The most criticcal period of life, in this respect, iz the age of puberty, which iz usually between thirteen and seventeen, or eighteen. Before this period, you are very much in the power of parents or masters, and if they wish to see you strong and robust, they wil feed you with coarse substantial food of eezy digestion. But at fourteen yeers old, yung persons are capable of exercising their reezon, in some degree, and ought to be instructed in the mode of living, best calculated to secure helth and long life. It iz obzervable that yung persons of both sexes grow tall very rapidly about the age of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen or sixteen; but they do not acquire muscular strength in du proportion. It should then be the bizziness of yung persons to assist nature, and strengthen the growing frame by athletic exercises.
Thoze persons who leed a sedentary life, should practis some amusement which requires considerable exertion of the lims; az running, foot ball, quoit; taking care not to injure themselves by too violent exertion; for this would defeet the salutary purpose of such exercizes. But the exercize I would most recommend, iz fencing; for the art itself iz highly useful at times, and the practice tends more to render the body firm and vigorous than almost any exercize whatever. It braces the muscles of the arm, spreds the brest, opens the chest to giv the lungs play; an effect of great consequence to persons about the age of puberty. For, az waz before obzerved, persons of this age, shoot up very fast; the body grows tall, but narrow; the mass of flesh and blood iz increesed much faster than the tone of the vessels and muscular strength; the chest iz two narrow for the lungs to perform their office, and the blood vessels hav not sufficient elasticity to produce a brisk free circulation; the system iz often too week to carry on the necessary secretions of the juices; and the consequence of the whole iz, an obstructed circulation produces ulcers upon the lungs, which bring on a decay, or some infirmities of body, which last for many yeers, and not unfrequently for life.
To avoid theze ills, much exercise of the arms and body iz not only useful, but necessary; and when it iz not the lot of yung persons to labor, in agriculture or mekanic arts, some laborious amusement should be constantly and daily pursued az a substitute, and none iz preferable to fencing. A fencing skool iz perhaps az necessary an institution in a college, az a professorship of mathematics; for yung men usually enter college about the age of puberty; and often leev a laborious occupation, to commence a sedentary life, at the very time when labor or other exercize iz the most necessary to giv firmness and vigor to their constitutions. In consequence of this change and an academic life, they often run up into long, slender, effeminate bodies, which a slight cold may throw into a consumption; or by intense application to books, add, to a debilitated frame of body, a week nervous system, which keeps them always dying, tho it may not end life til old age.
Dancing iz an excellent amusement for yung peeple, especially for thoze of sedentary occupations. Its excellence consists in exciting a cheerfulness of the mind, highly essential to helth; in bracing the muscles of the body, and in producing copious perspiration. Az the two first effects are very visibly beneficial, they are the subject of common obzervation; but the last, which iz perhaps the most generally beneficial, iz rarely mentioned.
Experience haz led me to the following ideas on this subject. Our bodies are so constituted that a large portion of the juices should be thrown off by insensible perspiration; nor can the process be abated without danger, nor wholly obstructed without occasioning diseese. The body must perspire, or must be out of order. A violent cold iz a sudden obstruction of the process, which throws the matter, intended for evacuation thro the pores of the skin, back upon the intestines, taking the word, not in a tecknical, but in its original extended sense. All that iz necessary to cure a cold, which iz not attended with symptoms of inflamation, iz to open the pores of the body; which may be done by bracing, az by drinking cold water, which excites circulation by its tonic power; or by relaxing the system, az by the warm bath and warm teas. The first wil answer, where the body haz vigor enough to giv the tonic its full effect; but iz not so efficacious, nor so generally practicable az the last. It iz not so eezy to force thro a wall, az to open a gate.
The common house-wifely remedies, consisting of butter or other oily substances, mixed with spirits, usually hav no effect upon a cold, or a bad one. Flannel, warm teas, or simple warm water, hav the best effect in relaxing; but if they fail of producing a perspiration, the patient should hav recourse to exercise. Dancing in a warm room, or other violent exercise, wil generally throw a person into a copious swet in a few minutes; and this, two or three times repeeted, wil usually releev the person, however obstinate the cold. If every thing else fails, the warm bath should be resorted to az an almost infallible remedy.
But there iz another species of obstructed perspiration more dangerous perhaps than sudden colds, because less perceptible; I meen, that which proceeds from a week habit of body. Whenever the tone of the vessels iz lost, the circulation of the blood becumes languid, the animal heet iz diminished, and the system haz not strength sufficient to throw off the perspirable matter. The consequence iz, the skin becumes dry and rigid, and the person usually feels a dull pain in hiz hed and the back part of hiz neck. Wimen, literary men, clerks, &c. are most expozed to theze symptoms. The remedy for them iz, free perspiration; but the most effectual remedy iz dancing, or other vigorous exercise, which increeses, at the same time, animal heet and the tone of the vessels. Dancing indeed unites to theze, the other advantage of cheerfulness and good spirits, which iz of singular use to persons accustomed to close application to bizziness or contemplation. The only caution to be obzerved iz, not to go into the cold air, without considerable additional clothing.
In cases where persons cannot hav recourse to dancing or other exercize in a warm room, the warm bath may be uzed to great advantage. At first thought, one would imagin, that the cold bath should be prescribed for giving tone to a week system; but on reflection, this would appeer to be generally, tho not always hazardous. The truth iz, a general relaxation of the body checks perspiration; and the first effect of cold, in such cases, iz to brace the exterior parts of the body, and throw the offending matter, lodged in the skin by the debility of the system, back upon the lungs, or other interior parts. If the system haz strength enough, or can receev enough by the operation of cold, to force open the pores and produce a copious perspiration, the cold bath wil hav an excellent effect. But when the person iz of a week frame, the experiment iz extremely dangerous. The safest remedy iz the warm bath, which remooves the obstructing matter by a gentle relaxation of the surface; thus enabling the vessels to recuver their tone, in a degree, and keep up a brisk circulation. The warm bath then iz the most safe and efficacious remedy for obstructed perspiration, occasioned by debility; and this iz an evil to which all sedentary peeple are expozed, and by which most of them suffer.
I hav been often suprized that the moderns hav so generally neglected the meens of prezerving helth, which were uzed by the ancients. A little attention to the structure of the human body, and the effect of heet and cold upon it, led the ancients to the obvious and almost infallable meens of garding themselves from diseeze. Their method waz to bathe almost daily; and then oil their bodies. By bathing, they kept their perspiration free, and their bodies of course, in vigor and clenly; and by the use of oil, they secured the body from the fatal effects of sudden cold. In the later ages of Rome, warm baths indeed became a luxury, and were uzed to excess; but this waz only an abuse of a good thing, the excellent effects of which had been experienced for ages. The neglect of the same meens, of preventing diseese, haz obliged the modern to hav recourse to physic, a substitute, more expensiv and trublesome, and not always effectual.[167]
Whether in bizziness or amusement, let your whole conduct be guided by temperance. Are you students? Eet moderately, and let your food be of the nutritiv kind, but not oily, high seesoned and indigestible. Drink but little, or rather no distilled liquors; wine and fermented liquors are much to be preferred. A good cup of tee, iz sometimes a cordial; coffee may be uzed freely; but the constant use of hot liquors seldom fails to debilitate the system and impair the digestiv powers.