114 THE HUMAN BODY 



for healthy persons is good, and girls are all the better for being 

 allowed to join in their brothers' sports. Half of the debility and 

 general ill-health of so many of our women is the consequence of 

 deficient exercise during early life. 



Exercise in Youth should be regulated largely by sex; not that 

 women are to be shut up and made pale, delicate, and unfit to 

 share the duties or participate fully in the pleasures of life; but 

 the other calls on the strength of the young woman render vig- 

 orous muscular work often unadvisable, especially under con- 

 ditions where it is apt to be followed by a chill. 



A healthy boy or young man may do nearly anything; but 

 until twenty-two or twenty-three very prolonged effort is un- f 

 advisable. The frame is still not firmly knit or as capable of en- 

 durance as it will subsequently become. 



Girls should be allowed to ride or play outdoor games in mod- 

 eration, and in any case should not be cribbed in tight stays or 

 tight boots. A flannel dress and proper lawn tennis shoes are as 

 necessary for the healthy and safe enjoyment of an afternoon at 

 that game by a girl as they are for her brother in the baseball 

 field. Rowing is excellent for girls if there be any one to teach 

 them to do it properly with the legs and back, and not with the 

 arms only, as women are so apt to row. Properly practised it 

 strengthens the back and improves the carriage. 



Exercise in Adult Life. Up to forty a man may carry on safely 

 the exercises of youth, but after that sudden efforts should be 

 avoided. A lad of twenty-one or so may, if trained, safely run a 

 quarter-mile race, but to a man of forty-five it would be dan- 

 gerous, for with the rigidity of the cartilages and blood-vessels 

 which begins to show itself about that time comes a diminished 

 power of meeting a sudden violent demand. On the other hand, 

 the man of thirty would more safely than the lad of nineteen or 

 twenty undertake one of the long-distance walking matches which 

 have lately been in vogue; the prolonged effort would be less 

 dangerous to him, though a six-days' match, with its attendant 

 loss of sleep, cannot fail to be more or less dangerous t6 any one. 

 Probably for one engaged in active business a walk of two or 

 three miles to it in the morning and back again in the afternoon is 

 the best and most available exercise. The habit which Americans 

 have everywhere acquired, of never walking when they can take 



