PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 303 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 



By FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 

 DIET. 



"Blessed are the pure, for they can follow their inclinations with impunity." 



T'T'N'N'ATURAL food is the principal cause of human degeoeratiou. 

 vJ It is the oldest vice. If we reflect upon the number of ruinous 

 dietetic abuses, and their immemorial tyranny over the larger part of 

 the human race, we are tempted to eschew all symbolical interpreta- 

 tions of the paradise legend, and to ascribe the fall of mankind literally 

 and exclusively to the eating of forbidden food. From century to cen- 

 tury the same cause has multiplied the sum of our earthly ills. Sub- 

 stances which Nature never intended for the food of man have come 

 to form a principal part of our diet ; caustic spices torture our digestive 

 organs ; we ransack every clime for noxious weeds and intoxicating 

 fluids ; from twenty to thirty-five per cent, of our breadstuffs are yearly 

 wasted on the distillation of a life-consuming fire ; vegetable poisons, 

 inorganic poisons, and all kinds of indigestible compounds enslave our 

 appetites, and among the Caucasian nations of the present age an un- 

 exampled concurrence of causes has made a passive submission to that 

 slavery the habitual condition. 



Dietetic abuses, alone, would amply account for all our " ailments 

 and pains, in form, variety, and degree beyond description " ; the vital- 

 ity of the human race would, indeed, have long succumbed to their 

 combined influence, if their effects were not counteracted by the recon- 

 structive tendency of Nature. Every birth is an hygienic regeneration. 

 The constitutional defects which degenerate parents transmit to their 

 offspring are modified by the inalienable bequest of an elder world 

 the redeeming instincts which our All-mother grants to every new child 

 of earth. Individuals may deprave these instincts till their functions 

 are entirely usurped by the cravings of a vicious appetency, but this 

 perversion is never hereditary ; Nature has ordained that all her chil- 

 dren should begin the pilgrimage of life from beyond the point where 

 the roads of misery and happiness diverge. As the golden age, the 

 happy childhood of the human race returns in the morning of every 

 life, the noi-mal type of our pi-imogenitor asserts itself athwart the 

 morbid influences of all intermediate generations ; the regenesis of every 

 new birth brings mankind back from vice to innocence, from mysticism 

 to realism, from ghost-land to earth. For a time those better instincts 

 thwart the influence of miseducation as persistently as confirmed vices 

 afterward thwart the success of reformatory measures ; but, if the work 

 of correct physical culture were begun in time, our innate propensities 



