PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 727 



should provide him with clothing enough to defy the vicissitudes of 

 the seasons, and keep him out-doors in all kinds of weather walking, 

 riding, or sitting ; he would be safe : the fresh air would prevent the 

 progress of the disease. But imjjrove he could not without exercise. 

 Increased exercise is the price of increased vigor. Running and walk- 

 ing steel the leg-sinews. In order to strengthen his wrist-joints a 

 man must handle heavy weights. Almost any bodily exercise but 

 especially swinging, wood-chopping, carrying weights, and walking up- 

 hill increases the action of the lungs, and thus gradually their func- 

 tional vigor. Gymnastics that expand the chest facilitate the ac- 

 tion of the respiratory organs, and have the collateral advantage of 

 strengthening the sinews, and invigorating the system in general, by 

 accelerating every function of the vital process. The exponents of 

 the movement-cure give a long list of athletic evolutions, warranted to 

 widen out the chest as infallibly as French-horn practice expands the 

 cheeks. But the trouble with such machine-exercises is that they are 

 almost sure to be discontinued as soon as they have relieved a momen- 

 tary distress, and, as Dr. Pitcher remarks in his " Memoirs of the Osage 

 Indians," the symptoms of consumption (caused by smoking and con- 

 finement in winter quarters) disappear during their annual buffalo- 

 hunt, but reappear upon their return to the indolent life of the wig- 

 wam. The problem is to make out-door exercise pleasant enough to 

 be permanently preferable to the far niente whose sweets seem espe- 

 cially tempting to consumptives. This purpose accomplished, the 

 steady progress of convalescence is generally insured, for the differ- 

 ences of climate, latitude, and altitude, of age and previous habits, al- 

 most disappear before the advantages of an habitual out-door life over 

 the healthiest in-door occupations. 



A tubercular diathesis inherited from both parents need not be 

 considered an insuperable obstacle to a successful issue of the cure. 



The family of my old colleague, Dr. G , of Namur, adopted a 



young relative who had lost his parents and his only brother by febrile 

 consumption, and was supposed to be in an advanced stage of the 

 same disease. The Antwerp doctors had given him uj), his complaint 

 having reached the stage of night-sweats and hectic chills, and, though 

 by no means resigned to the verdict of the medical tribunal, he had 

 an unfortunate aversion to anything like rough physical exercise. But 

 his uncle, having from personal experience a supreme faith in the effi- 

 cacy of the open-air cure, set about to study the character of the 

 youngster, and finally hit upon a plan which resulted in the proudest 

 triumph of his professional career. Pierre was neither a sportsman 

 nor much of an amateur naturalist, but he had a fair share of what 

 our phrenologists call " constructiveness " could whittle out ingenious 

 toys and make useful garden-chairs from cudgels and scraps of old 

 iron. That proved a sufficient base of operations. The doctor had no 

 farm of his own, and the only real estate in the market was a lot of 



