505 
Extracts from Foreign Journals. 
LECTURE ON THE INFLUENCE OF EXERCISE ON 
MAN AND ANIMALS. 
[From “La Clinique V4t6rinaire.”] 
MOTION is life. Free and regular motions, executed in accord- 
ance with animal structure and organization, evince health i all 
living beings seek exercise to preserve health. And every one 
that avoids motion, and makes any effort to maintain itself in in- 
action, is not in health. Immobility complete constitutes death. 
The physiological study of the beings around us demonstrates 
that they are especially designed for locomotion. The infant ani- 
mal of a day old, once launched into existence, exercises itself 
more and more, from day to day, in proportion as its strength 
increases. Instinct urges it to seek its mother’s teat, where it 
finds food already prepared, lasting until such time as it is able 
to seek nutriment elsewhere. It braces up its limbs, it walks; 
speedily becoming more fearless, and soon trusting itself to a run. 
Feeling more and more at liberty, power and courage grow up in 
it : it quits its mother. In one respect it feels itself in the enjoy- 
ment of independence ; in the other, it feels it is under the same 
law of Nature as all other creatures; a law which instinctively 
urges it to provide for its own wants, and thus watches over its 
preservation, and, by the act of reproduction, over the preservation 
of its whole species. Again, in searching for food, the animal is 
compelled to move about ; its limbs grow strong frdm exercise, 
and its body becomes developed in the same proportion until it 
reaches mature growth. 
The impulsion the body receives to put it into action is de- 
rived from the fleshy, fibrous, elastic substance we call muscle, 
which clothes the osseous framework. Muscles constitute the 
organs or instruments of motion. Although, however, in them- 
selves the seat of action, they evince no movement but through 
the influence they receive from the brain, the source whence is 
derived the activity of all the senses. Next to the brain, the noblest 
part of animal orgasm, one which human penetration has hitherto 
failed to unveil the mystery of, and probably for ever will, and 
which is most wonderful, is the muscles, the veritable actors in 
motion, in exercise, in work ; — their attachment to the bones, their 
structure, the cause of their intumescence, their number and their 
insertion, their uses or properties ; lastly, the admirable accord- 
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