IV. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF HORSE-BACK RIDING. 



" How much wagon-driving ' granny '-fashion, with swathed legs, 

 will give our young men's chests an inch in breadth, or add an 

 ounce to their attenuated calves. 



" If riding on horseback were the fashion, as it ought to be. New 

 York parties would present less frequently the lamentable spectacle 

 of cavaliers the same height and not half the breadth of their part- 

 ners. The narrow-shouldered, lanky beaux who haunt our ball- 

 rooms are standing appeals to the Park Commissioners to do any 

 thing that in them lies to bring back amongst us the ancient and 

 manly art of riding on horse-back. Nothing will do so much to 

 toughen our muscles and inflate our lungs." 



Hygiene, by F. H. Hamilton, M.D., 1859. 



HORSE-BACK riding is specially adapted to the phys- 

 ical development of man ; its effects reach every func- 

 tion, but as they are each and all inseparably con- 

 nected, no one of them can increase in energy without 

 augmenting the action of the others. Thus horse-back 

 riding rouses the weak ones, restores and maintains 

 the equilibrium, and establishes harmony between 

 all the physiological phenomena of life. In this lies 

 its hygienic and therapeutic power. 



In studying this part of our subject, we propose to 

 examine successively the modifications caused by it 

 in the exercise of each one of these functions, and 

 naturally commence with the act which provokes all 



