THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 457 



morphose the character of the patient, and all manner of symptoms 

 ascribed to "heart-disease," aneurism, intestinal parasites, spinal or 

 cerebral affections, are often simply due to depraved humors and their 

 reaction on the nervous system. By increasing the action of the circu- 

 latory system, physical exercise promotes the elimination of such humors, 

 with their whole train of morbid consequences — chlorosis, tantrums, 

 troubled dreams, and the nervous affections proper ; restlessness and 

 want of vital energy. What amounts of " tonic " nostrums — keeping 

 their promise of restoring the vigor of the system by producing a /cyer- 

 energy — would be thrown in the gutter, if the patient could be per- 

 suaded to try the receipt of Jacob Engel ! " When I reflect on the 

 immunity of hard-working people from the effects of wrong and 

 over feeding," says Dr. Boerhaave, "I can not help thinking that most 

 of our fashionable diseases might be cured mechanically instead of 

 chemically, by climbing a bitterwood-tree, or chopping it down, if 

 you like, rather than swallowing a decoction of its disgusting leaves." 

 For male patients, gardening, in all its branches, is about as fashiona- 

 ble as the said diseases, and no liberal man would shrink from the ex- 

 pense of a board fence, if it would induce his drug-poisoned wife to 

 try her hand at turf-spading, or, as a last resort, at hoeing, or even a 

 bit of wheelbarrow- work. Lawn-tennis will not answer the occasion. 

 There is no need of going to extremes and exhausting the little re- 

 maining strength of the patient, but without a certain amount of 

 fatigue the specific fails to operate, and experience will show that 

 labor with a practical purpose — gardening, boat-rowing, or amateur 

 carpentering — enables people to beguile themselves into a far greater 

 amount of hard work than the drill-master of a gymnasium could get 

 them to undergo. Besides the potential energy that turns hardships 

 into play-work, athletes have the further advantage of a greater dis- 

 ease-resisting capacity. Their constitution does not yield to every 

 trifling accident ; their nerves can stand the wear and tear of ordinary 

 excitements ; a little change in the weather does not disturb their sleep ; 

 they can digest more than other people. Any kind of exercise that 

 tends to strengthen — not a special set of muscles, but the muscular 

 system in general — has a proportionate influence on the general vigor 

 of the nervous organism, and thereby on its pathological power of re- 

 sistance. 



For nervous children my first prescription would be — the open 

 woods and a merry playmate ; for the chlorotic affections of their 

 elder comrades — some diverting, but withal fatiguing, form of man- 

 ual labor. In the minds of too many parents there is a vague notion 

 that rough work brutalizes the character. The truth is, that it regu- 

 lates its defects : it calms the temper, it affords an outlet to things 

 that would otherwise vent themselves in fretfulness and ugly passions. 

 Most school-teachers know that city children are more fidgety, more 

 irritable and mischievous than their village comrades ; and the most 



