Alfred Worcester

“ For some sets of muscles the blacksmith and the parson, and in fact all people, have equal need, and, in order to be equally vigorous in their respective stations, the development that the blacksmith gains naturally must, by others leading a sedentary life, be obtained artificially. Of prime importance to all are both the voluntary and the involuntary muscles of respiration. So directly does our physical health depend upon their continued vigor, that nothing short of their highest possible development should satisfy us. ”

“ Though strangely few, we still have some unquestionable records of not slight deformities and deficiencies corrected. In searching for measurements that will even approximately represent the vigor of the body, we can not depend upon measurements of muscles, which can never be accurate, and, even if they were so, are no sure guide. The weight and height are also alone useless; but all these measurements taken into account, together with the muscular strength and the general character of the flesh, give a tolerably fair idea of the person's condition. ”

“ The grandest opportunity for the introduction of this new system of gymnastics is in the schools, where succeeding generations are molded. According to statistics, in only three in a thousand of the public schools of this country is any attention paid to physical training. Even a casual inspection of these schools, where entire attention is paid to mental development, reveals sufficient reasons for the abounding deficiencies and deformities which make almost conspicuous any well-formed man or woman. ”

“ It matters not how impoverished their ancestry, colonists cut off from the sloth of old centers of population, forced to battle with the earth itself for their support, soon retake the vigorous manhood their fathers gradually lost. And the Romans, in their turn, driven under the yoke by a sturdier race, proved no exception to the general rule that, as ease of living rises above a certain line, people deteriorate physically. That there is no underlying law of nature necessitating this result is proved by the Grecian training which raised the body to a far higher than any barbarian standard. ”

“ If, as may naturally be supposed, the human body is designed to meet the physical activity of life in simplest conditions, where all the muscles find necessary employment in procuring food and protection, then, in conditions of life where such necessity does not exist, it follows either that the body has unlimited power of adaptability, or that sooner or later in the deviation from primitive conditions the body will not naturally attain its maximum of possible vigor. ”

“ Little prepared were our New England parents to understand that, by this kind of exercise, backs and limbs could be developed that would easily carry burdens which untrained muscles would groan under. This same popular ignorance exists to-day. The majority still believe that hard manual labor affords better exercise than can any system of artificial gymnastics; whereas, instead of the equally developed elastic body resulting from gymnasium-training, we have in the laborers a stiff-jointed, clumsy, ill-proportioned body. ”

“ THE very name carries our thoughts back to the ancient Greeks, who provided for their children the most complete physical training that the world has ever known. Men and women alike took pains and pride in the development of perfect bodies, and their success, recorded in inimitable statues, affords models of human beauty and strength. ”

“ In enabling the fortunate gainer more easily to meet the wear and tear of daily duties, or the possible onslaught of acute disease, what invaluable assistance would be rendered by these fifty cubic inches of lung capacity! ”

“ As a preventive of disease, there can be no question of the advantageous results of exercise, and in this connection may be quoted the reports from Amherst College, which show a remarkable decrease in sickness since the introduction of compulsory gymnastics, and a decrease in the proportion of three sick in the freshman year to one sick in the senior year, as a result of four years' training. Another most excellent result mentioned in the same reports, which can not be too greatly emphasized, is the increase of the person's own regard for his body. ”

“ Exercise was to be by couples holding rings or wands, and with music the doctor enthusiastically believed that he had borrowed all the charm of the dance, but it was found that, unlike dancing, in his evolutions all the fun was in learning how, and now his system is quite forgotten. In bringing our history of gymnastics down to date, it is necessary to mention the gymnasia of city clubs and colleges. Till within a few years a typical gymnasium of this sort was a medley collection of apparatus under the care of a janitor, who possibly knew something of the art of boxing. ”

“ First, in response to unusual demands there is an accelerated destruction of degenerating substance in the involuntary muscles of the heart and arterial walls, which, as we have seen, is requisite to the substitution of newer and more useful substance in them. Second, by the increased blood-tension, the coronary arteries and the vasa vasorum, in the intervals of dilatation, will carry more nourishment to the heart and arterial walls. It is hardly conceivable that a person, accustomed to regular physical exercise, should ever suffer from a fatty degenerated heart. ”

“ What has been said of the advantages of physical exercise in developing the body applies even more forcibly in regaining a vigorous condition after debilitating disease. For, while in growth we have natural tendencies toward excellent development, on the other hand in the convalescence of adults the only stimulus is that of needed strength ”

“ In the fifty years since the introduction into this country of systematic body-training, there, nevertheless, has been great gain in the popular estimation of its advantages, as is shown by the almost countless systems that have received ephemeral patronage. Witness the innumerable pieces of gymnasium apparatus that have been advertised, and widely believed, to prevent or to cure all manner of woes and ills. At one time it is the spirometer, which, if blown into daily, will prevent consumption; then it is a patent kind of lifting-machine by which a man may soon learn to lift a ton ”

“ As this age gave way before gunpowder and the Church, as men discovered the uselessness of heavy armor, battle-axe, cross-bow, and lance, and as they were taught the doctrine of the necessity of body-mortification in order to perfection of soul, there prevailed a total disregard of the physical conditions necessary to our well-being. ”

“ The latter is, of course, our only conclusion; and it needs but to be pointed out that, in our present complicated civilization, where the demands upon nervous and mental force are so disproportionally great, this deviation is excessive and increasing, in order to emphasize the need of supplying artificially the lost conditions of maximum body strength. Our subject naturally divides, according to purposes, into exercise designed for the preservation, and into exercise designed for the development, of health and strength. ”

“ Even bathing was held to be a vanity of worldly savor, and gymnastics would doubtless have been considered worse than folly. This state of darkness lasted in Europe till the beginning of the present century, when Ling, of Sweden, after most persistent effort, succeeded in introducing his "movement-cure." For every one of the five hundred muscles, and for every imaginable disease, this system provided some kind of exercise. ”

“ When we remember the pliant condition of young bone and the manner of its growth at the epiphyses, how easy it is to imagine the advantage of regularly stretching the cartilage in the lines of the most serviceable shape and position of the future bone! ”

“ In the age of chivalry we can find something of a similar physical excellence, and again its plain dependence upon a high estimate of the value of a perfect body and upon great pains taken for its procurement. ”

“ A month's work in correcting a child's deficiencies or deformities may be worth years of such labor later on, when the skeleton is thoroughly ossified. And yet, although the plastic stage of youth is so much the more favorable time for such work, there is still such a Milling response on Nature's part, that almost at any age our efforts in this direction are liberally rewarded.
In considering the results that may be expected from exercise directed to certain ends, let us take first the body framework. The shape of the bones most concerns us. ”

“ And if doctors oftener prescribed and required definite daily amounts of exercise, their patients' recoveries would be hastened, and the striking change for the better, now so often immediately following the doctors' dismissal, would then be less noticeable.
Especially applicable would such practice be in hospitals where patients are under stricter surveillance, but surrounded with less inducements to exercise themselves; comfortably cared for, with no necessity for exertion, it is often no easy job to rouse them to active recovery of strength. ”

“ No other set of muscles has suffered more in the change from active to sedentary life. Corsets are proof of this. Fashion is by no means wholly responsible for their almost universal use. They do not come and go, but, in spite of all efforts at dress reform, corsets hold their sway, because their wearers feel better in them. This will continue to be the case until the muscles whose office they partially supply are developed by exercise designed to take the place of what is no longer naturally obtained.
It is not sufficient to have merely large muscles. ”

“ To say nothing of the debilitating influence of their commonly wretched hygienic surroundings, their entire lack of physical exercise as a corrective for the unnatural sedentary life that is forced upon them is cause sufficient for their poor bodily development. ”

“ This is the philosophy of the advantage to muscles of regular exercise.
The full development and the continued vigorous condition of the circulatory system are of far more importance to the general health than are similar states of the voluntary muscles and the skeleton, whose importance is mainly in relation to the respiratory and circulatory systems. If we desire to possess maximum vigor, we must have large lung capacity, and, most of all, a stout heart and elastic arteries. ”

“ Such exercise can easily be provided in the schools, and will be provided when parents awake to the fact that children's bodies as well as minds suffer from neglect, and become serviceable according to the care taken in their development. ”

“ In passing now to the theoretical advantages of regularly exercising the voluntary muscles, little consideration need be paid to the supposed advantage of increase in size. Muscles readily respond to increased demands by rapid growth in size, and, for those whose duties do not require large muscles, it is questionable if they are any better off with them. ”

“ Once given a well-developed body in fine condition, and obedience to certain definite rules will keep it so; while, on the other hand, to bring about this condition is often impossible, and always demands skill and painstaking. No time may safely be wasted: the earlier the start and the more constant the care, the better are the possible results. ”

“ In this age, nerves need no such stimulus. A much more probable theory is given by Maclaren, of Oxford, namely, that the potential energy of body-substance depends upon its newness, which may be explained by the facts that the potential energy of combustible material is directly proportional, and its chemical stability is inversely proportional, to its molecular complexity. ”

“ It is a popular fallacy that the short recesses and the after-school play-hours can make up for the long school-sessions, during which the children must sit still and too often in a necessarily cramped position. The school-yard is generally so small and crowded that only the bolder boys dare run in it ”

“ In their ignorance they have believed the quacks, and, having suffered at least in purse, they now are shy of the subject in general. The fact is plain that their distrust is because more good has been claimed, and has been temporarily believed, to result from the use of one especial kind of exercise than could reasonably be expected from all kinds together. Honest efforts have meantime been made to introduce systematic exercise. Dio Lewis twenty years ago carried on in Boston a normal school of gymnastics. ”

“ Equally difficult would it be to describe the body alacrity so acquired, which, without stopping to discuss its origin, is a very valuable result, and never otherwise attainable. We are, however, not entirely dependent upon our own limited experience, nor upon indefinite statements of results. ”

“ There can be no doubt that this complexity, if not immediately, is then gradually, lessened in the animal economy. There are probably countless stages in the oxidation into urea of each particle of nitrogenous tissue, be it cell-wall or cell-protoplasm, and at each stage of the process the particle will have consequently less potential energy and greater chemical stability ”