president’s ADDRESS — SECTION I. 
177 
they are developing distinct tendencies to certain diseases, and suffer 
very largely from preventable ill-health. Or take the function of the 
bowels : — Inattention produces costiveness ; this is relieved by purga- 
tives ; fresh purgatives are taken to overcome the consequent atony ; 
their continuous use soon becomes a necessity, and the vicious circle 
is complete ; and, as a mark of the extent of this misuse, Holloway, 
Cockle, and Beecham are names more widely knowm than Gladstone, 
Bismarck, and General Gordon. Mistakes such as these with the 
commonplaces of health show us conclusively that their functional 
requirements need scientific regulation, and being matters of individual 
application should be made subjects of primary education. Surely 
they are of more importance than the dates of battles that have no 
present interest, or the heights of mountains that are never seen ! I 
am glad to be able to say that such matters are now part of the State 
education of Victoria, and I venture to think that such and similar 
health- teaching deserves a place in the education of every community. 
Nor must we forget that, like other living tilings, this body of 
ours has its life history. There are in that history epochs of growth, 
maturity, and decay. Each epoch presents its own special perils and 
morbid imminences, and it cannot be too often emphasised that decay 
is as natural as development, and that many forms of “ disease” are in 
reality nothing more or less than natural modes of decay. Upon this 
point there is such an excellent article by Dr. Southey in Quain’s “ Dic- 
tionary of Medicine” that I venture to draw special attention thereto, 
and, by way of incentive, quote his final remarks. He says : “Advice for 
every age may be thus briefly given— -for infancy and childhood, sustine ; 
for adult years, sustine et ahstine; for old age, again sustine. Individual 
health is attained by self-denial ; habits imply self-indulgence.” 
The great question of exercise has such an important influence 
on health that it cannot be passed by entirely without notice. Of the 
value of the systematic training of the body there is little need to say 
much in a community where the danger is rather that of athleticism 
run mad than the reverse. To the old Grecian conception of exercise, 
as a necessary factor in harmonious development, we add the more 
practical Eoman view that it is necessary for health — the only points 
to be considered are the amount and the kind. Sir James Paget but 
voices the general scientific opinion when he upholds the English 
system of competitive games as pre-eminently useful in the case of 
the young and the maturing. But some supervision is often necessary 
to prevent its misuse, and some combination with scientific gymnastics 
may also be required to counteract its defects. Such a system as that 
known in America as the “Sargent system” thus receives a scientific 
warrant. Especially is this of value where it is too often especially 
neglected — namely, in the case of girls and young women They, 
even more than the opposite sex, need the protection and assistance of 
a well-developed bodily frame, and the doctrine of systematic exercise 
for girlhood cannot be too widely or too loudly proclaimed. And 
turning to mature life, exercise has peculiar advantages which are 
far too seldom recognised. Healthier and happier will he ever be who 
then, as Lynch puts it, exercises daily ad ruborem if lean, and ad 
sudor em if fat, than he who, unmindful of the benefit that accrues to 
heart, lung, and brain, abandons the exercise of his youth. 
M 
