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ADAPTATION OF EXERCISE.

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Is not exercise often enjoined, with so little reference to the patient's constitution, to his habits of life, and even sometimes to the nature of his complaints, that a certain daily mileage of walking, or the use of dumb-bells of undefined weight for an indefinite time, are the doubtfully useful, because the ad libitum prescriptions: the medicine being good, and adapted to the case, but the doses left to the chapter of accidents ? * Such a proceeding is manifestly unreasonable, and must be injurious.

The character of people's minds differs so much, that the kind of exercise, to render the prescription palatable, and therefore give it all possible chance of being adopted and persevered in, must be adapted thereto. There are some, with minds of so grave and staid a character, that to recommend to such the skipping-rope, the battledore and shuttlecock, or any other of what are ordinarily used and thought of as playthings, might be construed by such persons into an insult, and would probably be treated with contempt; and most assuredly, the injunction would never be attended to by them; and yet these individuals might be induced to ride on horseback, or

* “That which is conducing to one man, in one case, the same is opposite to another. An ass and a mule went laden over a brook, the one with salt, the other with wool. The mule's pack was wet by chance, the salt melted, his burden the lighter, and he thereby much eased. He told the ass, who, thinking to speed as well, wet his pack likewise at the next water; but it was much the heavier, he quite tired. So one thing may be good and bad to several parties, upon divers occasions."-BURTON.

The degree of strength or power that exercise requires and exhausts, depends as much on its violence or activity as on its duration. The weak should walk at first slowly-move saunteringly along; gradually, as the strength improves, increasing the distance walked over, and the rate of motion.

Both the extent to which exercise should be carried, and its activity, must always be proportioned to, and kept within, the individual's powers, to be productive of real benefit to the health. Exercise should be daily carried to the confines of fatigue, but it should never produce absolute weariness.*

The degree to which the mind is occupied, has much to do with the amount of exercise that may be taken without fatigue; and, it may be added, has much to do with the amount of benefit that will be derived from it. Give an individual an object to walk for to visit a patient, or a client, or a customer,—or to collect plants, or minerals, or insects,— or let him be accompanied by a cheerful and familiar friend,—and miles will be passed over almost insensibly, and a long walk taken probably with less sense of fatigue, than a short walk would have been under different circumstances. If people are so unfortunate, as to have no business or professional necessity, to make them take exercise in the open air, and furnish

* "Exercitationis autem plerumque finis esse debet sudor, aut certè lassitudo, quæ citra fatigationem sit: idque ipsum, modo minus, modo magis faciendum est. Ac ne his quidem, athletarum exemplo, vel certa esse lex, vel immodicus esse labor debet."CELSUS, lib. i., cap. 2.

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the mental stimulus which would make the muscular effort easy to them, they might very wisely try to discover some such object that would not be unworthy of their native and acquired intellectual faculties and endowments. To many such people, some little attention to entomology, or botany, or mineralogy, or geology, might be doubly valuable; as the collection of specimens for the herbarium and the cabinet would supply the mental incentive to take the exercise which health demands, and the conjoining the mental and the bodily exercise would unquestionably much enhance the value of the

latter.

A love of sport—shooting, hunting, coursing, &c. -is in this way highly useful to many, who, perhaps not accustomed to more intellectual pursuits, might hardly be induced by anything else to undergo active or laborious exercise. Yet with such an incentive, I have known an individual rise from his bed. long before daybreak, and walk-perhaps beating furze-bushes half the time-with little intermission, during ten hours, and much of the distance over ploughed land; while a pound or two of dirt was adhering to his shoes, and each step must have been taken with more than twice the exertion that walking on a pavement, or on an ordinary foot-path, involves. The mental zest is indeed a great requisite, in rendering muscular exercise as useful to the system as it may be; and hence the sports of the field may be deserving of all praise, in cases where other

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incentives to active out-of-door exercise are wanting. The great evil of these pursuits, as regards the question of health, is their being probably in most cases too severe, and their being so irregularly made use of. A man who leads a life that is otherwise perhaps essentially sedentary, during a few weeks of the year rides over so many miles of country, and at such a rapid pace, at the heels of a pack of hounds, as to exhaust the powers of himself and his horses, and this probably two, or at most three, days a week ;-or he toils for a few days or weeks of the year on foot, in the pursuit of grouse, partridges, or pheasants ;or he seeks the banks of some rocky-bedded stream, with his rod and his flies, to spend hour after hour in practising the patient art of old Walton, but this only during a few weeks of the year;—and the rest of his time is spent as usual, perhaps ministering very insufficiently to the expenditure of the system, to the tone of the muscles, to the equalising of the circulation, by the use of his limbs. It is regular and moderate exercise, that health requires and demands of us. Habit may reconcile the system for a time, even to a life that is absolutely sedentary. But exercise, carried at one time much beyond the confines of fatigue, and to the probable degree of great physical exhaustion,-this being taken at long and uncertain intervals, which are probably characterised by little of laborious muscular effort,-cannot be supported on any principle of reasonableness, as regards the health of the economy; unless in so far

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as it supplies the mental stimulus, so much required and so useful, in aiding the good effects of bodily exercise on the system.*

The late Dr. Combe, whose death, at so comparatively early an age, will be most deplored, on public grounds, by those who are most familiar with his admirable writings,—in his work on "Physiology applied to Health and Education," handles this subject with his usual ability. “In summer, walking excursions to the Highlands of Scotland are common among the youth of our cities, and when proportioned in extent to the constitution and previous habits of the individual, nothing can be more advantageous and delightful. But not a season passes in which health is not sacrificed and life lost by young men imprudently exceeding their natural powers, and undertaking journeys for which they are totally unfitted. It is no unusual thing for youths, still weak from rapid growth, and perhaps accustomed to the desk, to set out in high spirits at the rate of twenty-five or thirty miles a day, on a walking excursion, and (in consequence of carrying exercise, for days in succession, to the third degree, or that in which waste exceeds nutrition), to come home so much worn out and debilitated that they never recover. Young soldiers, when youth is scarcely finished, are well known to die in great numbers, when exposed to long and heavy marches, particularly when food is at the time scanty. Violent exercise is not less pernicious, and, as well remarked by Dr. Johnson, 'it did great harm even when nations were more in a state of nature than they now are. Galen, in his discourse on Thrasibulus, inveighs against the athletic practices of the gymnasium. A smart walk of a mile is to a valetudinarian, what a grievous wrestle would be to an athletic. If we trace those dreadful aneurismal affections of the heart and arteries in early life, we shall find their origins in violent exercise or sudden over-exertion, in nine cases out of ten, when age and ossification are not concerned.' Even a single day of excessive fatigue will sometimes suffice to interrupt growth and produce permanent bad health; and I know one instance of a strong young man, who brought on a severe illness and permanent debility, by sudden return to hard exercise for a single day, although for some years before he had been accustomed to every species of muscular exertion in running, leaping, and swimming. Many young men hurry on the premature development of consumption by excessive fatigue during the shooting season, in cases where, by prudent management, they might have escaped it for years, if not altogether. The

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