THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



JUNE, 1881. 

 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 



By FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 



CLOTHIIS^G. 

 " No better traveling habit than hardy hdbitsy Sir Samuel Bakee. 



THE capacity of our ancestors to accommodate themselves to every 

 climate depended not only on their physiological faculty of adap- 

 tation, but also on their skill in protecting themselves by artificial means 

 from the inclemency of the higher latitudes. Houses and clothes are 

 a blessing if they answer this purpose by a close imitation of Nature's 

 own plan in sheltering her children from atmospheric vicissitudes ; but 

 in degree as they deviate from that plan their hygienic disadvantages 

 balance, or even outweigh, the gain in other respects. A swallow's 

 nest protects her brood from cold and rain without debarring them 

 from the fresh air ; a human domicile, too, should combine comfort 

 with the advantage of perfect ventilation ; and our clothes, like the fur 

 of a squirrel or the feather-mantle of a hawk, should keep us warm and 

 dry without interfering with the cutaneous excretions and the free 

 movement of our limbs. 



Measured by these standards, the winter dress of an American 

 schoolboy is nearly the best, the summer dress of the average Ameri- 

 can, French, and German nursling about the worst that could possibly 

 be devised. At an age when the rapid development of the whole or- 

 ganism requires the utmost freedom of movement, our children are 

 kept in the fetters of garments that check the activity of the body in 

 every way : swaddling-clothes, undershirts, overshirts, neck-wrappers, 

 trailing gowns, garnitures, flounces, and shawls reduce the helpless 

 homunculus to a bundle of dry-goods, unable to move or turn, inca- 

 pable of relieving or intimating its uneasiness in any way save by the 



VOL. XIX. 10 



