THE SOURCE OF MUSCULAR ENERGY. 377 



palate merely or mainly. "Fasting, fresh air, and exercise, is Na- 

 ture's panacea," says Dr. Oswald ; and so, in practice, I have found it 

 for a wide range of " diseases " that nothing else can reach. If we 

 aoree that disease results, mainly, from the breathing of impure air, 

 the use of unnatural food or excess, and often deficient exercise, then 

 it would seem to follow that ease must depend upon a reform in these 

 particulars. In all my experience with sick people I have never known 

 of the restoration of a single patient to fairly robust health in the ab- 

 sence of such reform. I have rarely known a person to become sick 

 except as the direct result of some degree of fear of pure air, and fear- 

 lessness regarding the influence of impure food. Whatever else may 

 have contributed to the production of his disease, it is seldom, indeed, 

 that these may not be truly regarded as the principal causes. Nature's 

 preventive and curative agents may be summed up thus : Pure air, 

 appropriate food, exercise (active or passive as the case may require), 

 skin-cleanliness, with proper ventilation of the surface of the body, 

 i. e., through the use of non-sweltering garments, supplemented by 

 rational exposure of the entire surface of the body to the air, by means 

 of air-baths, sunshine in the home and " sunshine in the heart " with 

 these, and only these, all curable cases will go on to certain recovery. 

 Without them no medication will avaiL 







THE SOUECE OF MTTSCULAK ENEKGY. 



Br J. M. STILLMAN, Ph. B. 



^V1"EW and valuable scientific discoveries and inventions are not slow 

 -i-N at the present time in making their way from the closets and 

 laboratories of the investigators or discoverers to popular recognition. 

 It is somewhat otherwise with the gradual development of knowledge 

 on subjects once thought to have been tolerably clearly understood and 

 of no immediate practical value. The gradual modifications which take 

 place in generally accepted theories by the slowly accumulating results 

 of the labor of many investigators are, to be sure, appreciated by the 

 special student in the particular department of knowledge concerned, 

 but are slower in meeting with public recognition. It thus happens 

 that teachers and books, not dealing as a specialty with the subject 

 involved, often adopt and repeat as authoritative views and theories 

 which, by the specialists in those branches, have either been aban- 

 doned or brought seriously into question. Nor is it to be otherwise 

 expected. Chroniclers are quick to seize upon and distribute the news 

 of brilliant or startling discoveries or inventions, but those are fewer 

 who will track patiently the slowly accumulating evidence of many 

 workers, appreciate the bearing of their work, and produce it in a 



