He also hit upon another plan of showing the change; for he says he had them "photographed, stripped to the waist", both at first and when the four months were over, and the change even in these portraits was very distinct, and most notably in the youngest, who was nineteen, for, besides the acquisition of muscle, there was in his case "a readjustment and expansion of the osseous framework upon which the muscles are distributed." Now let us look a little at the measurements and the actual changes wrought.
In the first place, this last instance settles conclusively one matter most important to flat-chested youth, namely, whether the shape of the chest itself can be changed; for here it was done, and in a very short time at that. Again, of these twelve men, in less than eight months every one gained perceptibly in height; indeed, there was an average gain of five-twelfths of an inch in height, though all, save one, were over twenty; and one man who gained half an inch was twenty-eight years old, while one twenty-six gained five-eighths of an inch! (Most people suppose they can get no taller after twenty-one.) All increased decidedly in weight—the smallest gain being 5 pounds, the average 10 pounds; and one, and he twenty-eight, and a five-feet-eleven man, actually went up from 149 pounds at the beginning, to 165 pounds in less than four months. It is not likely there was much fat about them, as they had so much vigorous muscular exercise. Every man's chest enlarged decidedly, the smallest gain being a whole inch in the four months, the average being 27/8 inches, and one, though twenty-four years old, actually gaining 5 inches, or over an inch a month. Every upper arm increased 1 inch, most of them more than that, and one 1¾ inches. As the work was aimed to develop the whole body, there is little doubt that there was a proportional increase in the girth of hips and thigh and calf.
Again, from the Royal Academy at Woolwich, Professor Maclaren took twenty-one youths whose average age was about eighteen, and in the brief period of four months and a half obtained an average advance of 1¾ pounds in weight, of 2½ inches in chest, and of 1 inch on the upper arm; while one fellow, nineteen, and slender at that, gained 8 pounds in weight, and 5¼ inches about the chest! Think what a difference that would make in the chest of any man, and a difference all in the right direction at that!
But the most satisfactory statistics offered were those of two articled pupils, one sixteen, the other twenty. In exactly one year's work the younger grew from 5 feet 2¾ inches in height to 5 feet 4¾ inches. He weighed 108 pounds on his sixteenth birthday; on his seventeenth, 129! At the start his chest girthed 31 inches; twelve months later, just 36! His forearm went up from 8 inches to 10 inches, and his upper arm from 9¼ inches to 11¼.
While the older gained but three-eighths of an inch in height, his weight went up from 153 pounds to 161½, his forearm from 11¼ inches to 12½—an unusually large forearm for any man—and his upper arm from 11¾ inches to 13¼, while his chest actually made the astonishing stride of from 34 inches to 40. Not yet a large arm, save below the elbow, not yet a great chest; five inches smaller, for instance, than Daniel Webster's, but greatly ahead of what they were a year earlier.
There is no mystery about the Maclaren method. Others might do it, perhaps not as well as he, for Maclaren's has been a very exceptional experience; still, well enough.
Look what Sargent did with a Bowdoin student of nineteen, as shown in [Appendix IV]. In four hours' work a week this student's upper arm went up 1½ inches—just the same amount as did Maclaren's student of twenty; his chest went up from 36½ inches to 40, while that of Maclaren's man went from 34 to 40; but it should be borne in mind that 36½ is harder to add 6 inches to in this kind of work than 34. In height the Englishman made three-eighths of an inch in the year, while the American made a whole inch. But the latter also led easily in another direction, and a very important one too; for, while the Briton, though but a year older, and of almost exactly the same height, gained but 8½ pounds in the year, the American made 15! His case is further valuable in that it shows, beside this advance above the waist, splendid increase in girth of hips, thigh, and calf as well.
With us Americans fond of results, many of whose chests, by-the-way, do not increase a hair's-breadth in twenty years, better proof could not be sought than these figures offer of the value of a system of exercise which would work such rapid and decided changes. Had they all been with boys, there might have been difficulty in separating what natural growth did, in the years they change so fast, from what was the result of development. But most of the cases cited are of men who had their growth, and had apparently, to a large extent, taken their form and set for life. To take a man twenty-eight years old, tall and rather slim, and whose height had probably not increased a single hairs-breadth in seven years, and in a few short months increase that height by a good half inch; to take another, also twenty-eight, and suddenly, in the short period between September 11th and the 30th of the next April, add sixteen pounds to his weight, and every pound of excellent stuff, was in itself no light thing; and there are thousands of men in our land to-day who would be delighted to make an equally great addition to their general size and strength, even in twice the period. To add five whole inches of chest, and nearly that much of lung and heart room and stomach room, and the consequent greater capacity for all the vital organs, is a matter, to many men, of almost immeasurable value. Hear Dr. Morgan, in his English "University Oars," on this point: "An addition of three inches to the circumference of the chest implies that the lungs, instead of containing 250 cubic inches of air, as they did before their functional activity was exalted, are now capable of receiving 300 cubic inches within their cells: the value of this augmented lung accommodation will readily be admitted. Suppose, for example, that a man is attacked by inflammation of the lungs, by pleurisy, or some one of the varied forms of consumption, it may readily be conceived that, in such an emergency, the possession of enough lung tissue to admit forty or fifty additional cubic inches of air will amply suffice to turn the scale on the side of recovery. It assists a patient successfully to tide over the critical stage of his disease." A man, then, of feeble lungs—the consumptive, for instance—taken early in hand, with the care which Maclaren or Sargent could so well give, gradually advanced in every direction, would suddenly find that his narrow, thin, and hollow chest had departed, had given way to one round, full, deep, and roomy; that the feeble lungs and heart which, in cooler weather, were formerly hardly up to keeping the extremities warm, are now strong and vigorous; that the old tendency to lean his head forward when standing or walking, and to sit stooping, with most of his vital organs cramped, has all gone. In their place had come an erect carriage, a firm tread, a strong, well-knit trunk, a manly voice, and a buoyancy and exhilaration of spirits worth untold wealth. Who will say that all these have not assured him years of life?
Well, but did all this increase of weight and size actually change the shape of the chest, for instance, and take the hollowness out of it? That is exactly what it did; and Maclaren has a drawing of the same chest at the beginning and end of the year, showing an increase in the breadth, depth, and fulness of the lower chest which makes it seem almost impossible that it could have belonged to the same person. It will be remembered that Maclaren claimed[I] that just such a readjustment of the osseous framework would result. Is not this, then, remaking a man? Instead of a cramped stomach, half-used lungs, a thin, scrawny, caved-in make, poor pipe-stems of legs, with arms to match, almost every one under forty, at least, can in a very few months, by means of a series of exercises, change those same slender legs, those puny arms, that flat chest, that slim neck, and metamorphose their owner into a well-built, self-sufficient, vigorous man, fitter a hundred times for severe in-door or out-door life, for the quiet plodding at the desk, or the stormy days and nights of the ocean or the bivouac. Who is going to do better brain-work: he whose brain is steadily fed with vigorous, rich blood, made by machinery kept constantly in excellent order, never cramped, aided daily by judicious and vigorous exercise, tending directly to rest and build him up? or he who overworks his brain, gets it once clogged with blood, and, for many hours of the day, keeps it clogged, who does nothing to draw the blood out of his brain for awhile and put more of it in the muscles, who, perhaps, in the very midst of his work, rushes out, dashes down a full meal, and hurries back to work, and at once sets his brain to doing well-nigh its utmost?
Well, but is not the work which will effect such swift changes very severe, and so a hazardous one to attempt? That is just what it is not. Is there anything very formidable in wooden dumb-bells weighing only two and a half pounds each, or clubs of three and a half-pounds, or pulley-weights of from ten to fifteen pounds? or is any great danger likely to result from their use? And yet they were Sargent's weapons with his Bowdoin two hundred.[J] Nothing in Maclaren's work, so far as he points out what it is, is nearly so dangerous as a sudden run to boat or train, taken by one all out of the way of running, perhaps who has never learned. There a heart unused to swift work is suddenly forced to beat at a tremendous rate, lungs ordinarily half-used are strained to their utmost, and all without one jot of preparation.