490 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it is natural to associate their fine physiques with their passionate 

 fondness for swimming, which is one of the best of known exercises 

 for giving one an all-round development. 



The Cubans, as a class, have been reported by different American 

 authors to be uncleanly, and some of the Cambridge people feared that 

 this personal neglect might prove troublesome during the Northern 

 sojourn of their visitors. Passing over the right of the Americans to 

 make this criticism, who were themselves criticized by Dickens and 

 other English travelers, not so many years ago, for this same defect, 

 and who are not even now a water-loving people — I wish to say that 

 bathing for cleanliness, with free use of perfumed soap, etc., is of little 

 value from a hygienic point of view, compared to the bathing that fol- 

 lows a profuse perspiration produced by physical exercise. If, in con- 

 nection with the use of water in the summer season, the skin is fre- 

 quently exposed to the direct rays of the sun, and immediate contact 

 with the air, it will be greatly improved in its functional power. In 

 my personal contact with young men in the examining room, I am 

 more and more impressed with the importance of keeping the skin in 

 good condition, not only as a means of maintaining health and pre- 

 venting disease, but of adding to one's nervous and muscular power. 

 Since custom has decreed that the body shall be altogether covered, 

 even in the tropics, the skin has lost much of its beauty, as well as its 

 health-preserving qualities. 



A dark complexion is the result of living for a long time in a tropical 

 climate, and is not indicative of racial inferiority, as is too frequently 

 assumed where the white and black races come together. The habit 

 which many Cuban women have of plastering their faces with rice 

 powder until they look almost ghastly, seems to us very singular, in 

 view of the fact that so many of our own well-bred youth of both sexes 

 spend their summer vacations at the seashore or in the mountains, ear- 

 nestly endeavoring to acquire a tanned skin and a bronzed or olive- 

 brown complexion. 



Another custom which prevailed among many of the Cuban women 

 who were in Cambridge was that of wearing narrow-toed, high-heeled 

 shoes. The Cubans have naturally small hands and feet, and perhaps 

 it is pardonable for a people to affect to exaggerate a little the thing 

 upon which they pride themselves. Here, again, we see something of 

 Spanish blood and the traditions of slavery. Those who toil for a 

 living have large hands and feet: slaves toil for a living; therefore, 

 slaves have large hands and feet. Those who do not have to work for a 

 living have small hands and feet: ladies do not have to work for a liv- 

 ing; therefore, ladies have small hands and feet. It is only necessary 

 to carry this line of reasoning a step farther to see why the Chinese 

 aristocrat bandages the feet of his daughter until they become so small 



