THE PROPER LIMITS OF PHYSICAL CULTURE. 435 



MEDICINE AND HYGIENE. 



THE PROPER LIMITS OF PHYSICAL CULTURE. 



BY W. B. SAWYER, M. D. , KANSAS CITY, MO. 



The questions of physical culture are pre-eminently those of this 'day. The 

 college curricula of half a century ago contained no allusions to cultivation of the 

 bodily powers, and society took no heed of how its members cared for them. 

 The pendulum of fashion has swung far, however, away from this point of 

 apathy and is rapidly approaching, if it has not reached, the opposite one of ex- 

 cess. To-day colleges, schools, towns, cities, and private societies are furnishing 

 gymnasia for indoor exercises and expensive apparatus and stimulating prizes 

 for excellence in outdoor athletics. The college graduate of the present is ex- 

 pected to be an expert oarsman, runner, or base-ball player, while nearly every 

 young man is anxious to excel in feats of power. Will it not be well to question 

 then what proper physical culture is and what needs it should aim to supply ? 



To begin with, all men are given, as part of the capital with which to gain a 

 livelihood, bodies which, to say nothing of the wonderful beauty symmetry and 

 nicety of their various arrangements, are precisely adapted for any calling in life 

 which they may assume. They are also gifted, as the feature that distinguishes them 

 from the brute creation, with intellect, and herein lies the point of their responsi- 

 bility. The animal is guided in the care of his body only by instinct. When he 

 is thirsty he drinks, when hungry seeks food, when frightened flees from the 

 cause of his fear. All animals, saving man, have also provided for them, each in 

 their separate kind, certain peculiar organs, functions and developments, which 

 take for them, to a certain extent, the place of reasoning faculties. Thus the 

 coat of horses, cattle, and fur-producing animals is thick for the cold of winter, 

 is shed and comes again thinner when the warm months appear; certain classes 

 of them are fitted entirely for a diet of herbs and others for meats alone, and to 

 prevent the possibility of their mistaking the one for the other, or of manifesting 

 any choice in the matter, they are each provided with teeth of such a kind as to 

 admit of masticating the one, and not the other. So also to every created brute 

 has been given just those qualities, organs, and instincts as are required by his 

 peculiar characteristics. The bird has his light bones, broad wings and extensive 

 lungs to prepare him for his aerial navigation. The water-fowl his broad web-feet 

 for swimming, and the wonderful capacity for retaining air in the body. 



Look over the entire range of animal nature in fact, and we see that what- 

 ever element the animal is to live and move in or upon, and whatever instinctive, 

 natural traits he has, for the enjoyment and performance of them, he is provided 



