feet into water as hot as you can bear it, and keep them there five minutes. Then put them into cold water for a second.
“Cool head, free bowels, warm feet and a good-salary” is the old aphorism. If you suffer your feet to get cold you are in danger of apoplexy of the brain or of the lungs. Cold feet are very likely to be associated with a sluggish state of the bowels. The feet are cold because there is too much blood in one place and too little in another. Cold feet follow the breaking of an equilibrium of the circulation. Sedentary occupations are provocative of cold feet. If you keep the skin clean and the bowels free and take moderate exercise you will maintain an equilibrium of circulation, and this equalized circulation will keep the feet warm. When the feet are cold it is better to warm them with exercise than at a fire. Look at the wood chopper, swinging his arms so that his hands slap his sides. Thus he carries the blood to his hands, and it warms them. That is the best warmth for either. There is a vast difference between the longevity of men who take care of themselves and of those who do not. It is, as the life insurance companies’ tables show, as thirty-five is to about seventy. The man who bows to all the known laws of hygiene not only lives longer, but is able also to enter into all the joys of life without the aches and pains.
THE LATE JOHN MORRISSEY’S VIEWS.
The Honorable John Morrissey, ex-champion pugilist of America, in conversation with us about diet, said:
“Mr. James, you can form no idea of the glorious feeling that a man experiences when he gets himself in perfect condition. Everything in the world looks different to him from what it does when his system is clogged up with bile, and he is carrying a quantity of flesh that is only a burden to him. It is almost impossible to get a man when in such a condition into a bad humor. He feels like a young colt, and wants to kick up his heels and have a good time with everybody and everything he meets.” His course of training was as follows:
First. Take a black draught. Any druggist will put it up. All prize-fighters take this when they begin to train for a fight. You’ll find it the liveliest dose of medicine you ever took.
Second. Be sure and get at least seven or eight hours of good sound sleep every day.
Third. In the morning when you first get up drink a glass of hard cider with a raw egg in it. If the cider is not to be had then use sherry wine, but I prefer the cider. Then start out and walk briskly for a couple of miles. When you come back take a sponge bath and rub yourself dry with a coarse towel. Bub until your skin is all aglow.