EXERCISE EOR ELDERLY PEOPLE. 777 



that is proportioned to the quantity of tissues burned, to the 

 amount of oxygen consumed in the acts of vital chemistry that 

 constitute nutrition. It is possible to reach a considerable sum 

 of daily work without at any moment making intense exertion or 

 rapid movements. The muscular acts of exercises chosen have 

 for that only to be continued long, without being very violent or 

 very rapid. In other words, it is enough that the exercise repre- 

 sents " bottom " work. 



"Walking is the type of " bottom " exercise, and is the most 

 hygienic of all kinds for the elderly man, provided it is prolonged 

 enough to represent a sufficient amount of work. Nothing is so 

 good for the man of fifty years as a gunning tramp, or long pedes- 

 trian tours like those the Alpinists make. But it is necessary to 

 regard the social exigencies, which refuse to give everybody the 

 desired number of hours, and compel another choice. There are 

 many other " bottom " exercises that exact a larger expenditure 

 of force than walking, without going beyond the degree of effort 

 and rapidity that the arteries of the elderly man can safely bear. 

 Many of what are called open-air games, like tennis, lawn-tennis, 

 and even rowing, when practiced not for racing but as a recre- 

 ation that is, with a liveliness graduated to the respiratory ca- 

 pacity of the rower provoke, for example, in one or two hours, 

 an elimination of the products of disassimilation and an acqui- 

 sition of oxygen equivalent to what one can get from eight or 

 ten hours of walking. They permit the busy man to gain time, 

 compensating for the shorter duration of the exercise by its inten- 

 sity ; but that in such a way that he can get the general con- 

 secutive effects of exercise while avoiding its general immediate 

 effects, super-activity of the circulation of the blood and of res- 

 piration. 



We ought to look also to exercise for local effects ; in order, in 

 the first place, to keep the joints supple and counterbalance the 

 tendency to incrustation of the cartilages, which is one of the 

 consequences of age ; and, in the second place, to keep the muscles 

 as a whole in sufficient strength and volume. The muscle, as we 

 have read, is " the furnace of vital combustion/' and in developing 

 the muscular tissue we favor the activity of combustion and the 

 destruction of the refuse of nutrition. For the satisfaction of 

 these requisitions, such exercises are adopted as might be called 

 analytical, inasmuch as they bring the whole muscular system 

 into play, not by the work of the whole together, but by a series 

 of successive movements that call the various muscular groups 

 into action severally one after the other. It is important, in 

 order to preserve the easy working and suppleness of all the ar- 

 ticulations of the body, to subject them to movements extending 

 to the extreme limit of possible displacement. We might also, 



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