PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 723 



poisons, for every trifling complaint. Constipation is often simply a 

 transient lassitude of the system, a functional tardiness caused by fa- 

 tigue and perspiration, and very apt to cure itself in the course of two 

 or three days, especially at a change from a higher to a lower tem- 

 perature. After the third day the disorder demands a change of 

 regimen : cold ablutions, lighter bedclothes, in summer-time removal 

 of the b^d to the coolest and airiest available locality, and liberal 

 rations of the most digestible food bran-bread, sweet cold milk, 

 stewed prunes, and fresh fruit in any desired quantity ; faute de 

 mieux, cold water and sugar, oatmeal-gruel, and diluted molasses. The 

 legumina, in all their combinations, are likewise very eflicient bowel 

 regulators, and common pea-soup is a remedial equivalent of Du 

 Barry's expensive "revalenta Arabica" (lentil -powder). For real 

 dyspepsia (rarely a chronic disease of youngsters in their teens), there 

 is hardly any help but rough out-door exercise, daily pedestrian exer- 

 cise or out-door labor, continued for hours in all kinds of weather. 

 The Graham starvation cure might bring relief in the course of time, 

 but for one person with passive heroism enough to resist the continual 

 cravings of an abnormal appetite, hundreds can muster the requisite 

 resolution for an occasional active effort, which will gradually but 

 perceptibly restore the vigor of the system. Drugs only change the 

 form of the disease bv turninor a confirmed surfeit-habit into a still 

 more obstinate and less commutable alcohol-habit ; the vile mixtures 

 sold under the name of " tonic " bitters have never benefited anybody 

 but their proprietors and the rum-sellers, to whose army of victims 

 the patent-medicine dispensaries serve as so many recruiting-ofiices. 



Active exercise is also the only remedy for those secret vices whose 

 causes are as often misunderstood as their consequences. The pathol- 

 ogists who ascribe precocious prurience to the effects of a stimulat- 

 ing diet seem to overlook the fact that the most continent nations of 

 antiquity, the Scythians and ancient Germans, were as nearly exclu- 

 sively carnivorous as our Indian hunting-tribes, the apathy of whose 

 sexual instincts has been alleged in explanation of their gradual ex- 

 tinction.* For the same reason the gauchos of the tropical pampas 

 are an unprolific race, while the Russian mujiks and the sluggish 

 boyars of the Danubian i^rincipalities are as salacious as the inert 

 (though frugivorous) natives of southern Italy. Independent of cli- 

 mate and diet, the continence or incontinence of the different nations, 

 or different classes of any nation, bears an unmistakable proportion to 

 the degree of their indolence. Lazy cities and small, thickly popu- 

 lated islands (Lesbos, Paphos, Cythera, Otaheite) have been most con- 

 spicuous for the absence of those virtues which the Grecian allegory 

 ascribed to the goddess of the chase. The menu prescribed by the 

 founders of the monastic orders was rather ultra-Grahamite in quality 

 and quantity, yet neither barley-bread nor the frequent fasts to aid the 



* Ludwig, *' American Aborigines," p, 128. 



