Exercise and Health
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM.
- Author:
Woods Hutchinson, M.D. New York: Outing Publishing Company, 1911, pp. 156.
That exercise and health are two words for the same state of being in the human animal, is the theme of Dr Hutchinson’s discourse. Exercise brings health, health brings a desire and a relish for exercise. Most of us underestimate the amount of exercise we can profitably take every day. Dr Hutchinson says we need not less than two hours, preferably four. “The ‘business,’ so to speak, of exercise for the brain worker or indoor man or woman is to pump the blood through the tired brain and little-used muscles, wash out their fatigue poisons, burn up clean the wastes of the food necessary to supply working power, and get rid of all these through the lungs, the skin, and the kidneys. This process takes hours every day instead of minutes, and you can 110 more accomplish it in two or three ten-minute periods than you can keep up your working power 011 three tablespoonfuls of patent, pre-digested humbug in place of three square meals. Moreover, the only place to get rid of these waste poisons adequately from lungs and skin is in the open air.”
With regard to much that is popular under the name of “physical culture,” Dr Hutchinson says, “The most dangerous feature of fads in physical culture is that by their narrowness and in judiciousness they prevent you from getting enough of it!” This is not the only current superstition in the domain of physiology which Dr Hutchinson attacks. He explains just how weak hearts are strengthened by steady exercise, and how weak lungs are built up in the same way, and how both heart and lungs can be injured by too much rest. “Our real breathing,” he says, “is done by the blood, not the lungs. Air in the lungs is like food in the stomach, of no use to the body until it is absorbed… .The muscles that best develop the chest are those of the legs, because they are the largest masses which can be most vigorously and protractedly exercised.” Further on he says, “An easy, swinging, elastic walk, or a bounding, springing run are a positive rest compared with prolonged standing at a desk, or even sitting in the rigid position often required for indoor work, with little opportunity to swing the limbs, or bend the back.” And here Dr Hutchinson strikes a blow at another superstition which is just beginning to lose its hold on the layman’s mind, the popular belief as to the cause and cure of flat-foot. “We stand supported,” he says, “upon two curving arches of bone, each reaching from the ball of the foot to the heel; and the curve of each arch is supported, not by bony or stony blocks of keystone shape, but by the incessant and elastic pull of muscle. Standing still tires out these muscles that support the arch far worse than walking does, and flatfoot, or the breaking of the arch, is one of the most painful and crip(59) pling lesser defects to which the human body is subject. It is produced by standing and so-called sedentary occupations upon hard floors, at least ten times as often as it is by outdoor work. .. .Permanent cure can be produced only by systematic massage and vigorous exercise of the muscles of the calf and the front of the leg, so as to give them strength to resume their natural support of the arch.”
In a delightfully robust chapter called “Muscle Maketh Man,” Dr. Hutchinson tells us how to “train for life,” as he puts it. His programme covers the entire day, from morning bath to nine hours of sleep in an airy room and the next morning’s bath, with breakfast in bed on Sundays and holidays. “Live like this,” he adds, “and you will never know that you are old until one day you are suddenly dead.” Ilis advice as to eating is only too easy to follow; indeed it is the one part of his system which is already in full force among middle-class Americans. Dr Hutchinson is not of those who believe that we are prone to eat too much. He says, “No nation has ever yet been known to get too much protein into its dietary. .. .The man who would put beef twice a day upon the table of every working man in the country would be the greatest benefactor that the world has ever known,” but in reading this we must remember that it is the opinion of a physician who believes that play is quite as essential to human welfare as is beef after play.
In a chapter on “The Heal Danger of Athletics,” we learn that the danger comes in stopping. “The building of man is never finished until he is dead….when we stop playing, we stop growing.” In the next chapter Dr Hutchinson discusses the kind of “Exercise that Rests,” and deplores the fact that by Americans “Idleness has come to be regarded not merely as a negative fault, but as a positive crime…. Play must always be apologized for.” He explains the scientific attitude toward work and fatigue, and shows “why, within certain limits, change of activity rests us.” But sleep is sometimes even better than exercise. “Many a fatigued and exhausted business man or overworked housemother or teacher would be much more benefited by an hour’s rest or sleep in a well-ventilated room?if possible in the open than by a brisk two-mile walk. The best possible short vacation is often to sleep late, take one’s breakfast in bed, and loaf industriously all the afternoon.”
Dr Hutchinson is an acknowledged master of the art of speaking lxis mind, and it is a great charm of his book that it is so easy to quote, so easy to discuss with friends. One more passage must serve to conclude the present tasting, “Any method of life which will carry a man happily and efficiently until sixty-five or seventy can drop him in the lap of Mother Earth as speedily and as suddenly as it likes after that. Indeed, the more suddenly the better, for a full life and a sudden death are the greatest favors granted by the gods.” A. T.
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