water should be applied to all parts of the body, and then rubbed dry
with a Turkish towel. If too much of a shock to the system, apply a
flesh-brush or the palm of your hands vigorously to the skin, after
which the sponge bath, and when dry the brush or hand, as before.
When the shower-bath is used, and a person feels exhilarated from its
effects, it is better than the sponge bath; but when it produces a
shiver or weakness, it should be discontinued until strong enough to
indulge in this great summer luxury.
The mere fact that millions of human beings are strong and healthy
upon a purely vegetable diet should of itself suggest that, although
animal food, as more concentrated, and yielding more force with less
expenditure in its digestion, is superior to vegetable food, yet there
is excellent nutriment to be extracted from vegetables. The anatomical
indications of man, being omnivorous, should also point in the same
direction, and the need of vegetable acids, no less than the advantages
of variety, at once disclose the error of banishing vegetable food.
The chief mistake lies in the cooking. The water in which green
vegetables are cooked is poisonous. There is not one house in fifty
where the vegetables are not cooked in small vessels, containing very
little water, which is never _changed_, and where the greens are sent
to table with the water properly squeezed from them. Let any person
unable to eat broccoli, or greens cooked in a quart of water, try the
effect of having them cooked in a gallon of water, or of having the
quart changed three or four times during the process, and he will soon
discover the difference. If potatoes are “watery,” it is because they
are ill-cooked. No Irishwoman serves up watery potatoes.
Veal and pork are rigidly excluded by the trainer, which some will hear
it with amazement, and will ask how it was that the ancients gave the
athletes nothing but pork. Would the old hen be thought nutritious, and
the chicken injurious? Would the sheep be tender, and the lamb tough?
And why is the calf to be blooded, and the ox not? Yet, so long as this
practice continues, no one should indulge in veal, unless his digestion
be vigorous. Fried dishes, rich gravies and pastry should also be
avoided, because of their tendency to develop fatty acids in the
stomach. Some cannot endure fat; others cannot get on without it. Some
cannot touch mutton; others are made ill by eggs. Let each find out
his own idiosyncrasy. The only thing the trainer teaches us is to take
abundant exercise in the open air, and to be simple and moderate in our
diet, with regularity in hours. If neither time nor strength permits
our abundant exercise, and if our avocations prevent regularity, what
remains but moderation in diet?
The effects of exercise are two-fold: on the one hand a stimulus is
given to the action of the heart and lungs, which enables the blood
to be more thoroughly oxygenated and more rapidly circulated; on the
other hand, there is an expenditure force, accompanying the increased
activity of the organic changes. Exercise strengthens the parts
exercised, because it increases the nutrition of those parts. When
any organ is inactive, the circulation in it becomes less and less,
the smaller ramifications of its network of blood vessels are empty
or but half filled, the streams gradually run in fewer channels, and
the organ, ceasing to be thoroughly nourished, wastes away. When the
organ is active all its vessels are filled; all the vital changes, on
which depend its growth and power, proceed rapidly. The force expended
is renewed, unless the expenditure has been excessive, in which case
there is a disturbance of the mechanism, and depression or disease
results. But unless there has been excess, we see that the great
advantage of exercise consists in keeping up a due equalization of
the circulation, an equable distribution of nutrition to the various
organs. Perfect health means the equable activity of all the functions;
not the vigor of the muscular system alone, nor of the nervous system
alone; not the activity of this gland or that, but the equable vigor
of all. Remember that when life makes great demands upon the muscular
energy, the demands upon the brain must be less; and when the demands
upon the brain are energetic, there is less force disposable for
muscles and glands. The advantage of exercise to a student or any other
brain-worker, is that it _lessens_ the over-stimulus of his brain,
distributes the blood more equably, calling to his muscles some of
those streams which would impetuously be rushing through his brain. And
understanding what this advantage is, he should be careful to avail
himself of it; but he should be careful to remember at the same time
that within certain limits all the force with drawn by his muscles is
withdrawn from the brain or some other organ. He must not burn the
candle at both ends.
It is certain that sedentary men, and men of hard-worked intellects,
are greatly in need of some means of distributing the circulation
through the muscles. Exercise is the means. When the avocations are
such as to render continuous exercise in the open air difficult or
impossible, we should seek to compensate for this by variety of
gentle activities distributed throughout the day. No error is more
common than that of supposing open-air exercise to be indispensable
to health: we may have no time for walking, rowing, riding or any
of the ordinary modes of out-door activity, yet--as the excellent
health and strength of domestic servants, who scarcely ever stir out,
will show--the mere activity of the body, in various occupations,
suffices for the equalization of the circulation. Let the sedentary
stand as well as sit, changing the posture frequently, and using back
and arms as variously as possible. A variety of gentle activities is
more beneficial to the student than bursts of violent exercise. Above
all things, remember that in exercise, as in diet, the grand rule is
moderation. Avoid fatigue; as you would cease eating when appetite
abates, cease muscular activity when the impulse to continue it abates.
In general, the healthy man may eat almost anything in moderation; but
it is wiser for all to avoid meat twice cooked, rich gravies and fried
dishes. Nature tells us very plainly that that pleasure is a means no
less than an end. The exercise which has in it the element of amusement
is ten times as beneficial as a listless walk; and the meal which is
eaten with a relish is far more nutritious than a meal eaten only as a
periodical necessity. Solitary walks along familiar or uninteresting
roads, or solitary meals on dishes unstimulating to the palate, are
not to be compared with rambles through interesting tracts, or with
stimulating companions, and meals where the guests, no less than
dishes, add their pleasurable excitement.
There is one point of regimen to which attention may be called, and
that is, never to attempt severe mental or bodily labor after a full
meal. If possible, let all such labor be got through in the early part
of the day, after breakfast, but before dinner; not only because the
bodily vigor is then greatest, but also because the restoration of
that vigor through dinner should not be interfered with. We know that
in many cases this advice is impracticable. Night-work is inevitable
in some lives, and is fancied to be so in the lives of students and
literary men. In such cases, there is, at least, this mitigating
resource--not to commence hard work until the labor of digestion is
over. Thousands ruin their digestion by disregarding this simple
advice. If work after dinner be inevitable, let the dinner be a very
light one, and let a light supper be eaten.
In order to prove the facts above cited, a physician of our
acquaintance tried the experiment upon two healthy dogs. They were both
fed alike and in similar quantities, one being allowed to rest in quiet
an hour after feeding, and the other permitted to run around and frolic
for a similar length of time. Both dogs were then killed, and the food
of the one allowed to rest was quite digested, while that of the other
was scarcely digested at all.
No better general advice can be given in conclusion than that furnished
us by the greatest physician of the present time, Dr. Willard Parker,
now enjoying rugged health at the advanced age of eighty, and being a
living example of the truth of his reasoning.
The blood will be either good or bad, according as the material or
food is good or bad. The character of blood made depends on the kind
of food taken. In this country, as a rule, too much meat is eaten;
meat once a day is sufficient, especially for brain workers. The waste
matter from a meat diet is eliminated through the kidneys. Too much
labor thrown upon those organs produces disease. An overloaded stomach
is unfavorable to active brain work. Man is like an engine with two
service pipes, one for the brain and one for the body, and no man has
the requisite force to work both at once. Generally Americans bolt
their food. It should be cooked. The first process of cooking a steak
is on the range; the second is in the mouth, and this is done by
working the saliva into the food by chewing. Thus is the food prepared
to be acted upon by the juices of the stomach. Infants in nursing
move the jaws to obtain the milk, and the working of the infant’s jaw
mixes the milk with the saliva, and thus fits that milk to go into the
stomach. After being subjected to the action of the stomach for two
or three hours the food becomes fitted to pass into the circulation
by absorption. To have good food, therefore, it is necessary that it
be made of proper material properly prepared. We are furnished with
milk to start with as we enter the world. Had meat been the best diet,
we should have been born with beefsteaks in our hands. But we are
given milk. Milk and blood are nearer alike than any other two fluids;
a large proportion of each is water. After milk, breadstuffs and
vegetables are the best diet, and in warm climates fruit. Then meats.
Sugar and fat go into the body not so much to nourish it as to be a
fuel to give it warmth. Meat contains much nitrogenous matter.
A limited quantity of spirits at the principal meal, especially
for persons advanced in life or of weak digestion, may aid in the
combustion of the food. Spirits aid digestion in feeble and aged
persons; but only the feeble or the aged require such a stimulus. The
young and vigorous do not need it, and are better off without it.
Middle aged persons may perhaps drink a little spirit with their meals
without danger; but they cannot safely make it a beverage. In small
quantities alcoholic drinks stimulate, and if not enough is taken to
coagulate the pepsin and the albumen in the food they promote digestion
in proper cases, and thus help to repair the system. But whenever
more alcoholic liquor is taken into the stomach with the food than is
demanded it passes into the circulation, disturbs the action of the
heart, flushes the face and confuses the brain. When so much fermented
or distilled liquor is taken into the system that the functions of
the organism are disturbed positive harm is done--the system has been
so far poisoned. An irritation has been set up instead of the desired
healthful stimulation of the stomach.
The human system contains water, fat, starch, sugar, nitrogenous
substances, iron, sulphur, phosphorus, animal quinine, sodium potassium
and chlorine; but no alcohol is found. It has no like in the system,
hence there is nothing that it can repair, and it cannot, therefore,
be ranked as a food of any kind. It possesses an inherent deleterious
property, which, when introduced into the system, is capable of
destroying life, and it has its place with arsenic, belladonna, prussic
acid and opium. Like these, it is to be employed as a medicine, and has
its true position in works on materia medica. It is both a poison and a
medicine.
It has been settled by science that alcohol, which passes into the
blood when more is taken than can be employed as a condiment or tonic,
undergoes no change in the blood, but exists there as a foreign
substance, creating irritation; and the excitement involved in the
effort to throw off the irritating substance wastes the energy and life
of the system. After alcohol has produced disease of the stomach it
next expends its force upon the neighboring organs, inducing disease of
the liver and dropsy or Bright’s disease, both of which are fatal to
health, if not to life.
The life insurance companies understand it. Their figures show that
while a temperate young man at twenty may reasonably look forward to
forty-four years and two months of life, the young man of the same age
who poisons his system with drink can expect not more than fifteen
years and six months. He who uses alcohol becomes an easy prey of
epidemics; his system cannot resist the poison of diphtheria, cholera
and fevers.
To make good blood we require good food, pure water, pure air, sunlight
and exercise. Either foul air or impure water poisons the blood. If you
don’t throw off two pounds and three-quarters of effete matter every
twenty-four hours through the lungs and two pounds through the pores
you must expect sooner or later to fall. Nothing is more essential than
pure air. Impure air is the source of our ship fevers.
Cleanliness has been classed as akin to godliness. It certainly takes
high rank in equalizing the circulation. The jockeys appreciate its
importance. How regularly and carefully they groom their horses! Is
not man as precious as the horse? Every man should groom himself every
morning--sponge himself from head to foot with water of the temperature
of the room in which he sleeps. The purpose of wetting the surface is
merely to make the friction of a rough towel more effective as it
is rubbed over the person. You should not sleep in any garment that
you wear by day, and the room in which you sleep should be perfectly
ventilated by a fireplace and a partly opened window if possible.
[Illustration: PETER J. PANCHOT,
First Winner U. S. Six-day Go-as-you-please Champion Belt; making 480
miles and defeating 40 competitors.]
[Illustration: BLOWER BROWN,
Second Winner Six-day Go-as-you-please English Champion Belt, making
over 542 miles, April, 1879.]
[Illustration: EDWARD PAYSON WESTON,
the American Long-distance Walker.]
If, after you have observed the rules of hygiene to the extent
indicated you have cold feet and limbs and indigestion and a tendency
to vertigo, plunge your feet into water as hot as you can bear it,
and keep them there five minutes. Then put them into cold water for a
second.
“Cool head, free bowels, warm feet and a good-salary” is the old
aphorism. If you suffer your feet to get cold you are in danger of
apoplexy of the brain or of the lungs. Cold feet are very likely to
be associated with a sluggish state of the bowels. The feet are cold
because there is too much blood in one place and too little in another.
Cold feet follow the breaking of an equilibrium of the circulation.
Sedentary occupations are provocative of cold feet. If you keep the
skin clean and the bowels free and take moderate exercise you will
maintain an equilibrium of circulation, and this equalized circulation
will keep the feet warm. When the feet are cold it is better to warm
them with exercise than at a fire. Look at the wood chopper, swinging
his arms so that his hands slap his sides. Thus he carries the blood
to his hands, and it warms them. That is the best warmth for either.
There is a vast difference between the longevity of men who take care
of themselves and of those who do not. It is, as the life insurance
companies’ tables show, as thirty-five is to about seventy. The man
who bows to all the known laws of hygiene not only lives longer, but
is able also to enter into all the joys of life without the aches and
pains.
THE LATE JOHN MORRISSEY’S VIEWS.
The Honorable John Morrissey, ex-champion pugilist of America, in
conversation with us about diet, said:
“Mr. James, you can form no idea of the glorious feeling that a man
experiences when he gets himself in perfect condition. Everything in
the world looks different to him from what it does when his system is
clogged up with bile, and he is carrying a quantity of flesh that is
only a burden to him. It is almost impossible to get a man when in such
a condition into a bad humor. He feels like a young colt, and wants to
kick up his heels and have a good time with everybody and everything he
meets.” His course of training was as follows:
FIRST. Take a black draught. Any druggist will put it up. All
prize-fighters take this when they begin to train for a fight. You’ll
find it the liveliest dose of medicine you ever took.
SECOND. Be sure and get at least seven or eight hours of good sound
sleep every day.
THIRD. In the morning when you first get up drink a glass of hard cider
with a raw egg in it. If the cider is not to be had then use sherry
wine, but I prefer the cider. Then start out and walk briskly for a
couple of miles. When you come back take a sponge bath and rub yourself
dry with a coarse towel. Bub until your skin is all aglow.
FOURTH. For breakfast eat a lean steak, cooked rare, and stale bread.
Use no milk, no sugar, no butter, and no potatoes, with the exception
of about once a week. If you wish you can eat a roast or baked potato
in the morning. Drink sparingly of tea and coffee. Tea is the best.
FIFTH. For dinner eat rare roast beef and stale bread. Use no potatoes
or vegetables of any kind with this meal. For change you can have
occasionally a mutton chop.
SIXTH. For supper, a lean steak or a mutton chop, without fat. Do
not eat any warm biscuits or warm bread, at any time. Stick to good
wholesome stale wheat bread. Eat no pies, cakes or pastry of any kind,
and use pepper, salt and all other seasonings very sparingly.
SEVENTH. Use no stimulants of any kind. Do not smoke. Drink sparingly
of water. Do not eat berries or vegetables of any kind, excepting
occasionally a raw onion.
EIGHTH. If you feel weak in the morning before breakfast, it comes from
the bathing, and it should be discontinued for a few days.
The system for hardening the muscles, etc., most approved of by the
Senator and the leading pugilists, is being first sponged with a
decoction of arnica flowers, alum, borax and Jamaica rum, then bathed
with hartshorn liniment, and an application of white wine vinegar
mixed with alum and borax to the face and hands. The proportions of
the ingredients used in the sponge bath have hitherto been a profound
secret with the professional trainer. For the benefit of the fraternity
we here print them: Take two pounds of arnica flowers, five cents’
worth of borax, five cents’ worth of alum, and steep all together,
after pulverizing the alum and borax, in a gallon or so of Jamaica
rum, and after letting it steep for twenty-four hours, apply as before
stated.
TRAINING IN REGARD TO PUGILISM AND WRESTLING.
The work necessary to reduce or otherwise bring the pugilist into
something like condition will be, of course, nearly if not precisely
similar to the training required for a pedestrian or other match.
The physicing will require great attention; all drastic and griping
medicines are to be avoided, if possible, and cases will occur from
time to time where no medicine ought to be given whatever. The man in
one of these instances will be in a low state, and require feeding and
training up. In another, the body will be in so open and relaxed a
state that the prescribing and giving the usual dose would be followed
to a certainty by the patient training right off, and failing into a
low and prostrate condition. In the general state of health, however,
which characterizes the pugilist when matched to fight (with a full
habit of body, flushed countenance, and a pulse full and slow), the
usual dose, salts, etc., may be introduced with advantage, but the
quantities and frequent use left to the usual habit of the man, or to
the judgment of the trainer. The physicing and preparation for the
hard work should occupy the first week; and the number of sweats taken
during the second week should be regulated by the state of inside and
the loose flesh on the body. A sharp run will soon show the state of
the inside by the state of “the bellows,” whether the wind is short
or not, and the manner in which the looser flesh shakes when sparring
is a pretty fair criterion of there being a good quantity of outside
superfluity to get away. He ought to be rubbed down after his runs and
fast walks, and dry clothes put on in a warm, dry room. The loss of
weight should be gradual. If, on the contrary, the loss be too rapid,
and continue daily, the reducing system must cease, and feeding up take
the place of sweating for a few days until the system is restored. The
meals, of course, must be taken regularly, and consist of the same kind
of animal food as recommended previously, and the beverage most suited
to the constitution of the man taken in small quantities--the kind and
quantity, of course, being left to the judgment of the trainer. Wine
is principally given when the man has to be trained up, and then good
old port wine will be found to be of the most service. The pugilists of
the present day strengthen the arms, loins, and shoulders by hitting
out at a striking-bag suspended from a beam, and a large bladder
hung in like manner; by exercise with pulleys, the ropes passing over
wheels and having weights attached; plenty of practice with the gloves,
diversified with the use of a skipping-rope, and finally, but by no
means of minor importance, by continual sharp practice with dumb-bells
of about seven pounds weight or under. Good condition in the pugilist
will be shown by the healthy state of the skin, which will be clear,
with a ruddy tinge underneath, as well as soft, with the muscles
underneath swelling and feeling firm to the touch at every movement
of the limb or portion under manipulation. The eye will be clear and
bright, and a look of confidence and ease of mind characterize the
expression and looks of the athlete. As regards the pickle for the
hands and face, the nostrums for the first are legion, and one as good
as another; but we believe that nothing is better than the simple juice
of a lemon for the latter, and which will be found to answer every
intended purpose.
The trainer ought to be chosen with regard to his conversational
powers, as well as for his knowledge of what is requisite for the
physical health of his pupil, that he may amuse and instruct him to
the fullest extent of his power. The trainer should inform him, if
possible, of all the peculiarities of the antagonist, his mode of
attack and method of defense, the weak points of his temper, or any
physical deficiency under which he might labor, as well as the manner
in which he may have won or lost any previous battle. And, as in many
cases the first or second telling may not have the effect of raising
the curiosity of his man, the patience of the trainer should not give
way under the repetition before the slow and obtuse curiosity is roused
to such an extent that the pugilist commences the interrogation in his
turn, and becomes anxious in his inquiries for information, which will
almost invariably be the case when he finds out the importance that the
trainer’s continued repetitions have invested the apparent trifles with.
PRINCIPAL MUSCLES USED BY THE ATHLETE.
In high jumping, the front muscles of the thigh are principally used.
They are attached at one end to the top part of the thigh bone, at the
ocher to the knee cap, which passes over the knee, and is fixed to
the top part of the shin bone. In the act of jumping, these muscles
contract violently, and straighten the leg with a jerk, the quickness
of which mainly contributes to the height of the jump.
In long jumping, the muscles of the back part of the thigh are used;
these are attached to the back part of the shin bone at one end, and to
the lower part of the pelvis at the other, and by contracting draw the
leg backwards on the trunk. This action is also assisted by the glutœus
maximus, which is fixed at one end of the top part of the thigh, at the
other to the lowest part of the vertebral column.