Physical weakness

“ The most striking points of weakness in the entire class were the bad postures in sitting and standing, consisting of round shoulders, a stooped position, and flabby muscles, 67 per cent.; a deficiency of one-seventh of the normal chest and lung development, accompanied by a deficiency of one-third of the normal chest expansion, 85 per cent.; weak hearts with weak and rapid pulse, subnormal blood-pressure, and anemia in over 50 per cent. ”

“ Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old. ”

“ That intangible tendency to weakness, to unhealth, so indefinable, so delicate, so inappreciable to our senses, is yet the mightiest factor in our being, and measures the amount of our physical pains and sufferings with a greater delicacy than we have been wont to think. ”

“ It is enough for the purpose of this article that in the course of physical decay, gray hair, baldness and enfeebled gait, weakness of the muscular and nervous system, in fact, a general lowering of the tone of the bodily health, appear. Life has been lived out with abandon, its energies have been overdrawn and its wheels have run down like the mainspring of a clock whose regulator has been lost. ”

“ The mere outer form is a minor consideration, though also an important one, but this too is part of the work of the elemental. If the man has deserved the limitation of deformity in his physical body or of weakness in some of its organs — the heart, the lungs, the stomach — it is through the elemental that his karma is adjusted. Its instructions (if we may use such a term) are to build a body of a certain kind and degree of strength, and with certain characteristics brought into prominence. ”

“ And when the worst came to the worst, their strength of mind triumphed over their weakness of body. If you want a good polar traveller get a man without too much muscle, with good physical tone, and let his mind be on wires—of steel. ”

“ At present housework, especially in the country, affords wearying labor which is not so well adapted to the development of physical strength as it might be because it is not systematic. [Pg 171] Certain parts of the body are overexercised and certain parts are neglected. The result is frequently a body with a semblance of strength but with, as you might say, strands of weakness, rendering it liable to fall at the least onslaught of infection or unusual strain. ”

“ Worden, ‘I saw so much sickness due to weakened bodies that I investigated causes, and came to the conclusion that much of the weakness was due to a lack of physical development, to abuses through mistaken kindness on the part of the parents, that so weakened the immature bodies that they could not withstand the attack of disease. With our children, beginning from babyhood, we have had one aim, and that is to give them strong physiques, and we have succeeded thus far. ”

“ Still I solemnly believe that in weakness and deterioration of health, the corset has more to answer for than intoxicating drinks.
What affects the physical affects the spiritual; what affects the animal life affects the mental. Given a physical body dwarfed and deteriorated in any respect, and a corresponding deficiency in spiritual, intellectual and moral worth is likely to exist. Look at our men and women who have been grand and successful in achievement, noble in purpose, and vigorous in intellect. With few exceptions they are men and women of harmonious, strong, athletic physiques. ”

“ With these bodily powers of aggression there is a natural outgrowth of mental belligerence. This is a law of Nature. The man who shrinks from a physical contest with his fellows is one of conscious bodily weakness. ”

“ A known weakness thoroughly conquered sometimes becomes an element of additional strength in human character. As the exercise of muscle builds up physical vigour, so the persistent exertion of will develops mental and moral power. ”

“ The principle upon which he proceeds is that even where there is found to be pronounced weakness of the heart muscle, and other disturbances in circulation, these may be met by steadily increasing the amount of physical work done, especially by hill climbing. ”

“ Obesity in young persons; Physical and nervous weakness in consequence of masturbation; Muscular weakness, difficulty of learning to walk, atrophy and other sufferings of scrofulous children; Tumefaction and suppuration of the glands ”

“ When a nation, which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant, rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts burdens with ease, which, in the absence of excitement, he could scarcely move; he who, under the rage of an insult, attacks and puts to flight half a score of his enemies, are such persons to be called weak? My good friend, if resistance be strength, how can the highest degree of resistance be a weakness?" ”

“ And as weakness of muscle is attended with unsteady, irregular, and sometimes even spasmodic action of its fibres, so it is with weakness of mind. Its efforts are fitful, and it is easily thrown off from its balance. ”

“ With this condition of weakness of the voluntary nerve- and muscle-apparatus of the whole body, there coexists, as aforesaid, just as in all states of similar motor weakness, a subjective feeling of weariness and heaviness, of something which weighs upon one; one feels 'downcast,' 'oppressed,' 'laden,' one speaks of his 'weight of sorrow,' one must 'bear up' under it, just as one must 'keep down' his anger. ”

“ It will teach you that weakness is a crime—that it is the result of plain, easily avoided causes—that if your body is weak, or diseased, there is not the slightest excuse for remaining so—that health and strength of a high degree is the natural heritage of man and woman, and if this superb condition is not possessed, this book will clearly and concisely furnish the knowledge necessary to acquire it. ”

“ If you have sound and capacious lungs, and want them to remain, always have ready the mental protest against the opposite belief of weak lungs, tubercles, or hereditary consumption getting hold of you from any circumstance, and you will find that mind, self-conscious and self-assured of its power, governs the body as directly to results in health as it forbids the muscles to move the hands to steal. Through fear, the body becomes instantly weak or abnormally strong, showing it is mortal mind that produces strength or weakness. ”

“ This effect ramifies in every direction; the tissues of which the human body is composed lose their tonicity and contractile power, and even mental integrity may be more or less affected. The pent-up denizens of the courts and alleys of our large towns, surrounded on every side by imperfect light, bad air, and the general aspects of low life, necessarily degenerate in physical competency, and their offspring is of a feeble type. ”

“ A violent nervous irritation, besides, affected him from the unsettling of the equilibrium in the different functions of his nature; weakness in one organ being made more palpable to him by disproportionate strength in another. ”

“ Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind; and I have seen enough who have got a weakness in their brains before either in their legs or stomach; and by how much the more it is a disease of no great pain to the sufferer, and of obscure symptoms, so much greater is the danger. ”

“ Defects often the result of ignorance, fashion or overwork.Such weak backs ought not to occur as often as they do, if proper attention were paid from the first to the physical conditions of life. I do not mean anything abstruse or difficult, but just the ordinary [412] commonplaces; that high-heeled shoes throw the body out of its natural balance and overstrain some muscles; that hard, stiff clothing pressing upon muscles weakens them by causing atrophy, a frequent cause of weak backs ”

“ These mind and soul centres are often gravely diseased without impairment of muscle energy: the furious strength of the insane is an abiding fear with all.
It is clear that weakness of structure so soft as brain, a substance which is on the dividing-line between liquids and solids, must be of the gravest form from the first: grave because so fragile, grave because the sick centres cannot rest as the broken arm, the sick body: these centres, regardless how sick, must continue to serve, even in abnormal ways. ”

“ I am a degenerate in the matter of physical strength, which is the stamp of nobility of our race. I cannot walk, I am fatigued beyond measure by what would be simply healthy exercise for you, at sixty years of age. ”

“ Weakness is a common concomitant of disease: but in consequence of his radical frame of body, a man may be weak all his life long, without experiencing any disease. Health, as we have observed, is principally a negative circumstance: strength a positive one. The degree of a man's strength can be measured with tolerable accuracy.
IX. 3. Hardiness is a circumstance which, though closely connected with that of strength, is distinguishable from it. Hardiness is the absence of irritability. Irritability respects either pain, resulting from the action of mechanical causes ”

“ Motion preserves the firmness of the parts, and elasticity of the vessels; it prevents that aggregation of thick humours which he is most to fear. A sedentary life always produces weakness, and that mischief always follows: weak eyes are gummy, weak lungs are clogged with phlegm, and weak bowels waste themselves in vapid diarrhœas. ”

“ If I were to try to appear other than exactly that I would look as well as feel mean—my arm would falter in every gesture, my tongue stammer, my knees shake—I would become weak—weak physically, mentally, utterly! ”

“ But if it is the case that the energies of the mind and of the moral nature are sadly cramped and confined through imperfect physical development and abnormal physical habit, what may we not hope for if, by proper gymnastic exercise and sound sanitary conditions, we are able to remedy, to a great extent, these bodily defects? ”

“ Is it any wonder that the neglected body develops some weakness; or too often general debility? Is it at all a rare thing, in the observation of any one, to see this weakness, this debility become chronic; and the woman, later on in life, a source of anxiety and a burden to her friends, when instead of this she might have been a valued helper? ”

“ There are positive physical defects which produce positive mental ones; the diseases of the muscular and nervous systems descend from father to son. Upon the agency of one corporal power how much that is not corporal depends ”

“ A striking example of the working out of the three truths which we have given is seen in the consistency of the body. Hard hands, hard muscles, and, in general, a dense, compact, unyielding consistency of fiber, are both inherited and acquired as the result of hard physical labor and the enduring of hardships. As is well known, those who spend their lives in grinding toil in the midst of hard conditions care little for the finer sentiments and sympathies of life. They have no time for them, no energy left for them. ”

“ Neurasthenia, from the Greek roots, neur, meaning nerve, and sthenos, strength, joined by the negative particle a, turning strength into weakness, means nothing more than nervous weakness. To tell a patient that he or she is nervously weak, or is suffering from nervous weakness is usually not satisfactory, but it may be absolutely true and may represent the limit of our knowledge with regard to the particular case. ”

“ The overweighted beast of burden, or the overweighted slave, can for certain instants shift the physical load, and find some slight respite even in enforcing additional pain upon such a set of muscles or such a limb. ”

“ The men who have been rejected have not failed through mere weakness of constitution, but (with only a solitary exception or two) from a mechanical defect in the valves of the heart in otherwise strong men, and for the most part traceable to over-muscular exercises. ”

“ Muscular Weakness and Discomfort.—There are a number of pains and aches occurring in lean persons that are due to nothing else than the weakness of muscle consequent upon the poor nutrition of their muscular tissues. Muscles which do not receive as much nourishment as they should, must necessarily be weak, and if asked to do much work they will resent it. ”

“ I shall now confine myself chiefly to its use in the various forms of weakness which exist with thin blood and wasting, with or without distinct lesions of the stomach, womb, or other organs.
Whether we shall ask a patient to walk or to take rest is a question which turns up for answer almost every day in practice. Most often we incline to insist on exercise, and are led to do so from a belief that many people walk too little, and that to move about a good deal every day is well for everybody. ”

“ I was aware of a greater weakness than I thought possible for a man to feel, as if I had been an invalid for months, but the life in me, faint though it was, was sound and normal, caused by no artificial stimulation. ”

“ Through the effect of our irregular and abnormal development, the cause of which is the too persistent use of the right hand, one lobe of our brains and one side of our bodies are in a neglected and weakened condition, and the evils resulting from this weakness are many and widespread. ”

“ We have seen that imperfection and instability of nerve-function may be inherited; that weakness, or impairment, exists with many persons from the time of birth, which affects more or less the functions of the various portions of the nervous system ”

“ In general it may be stated that the unduly susceptible individual has either inherited a weak nervous constitution as regards pain, or else that some depressing agency has lowered his power of resistance. When I speak of a weak nervous constitution as regards pain, I do not mean that it need be a generally weak physique. ”

“ The arms dangle from the shoulders; as if they were almost cut away, and hung by shreds. The legs totter and bend at the knees, as ready to sink under the weight of the reeling body. And a general incapacity, corporeal and mental, exhibits human nature sunk below the brutal. ”

“ The continuance of healthy and vigorous action in the matured physical, mental, and moral powers, requires frequent and regular action, alternated with rest, as much as in their development. Consequently, those who cultivate one or two of these faculties, to the neglect of the others, exhibit a marked deficiency of acuteness and vigor in those not exercised. This defect reacts on the powers that are vigorous, diminishing the energy and deteriorating all the other faculties of man. ”