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tary and inactive are constantly drugging themselves. It is altogether an error to suppose that the right conduct of health demands the oft-repeated administration of purgatives. Where the rules of Hygiene are attended to, the need of such medicines is at once obviated; but where these rules are slighted and disregarded, the alimentary canal may be oppressed and overloaded in different parts, so as to give rise to an apparent necessity for artificial means for its relief. Yet the use of such means only tends to increase the inconvenience against which they are administered; since the excessive stimulation of the medicine cannot last, it is sure to be succeeded by augmented torpor and inaction. In a similar way, regular muscular exercise serves to prevent headache, and those numerous affections of the brain, which perhaps constitute the most grievous afflictions of humanity. A ready interchange of blood in the brain gives a healthy impulse to the agreeable exercise of its functions; whilst a languid or stagnant state of the circulation in the head occasions all kinds of nervous symptoms, a tendency to disorganization in the brain itself, frequently resulting in apoplexy, palsy, and other serious maladies. The torpid state of the digestive canal has been considered highly instrumental in the production of such effects; and in the human body, where all parts and functions are connected by such a linked chain of harmony, it is frequently difficult to fix on the precise point where derangement takes its first stride; but begin where it may, exercise, gradually commenced and uninterruptedly continued, is the chief remedial measure against these serious evils. The distressing sufferings of hypochondriacal, nervous, and sensitive people, who are generally of the upper classes, whose circumstances impose no need for bodily labours, arise from the accumulation of nervous power in the system, for the want

of a sufficient vent or drain to keep down the supply of nervous force more nearly to a level with its expenditure. Such persons bid adieu to all their morbid feelings and impressions the moment their minds are engrossed with a sufficiently animating subject, that shall call forth an adequate exertion of their limbs. Their excitability is thus dissipated, and they enjoy ease and comfort in vigorous exercise. Again, the chest, the chief seat of that master malady, consumption, is stimulated to a healthy discharge of its functions by muscular exercise. The blood is not allowed to distend the yielding tissue of the lungs, and remain almost stagnant in their swollen vessels; a state, where it exists, exceedingly prone to occasion chronic inflammation, and, being conjoined with torpor and feebleness of action in the digestive and nervous systems, very much disposed to run into that kind of vegetative degeneration which results in the production of tubercles, or true tubercular consumption of the lungs. In fine, the effects of muscular action are to feed the lamp of vitality with a full supply of fuel, and to make the flame burn brighter and higher, whilst those of muscular inaction are to turn the living frame into a lump of senseless clay, more truly so as it gives rise to diseases which are usually fatal in their termination. The real degenerative consequences arising from muscular inaction cannot be more clearly illustrated than by the condition in which the muscles are found in club-foot and similar malformations, or diseases, which deprive them of action. They are converted into whitish, fatty masses, possessed of no one property of muscular fibres, without it be their external striated form. Having been long interdicted from all use, that law of organised matter previously explained comes into operation, and their red, fibrinous, and fleshy particles are removed, to be replaced by cellular tissue

and fat. The process of this fearful change, which results in the destruction of one of the finest functions of animal fibre, and the annihilation of all self-originating motion, proceeds through a regular gradation of stages before it arrives at its completion. Where a muscle is deprived of its office, as is the case with some of those executing the complicated movements of the spine, when the trunk is encased in tight stays and busks, its fibres become pale, and waste materially; their power of contractility is greatly diminished, and they scarcely acknowledge the authority of the will in calling them into action; indeed, when the process has proceeded so far, unless the attention be directed expressly to exciting natural or artificial motions in the part, and a powerful volition be exerted for this purpose, the final result of fatty degeneration and destruction of the muscular tissue is inevitable. And"-Mr. Davis proceeds, with a paragraph which, though not so immediately relating to pedestrianism as such chiefly practised by men in country rambling, yet from its correlative importance and value to the fair sex, we shall quote on-" and, however unpleasant it may be to the fair who may honour our little treatise with perusal, truth demands from us to declare, that one of the most frequent seats of muscular degeneration is in the gutters at the sides of the spinal column, where the thick masses of muscles intended for the complex motions executed by this most wonderful mechanism of the human frame,* being compressed and deprived of all action by artificial contrivances, their occupation being gone,-are found to be converted into a lardaceous matter."-Manual of the Art of Preserving Health. By J. B. Davis, Surgeon. Whittaker, London. 1836. Pp. 367-70.

"Walking, the most general, is the most beneficial * See Dr. Paley's Natural Theology.

*

of these" (corporeal) "exercises. It calls forth the alternate action of the extensor and flexor muscles of the lower limbs, as well as the contraction of those of the loins and of the shoulders. It solicits but little effort from the muscles of the chest and arms, the latter being chiefly used to balance the body in its progression, the arms moving in opposite directions to the legs of the corresponding sides. It makes few demands on the cerebral organs, further than that exertion of volition requisite to keep up the muscular action of the lower extremities. On a level surface it is not a fatiguing exercise, and only moderately excites the circulatory and respiratory organs. When pursued on an ascending plane it becomes laborious, and solicits a proportionate activity in breathing and in the circulation. Walking is an exercise suited to almost every age and constitution; even the invalid and convalescent partake of it with advantage; and there are few individuals can neglect it except to their prejudice. The famous Mr. Wm. Hutton, of Birmingham, presents the most remarkable instance of the love and practice of walking, kept up to extreme old age. To prepare himself for writing his Description of the Roman Wall, he undertook a journey of no less than six hundred miles on foot, at the age of seventy-eight. And such was his enthusiastic attachment to walking, that even to within a very few days of his death, which took place at the age of. ninety-two, he every day begged to be partly led and partly pushed over his accustomed number of rounds about the grass-plot in his garden. The celebrated Baron Larrey, surgeon-in-chief to Napoleon's grand army with which he invaded Russia, attributed his preservation, during the almost universal destruction that befel the host he accompanied, chiefly by reason of the severity of a northern winter, in a great measure to

the plan he adopted of traversing the whole distance on foot. Those who are prone to indulge in brooding fancies and melancholy thoughts should be careful how they partake in the exercise; for, unless cheerful society be conjoined with it, their gloomy propensities may be seriously aggravated. Indeed this is the surest way of deriving the largest measure of salutary influences from walking, by communicating a gentle and agreeable impulsion to the mind. The search for beautiful scenery and other natural objects, or even for works of art, tends to a similar end; and the collection of specimens of natural history, in some one or more of the fertile kingdoms of nature, is another almost inexhaustible means of imparting an interest to walking.”—Davis's Manual, pp. 391-2.

"It may be enough to say, that without suitable exercise, daily and regularly pursued, it is impossible to enjoy health, or to possess strength, or any moderate measure of usefulness: that exercise must never be disproportioned to previous habits, and must never be pursued beyond moderate limits, otherwise it becomes prejudicial instead of salutary: and that in the degree in which any exercise can be made cheering, agreeable, and pleasurable, is almost the precise measure of its utility as a means of Hygiene. For as it can be proved, by the stable facts of statistics, that happiness is one of the most essential elements of longevity, in the language of Shakspeare,

'Frame your mind to mirth and merriment,

Which bars a thousand harms, and lengthens life;'

so it is demonstrable that every action is salutary and health-promotive almost exactly in proportion as it administers to the enjoyment of the agent-a truth of vast importance, but far too much [ost sight of."-Ibid.

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