Keeping Fit All the Way | Page 6

physical impairments not
only will not correct themselves, but that they will get worse, and that a
large percentage of our vast horde of physically sub-standard,
low-priced men will drift into sickness and meet premature death
because their power to resist disease is rapidly declining. The Equitable
calls, on this convincing evidence, for a thorough and permanent
system of health education in our schools, saying: "With all of our
wealth and intelligence and scientific knowledge in the field of health
conservation, we are allowing a large proportion of our children to pass
out of the schools into adult life physically below par." The Equitable
concludes with the remark: "Some day we will give all American
school children thorough physical training and health education. Why
not commence now?"
FROM A FAMOUS PHYSICIAN'S NOTE-BOOK
Dr. S. Weir Mitchell says:
All classes of men who use the brain severely, and who have also--and
this is important--seasons of excessive anxiety or grave responsibility,
are subject to the same form of disease; and this is why, I presume, that
I, as well as others who are accustomed to encounter nervous disorders,
have met with numerous instances of nervous exhaustion among

merchants and manufacturers.
My note-books seem to show that manufacturers and certain classes of
railway officials are the most liable to suffer from neural exhaustion.
Next to these come merchants in general, brokers, etc.; then, less
frequently, clergymen; still less often, lawyers; and, more rarely,
doctors; while distressing cases are apt to occur among the
overschooled young of both sexes.
Here is a day's list:
Charles Page Bryan, former ambassador to Japan, died in Washington
of heart failure at the age of sixty-one.
Judge Arthur E. Burr, Judge of Probate for Suffolk County, dropped
dead in the court-house at the age of forty-eight.
Hiram Merrick Kirk, Municipal Court Justice, New York, died in the
forty-seventh year of his age.
Lieut. William T. Gleason dropped dead in the railroad station, Salt
Lake City, as he stepped from a railroad train, at the age of forty.
Indeed, it is not only the men of military age who drop off under this
strain, but the very vital strong men behind the lines.
THE ROAD TO EFFICIENCY
It is an extraordinary thing that the people in this country, many of
them coming from the most vigorous ancestry, should be willing to
compress all their athletic enthusiasm into a very small period of their
school and college life, and then to forget to take any exercise (except
vicariously) until warned, sometime after forty, that Nature will exact a
price for such folly. It is certainly a puzzle to understand how men can
willingly slip into fatness and flabbiness or nervous indigestion, forget
entirely what a pleasure physical vigor is, fold their hands contentedly,
with the statement that they haven't time for physical culture, and so,
gradually, by way of the motor-car and the dinner-table, slide into

physical decadence and a morbid condition of mind and body. And yet
three or four hours a week, less than an hour a day, with the assistance
of fresh air and water, and within a sixty-or ninety-day period, will start
these people on the road to recovered health and vigor. All that is
necessary is to get the proper action of the lungs, of the heart, and of
the skin, and, finally, of the digestion; then the results will follow fast.
A WINTER VACATION
The first time a good conservative New England business or
professional man, who has worked hard all his life and who has
attained a commanding position in the community, determines to break
away and take a vacation in the winter--a thing he has heard about and
sometimes wondered how other people could manage to do it--he meets
with the surprise of his life. After boarding a train and traveling for
twenty-four hours toward the South and sunshine, he begins to lose a
little the feeling that he is playing "hookey" and is liable to be dragged
home and birched. But he does wonder a little whether he won't have
hard work in finding somebody to play with him. When, however, he
disembarks from his train at his destination--we will say Pinehurst--he
has already begun to realize, through noting the other bags of
golf-clubs on the train, that possibly he will be able to get some
partners. When he arrives at the hotel, although it is early
breakfast-time, he is astounded at the number of people there, and he is
inclined to think that he has happened upon an unusual week or that
this is the one place in the South where golfers congregate.
By the time he has spent a day or two there and has found that, in spite
of the three courses open, it is wise to post his time