Unfitness

“ While we are accustomed to thinking of unfitness for our tasks as the one form of maladjustment due to our ignorance of human nature in general and individual traits in particular, there are other forms which, in their own way, cause much trouble and the remedying of which leads to desirable results. ”

“ It was all well enough to treat some earthworms, some climbing-plants, and some brightly colored birds as fit, and others as unfit, to survive; but when this distinction is extended over human beings and their economic, social, and political affairs, there is a general pricking-up of ears. The consciously fit look down on the resulting discussions with complacent scorn. The consciously unfit rage and roar loudly; while the unconsciously unfit bestir themselves mightily to overturn the whole theory upon which the distinction between fitness and unfitness rests. ”

“ Such glaring cases of unfitness are however not typical of the sort with which social work most often deals. More typical is such mild cherishing of unfitness as the securing of eye-glasses for a nearsighted child. ”

“ It is the universal law of the human frame that exercise is indispensable to the health of the several parts. Thus, if a blood-vessel be tied up, so as not to be used, it shrinks, and becomes a useless string; if a muscle be condemned to inaction, it shrinks in size and diminishes in power; and thus it is also with the bones. Inactivity produces softness, debility, and unfitness for the functions they are designed to perform. ”

“ Such measures are adopted at the present time, but often not until anxiety has produced a state of obvious unfitness, so that the period of rest or change prescribed is quite inadequate to restore stability. ”

“ Among the town inmates one finds two classes, one showing signs of degeneration, as poor physique, narrow chest, short stature, light weight associated with a low cunning and a peculiar restlessness of their eyes, watching for every movement; and among these a high arched palate is often noticed.”
Borstal
“Although evil environment must of course take first place among the causes of most of these youths’ downfall, I am becoming more and more struck with the importance of physical unfitness as a determining factor. ”

“ In the cases, on the other hand, in which the unfitness is real, the ordinary motives of human conduct will on the whole suffice to prevent the incompetent person from making, or from persisting in, the attempt. ”

“ To subject a person of the delicately organized and sensitive mental temperament, for a long period of time, to the hardships and privations of an occupation requiring exposure and severe muscular exertion is the height of cruelty and folly. A person of the extreme vital temperament, under the same conditions, would find life a weary burden, though a limited experience in muscular exercise, under conditions favorable to health, would be beneficial to both. ”

“ The reasons for this poverty of physique were manifold—city life, alcohol, nicotine, sedentary occupations, unsuitable food among the most frequent—but there was one that overshadowed all the rest, a complete ignorance of the structure and functions of the human body. ”

“ A time may come when patients of all sorts will hurry to a gymnasium as they now hasten to a drug store.
The power of established prejudices, it is true, has almost no limits, but now and then yields to the dictates of fashion, and by good luck physical exercise is a cosmetic. People who do not realize that weakness and disease are crimes, may consent to recover because it is also the surest way to get pretty. ”

“ As the stomach deprived of substantial food craves unnatural food,—sweets, stimulants,—so the mind deprived of substantial, regular diet of wholesome work turns to unwholesome, petty, fantastic, suspicious, unhappy thoughts. This state of mind, combined with the lack of bodily exercise that generally accompanies it, reacts unfavorably on physical health. An editor has aptly termed the do-nothing condition as a self-inflicted confinement:
A great deal of the misery and wretchedness among young men that inherit great fortunes is caused by the fact that they are practically in jail. ”

“ The over-violent passion for physical exercises which was his between the ages of ten and fifteen years obliged him suddenly to drop them. He has allowed his muscles gradually to be invaded and eaten up by that physical laziness which enervates so many thinkers of the present day, and which upsets the balance of their bodily forces. ”

“ Meantime bodily weakness no doubt makes the fight harder. Manner can be controlled, and I hope I do control it; but inwardly a jarred and tired irritation is upon me: I am hourly tempted to feel that nothing is worth doing, nothing worth living for. ”

“ First, then, let us consider this, that it is the nature of such things to be destroyed by defect and excess, as we see in the case of strength and of health (for to gain light on things imperceptible we must use the evidence of sensible things) ; both excessive and defective exercise destroys the strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it. So too is it, then, in the case of temperance and courage and the other virtues. ”

“ The evils arising from want of exercise are numerous:—the circulation, from the absence of due stimulus, becomes languid, the appetite and digestion are weakened, the respiration is imperfect, and the blood becomes so ill-conditioned, that when distributed through the body it is inadequate to communicate the necessary stimulus to healthy and vigorous action. These points being established, it now becomes a consideration in what mode, or at what periods, ladies, in society, can most advantageously avail themselves of that privilege which is granted to so many, denied, comparatively, to so few. ”

“ Then he delivered himself upon this wise:
“It is well known that much exercise and weariness consume the spirits and substance, refrigerate the body; and such humours which nature would have otherwise concocted and expelled, it stirs up and makes them rage; which, being so enraged, diversely affect and trouble the body and mind.” ”

“ It is not hard, as a rule, to convince people that they are committing errors of diet, or getting too little fresh air; but it is very different when we come to deal with these other matters. Few people like to be told that they should take more exercise, or rouse themselves to show more interest in things outside their ordinary routine of work. It sounds like an accusation of indolence.
Yet such resentment is slight compared with that of the men or women who have to be warned that they are wasting their energies by restlessness and worry or lack of recreation. ”

“ It is certainly a puzzle to understand how men can willingly slip into fatness and flabbiness or nervous indigestion, forget entirely what a pleasure physical vigor is, fold their hands contentedly, with the statement that they haven't time for physical culture, and so, gradually, by way of the motor-car and the dinner-table, slide into physical decadence and a morbid condition of mind and body. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If, during the age of muscle, lazy, puny men with diseased bodies, brought on by excess and vice, had demanded of the stalwart and vigorous that they must carry them on their backs, even though at their own peril, what could have been thought of them? ”

“ The sense of fitness was so strong that during the next two vitally important, developing years she avoided any physical expression of her natural exuberance of spirits; and habits now formed which were, for years, to deny her any right use of her muscular self. ”

“ To this Head I will add, that where a Woman has been accustom’d to drink a glass or two of Wine or Ale at Meals, she should not debar herself from it now; as her waste of Strength and Spirits certainly demand at least her usual way of Life; tho’ it does not seem needful for her to go far beyond it.
By Fatigue I mean so much Exercise as manifestly impairs the Strength, or brings on various Pains, so as to render a Mother incapable of executing what she has begun; or at least makes the Office extremely slavish to her. Exercise is good, but Fatigue is bad. ”

“ I do not doubt that a man who could devote his whole time to the work could, by means of some of the appliances offered—from the apparatus in a gymnasium to rubber shirts, get off fat—nor do I doubt the efficacy of exercise and its accompaniments in the way of sweating and baths and all that; but when a person has a living to make these methods are useless, not through any demerit of their own but because the man who is fat hasn't the time or opportunity and, more than all, soon fails in the inclination to use them. ”

“ Being little call for motion of any kind, and no room to exercise whatever wish there might be in that direction, very many succumbed unresistingly to the apathy which was so strongly favored by despondency and the weakness induced by continual hunger, and lying supinely on the hot sand, day in and day out, speedily brought themselves into such a condition as invited the attacks of disease. ”

“ Yes! we are a self-indulgent race, this present generation. Witness our easily excited feelings; witness our late hours of rising, our sofas and easy chairs, our useless days and dissipated nights! Witness our pallid faces, our forms, sometimes attenuated and repulsive while yet in early life, age marching, not creeping, on before his time; or witness our over-fed and over-expanded forms, enfeebled by indolence, and suffering the worst species of debility—the debility of fat. ”

“ It is the universal habit to hold on to one’s self with a grip that would almost lift one’s weight, muscles tightened, nerves strained to no purpose. The mind is too eager and fast for the body. The result is exhaustion.”
“How shall it be avoided? Take the will out of the body when it is not in action. In walking, let the lower limbs do the work; the arms have nothing to do: let them be carried as attachments, pendulums if you will, but at rest.” Let the hands fall easily when sitting in carriage, street car, or drawing-room. ”

“ All head-aches, want of appetite, pains under the shoulders, side-ache, cold feet, and irregular circulation, provided there is no positive disease, might, in time, be remedied by systematic attention to exercise. Of its effect upon the temper, and the general tone of the mind, we have yet to speak; but certain I am, that no actual calamity inflicted upon woman, ever brought with it more severe or extended sufferings, than those which result from the habitual neglect of exercise. ”

“ We all want to hear just how you can do it!" added the other girls.
"Why, just this, dears. We have had our food to nourish the body that must act at the suggestion of thought, and for this blessing we are grateful; for a weak, or impoverished body does not respond to the command of thought, no matter how willing it may be to act. After filling the receptacle for food one should not give way to lethargy—a common fault and inclination. Lethargy forms fat and soft muscles! ”

“ Therefore, although he desired them to be strong and vigorous,—to walk, to ride, to live much in the open air,—he bade them never to make a boast of their endurance. Rude health, no less than scholarship, was the exclusive prerogative of men. ”

“ But if the life he led was set to the tune of his temperament, he was forced to admit that he paid toll in the depletion of his physical vigours, for at this age, at all events, he should have been developing his muscles and enriching his blood in the open air. ”

“ According to my experience, people of these habits have their bodies more than usually under their command, as being subdued by severe exercise; and their minds, neither better nor worse on an average than those of their neighbours, are more available from being so much more rarely clogged by morbid habits in that uneasy yoke-fellow of the intellectual part—the body. ”

“ The invalid often finds relief from his complaints, less from the healing virtues of the Spa itself, than because his system of ordinary life undergoes an entire change, in his being removed from his ledger and account-books—from his legal folios and progresses of title-deeds—from his counters and shelves,—from whatever else forms the main source of his constant anxiety at home, destroys his appetite, mars the custom of his exercise, deranges the digestive powers, and clogs up the springs of life. ”

“ At the same time a temperate or intemperate life, skilful or unskilful regimen, [Pg 236] physical exercises well adapted to strengthen the weaker parts, physical apathy, vicious indulgence, misdirected or excessive effort, will all in their different ways alter his bodily condition and increase or diminish his chances of disease and premature death. The power of will over character is, however, stronger, or, at least, wider than its power over the body. ”

“ PHYSICAL vigor is the basis of all moral and bodily welfare, and a chief condition of permanent health. Like manly strength and female purity, gymnastics and temperance should go hand in hand. An effeminate man is half sick; without the stimulus of physical exercise, the complex organism of the human body is liable to disorders which abstinence and chastity can only partly counteract. ”

“ To be smothered with your own fat is a proper cruel end I call it; and I haven't deserved it; and it shakes my faith in an all-wise God, to feel myself turning into a useless mountain of flesh. Worse than useless in fact, because them that can't work themselves are certain sure to make work for others. ”

“ And if there is any phase of human enjoyment, any part of life, any occupation, avocation, divertisement, pleasure or pain where the fat man has the better of it in any regard, I failed to discover it in the twenty years during which I looked like the rear end of a hack and had all the bodily characteristics of a bale of hay. ”