V. 



THERAPEUTIC EFFECTS OF IIORSE-BACK RIDING. 



Mr. Budgell, in The Spectator, 171 1, writes : " For my own part, I 

 intend to hunt twice a week, during my stay with Sir Roger, and 

 shall prescribe the moderate use of this exercise to all my country 

 friends as the best kind of physic for mending a bad constitution 

 and preserving a good one. 



" I cannot do this better than out of the following lines of Dryden's 

 — Cymon and Iphigenia : 



" * The first physicians by debauch were made ; 

 Excess began, and Sloth sustains the trade. 

 By chase, our long-lived fathers earned their food ; 

 Toil strung the nerves and purified the blood : 

 But we, their sons, a pampered race of men. 

 Are dwindled down to threescore years and ten. 

 Better to hunt in fields for health unbought 

 Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. 

 The wise for cure on exercise depend : 

 God never made his work for man to mend.' " 



Let us now study the relations of horse-back riding 

 to the general health and to certain diseased con- 

 ditions of the system. That it can aid greatly in re- 

 establishing the general health and curing disease, is 

 easy not only of comprehension, but of demonstra- 

 tion. If — and this we have already proved — this exer- 

 cise be capable of increasing the activity of the organs 

 of nutrition, of diminishing both the tendency to a 

 plethoric condition itself, of aiding the excretion of 



