THE MUSCLES. 249 



them to stand and stagnate, so to speak, when the muscles cease to 

 use them. The stiffness and soreness of the muscles after rest is an 

 evidence that the change from exertion to repose was too sudden. 

 If the skin be covered with perspiration, produced by the severity 

 of the labor, this suggestion is so much the more important. 

 Never sit or lie down to rest in this state. It is the well-known 

 and proper practice of great walkers and other athletes to have 

 themselves well rubbed down, like race-horses, before they go to rest. 



Pure Blood This affords the highest muscular stimulus; 

 pure blood can only come from a strong and healthy digestion and 

 this again depends on a clean and properly warmed skin, pure air, 

 abundant sunlight and the free and unrestricted movement of the 

 ribs, diaphragm and lungs. It is of great practical importance to 

 both men and women to observe these conditions, whatever may be 

 their vocation or mode of life. 



Open-air Exercise This is important for the reason that the 

 purer the air we breathe the more stimulating will be the blood 

 supplied to the muscles, and the longer continued may be their exer- 

 tion without fatigue or injury. Thus also we see the importance of 

 thoroughly ventilating all inhabited rooms and especially sick- 

 rooms. The patient can sit up longer when the air is pure and he 

 finds his strength and appetite in every way improved. This is the 

 reason a patient can sit up longer while riding in a carriage than in 

 an easy chair in the room where he has been ill ; it is the difference 

 made by pure and impure air. 



Light Exercise should be taken as much as possible in the 

 light of day, and unless the sultriness of the hour or season forbid, 

 in the full sunlight. Men and animals, as well as plants, require 

 the stimulus of this agent. It would be well if all shops, kitchens 

 and sitting-rooms could be situated on the sunny side of the house. 

 Students especially should take their exercise during the day and 

 laborers shun night-tasks. Like plants that grow in the shade, 

 persons who dwell in dark rooms are paler and less vigorous than 

 others. 



Regular and Frequent Exercise Bays of severe toil, 

 followed by days of idleness sucji is the custom of the savage and 

 unreasonable man. Exercise, on the other hand, should be regular 

 and frequent. A weekly fast of twenty -four hours is not more absurd 

 and unnatural than a weekly suspension of exercise for a like period. 

 It is not more true though a matter of common experience and 

 observation that people who practice fasting, ruin their health 

 thereby, than that those who abstain from daily exertion in- 

 jure themselves correspondingly. The late Thomas Carlyle said 

 ne came out of a three-days' fast with a Devil of Dyspepsia that 

 haunted and cursed his whole life ; and many a man and woman, if 

 they only knew it, have emerged from corresponding periods of 

 idleness with the twin of that same Devil of Dyspepsia. It is true 

 that the evil consequences of neglect of exercise steal more slowly 



