626 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



value is in the proof that there is no shadow of evidence for any 

 other view. 



When embryologists talk about the doctrine of evolution in 

 embryology as antagonistic to the doctrine of epigenesis ; when 

 biologists seek for the origin of species in " laws of variation " 

 which are not the outcome of selection ; when they talk about a 

 " principle of organic stability " which does not owe its origin to 

 the same agency it seems to me that they fail to grasp the sig- 

 nificance of Darwin's work, and that they are wandering from the 

 only path in which we can have any well-grounded hope for 

 progress the path which takes its departure from that concep- 

 tion of specific types which leads us to seek for the origin of the 

 " events " which exhibit the type in the physical properties of liv- 

 ing matter, and to seek in the order of Nature external to the 

 organism for the origin of the " law of error/' which forms a type 

 out of these events. 



EXERCISE AS A 'REMEDY.* 



BY HENRY LING TAYLOR, M. D. 



is not a remedy which in some mysterious way 

 may prove beneficial in disordered conditions of the system, 

 still less a specific in any given disease, but it may be made the 

 means of producing gentle or powerful effects of a definite kind, 

 which vary with its form, intensity, duration, time of application, 

 method of administration, and the condition of the patient. The 

 problem presented to the physician in a given case is not merely 

 the prescription of exercise, but rather such proportioning and 

 contrasting of the muscular activity to periods of rest that the 

 total result shall be beneficial ; here, as always, the patient is to 

 be treated rather than the disease. Exercise employed systemat- 

 ically and with discrimination is of the highest value in the pre- 

 vention of debility and disease, and also in he treatment of certain 

 chronic affections. In many acute and some chronic diseases ex- 

 ercise is positively and actively injurious, and it is always liable 

 to prove so when employed without due regard to its physiological 

 effects. Though most of the useful effects of exercise can be ob- 

 tained under skilled supervision with little or no apparatus, its 

 practical importance is ignored in hospitals, but little recognized 

 in asylums and imperfectly appreciated in private practice. The 

 neglect of exercise as a therapeutic resource is traceable to fail- 

 ure to appreciate the indications for its employment, and perhaps 



* From advance sheets of Handbook of Therapeutics, edited by Frank P. Foster, M. D., 

 in press of D. Appleton & Co. 



