THE WILL AND AIR AND EXERCISE
"And wishes fall out as they are willed."
_Pericles_
Very probably the most important function of the will in its relation
to health is that which concerns its power to control the habits of
mankind as regards air and exercise. It is surprising to what an
extent people neglect both of these essentials of healthy living in
the midst of our modern sophisticated life, unless the will power is
consciously used for the purpose of forming and then maintaining
habits with regard to these requisites for health. It is a very
fortunate thing that instinct urges the child, particularly the
infant, to almost constant movement during its waking hours. Children
that are healthy and that are growing rapidly, boys somewhat more than
girls, are so constantly in movement that one would almost think that
they must be on springs. Whenever they discover that they can make a
{134} new movement, they proceed to make it over and over again until
they can do it with facility. There is no lolling around for them; as
soon as they wake, they want to be up and doing, no matter what the
habits of the household may be. They are constantly on the move. We
know that this is absolutely essential for growth as well as for the
proper training of their muscles, but it is a very fortunate thing
that children do it for themselves, for if their mothers were
compelled to train them, the task would be indeed difficult. All
mother has to do is to control them to some extent and keep them from
venturing too far, lest they should hurt themselves.
When the control of instinct over life is gradually replaced by
reason, this tendency to exercise gradually diminishes until it is
often surprising to find how little people are taking. As it is mainly
the need for exercise that forces people out into the air, indoor life
comes to be the main portion of existence. This is all contrary to
nature, and so it is not surprising that _disease_, in its original
etymological sense of discomfort, develops rather readily. The lack of
exercise in the air permits a great many people to drift into all
sorts of morbid conditions in which they are quite miserable. This
{135} is, of course, particularly true as regards nervous ailments of
various kinds; only under the term nervous ailments should be included
not alone direct affections of the nervous system or functional
disturbances of nerves, but also a number of other conditions. Nervous
indigestion, insomnia, neurotic constipation and many of the
symptomatic affections associated with these conditions, tired
feelings that interfere with activities, headache, various feelings of
discomfort in the muscles and around the joints, inability to control
the emotions and other such common complaints--if that is the proper
word for them--all these are fostered by a sedentary life indoors.
They frequently make not only the patient himself--or oftener
herself--miserable, but also all those who come in contact with her.
Above all, it must not be forgotten that lack of exercise in the open
air has a very definite tendency to make people extremely sensitive to
discomforts of all kinds, mental as well as physical. Many a man or
woman whose life seems full of worries, sometimes without any adequate
cause at all, who goes from one dread to another, who wakes in the
morning with a sense of depression, find that most of these feelings
and sometimes all of them, {136} disappear promptly when they begin to
exercise more in the open.
Nothing dispels the gloom and depressions consequent upon an
accumulation of cares and worries of various kinds like a few weeks in
the woods, where every moment is passed in the fresh outdoor air,
which actually seems to blow the cobwebs of ill feelings away and
leaves the individual with a freedom of mind and a comfort of body
that he almost expected never to enjoy again.
Undoubtedly the most important factor for the preservation of health
is an abundance of fresh air. At certain seasons of the year this is
not only easy and agreeable, but to do anything else imposes hardship.
In our climate, however, there are about six months of the year in
which it requires some exercise of will power to secure as much open
air life as is required for health. There are weeks when it is too
hot, there are many weeks when it is too cold. The cold air
particularly is important, because it produces a stimulating vital
reaction than which nothing is more precious for health. We have no
tonic among all the drugs of the pharmacopeia that is equal to the
effect of a brisk walk in the bracing air of a dry cold day. After a
long morning and {137} perhaps a whole day in the house, even half an
hour outdoors will enable us to throw off the sluggishness consequent
upon confinement to the indoor air and the lack of appetite and the
general feeling of physical lassitude which has followed living in an
absolutely equable temperature for twenty-four hours. Sometimes it
requires no little effort of the will to secure this, and to continue
it day after day without missing it or letting it be crowded out by
claims that are partly real and partly excuses, because we do not care
to make the special effort required.
What humanity needs is regular exercise in the open air every day. As
it is, between the trolley car and the automobile, very few people get
what they need. Any one who has to go a mile takes a car or some other
conveyance and between waiting for the car and certain inevitable
delays it will probably take ten minutes or more to go the mile. In
five minutes more one could walk that distance and secure precious
exercise besides such diversion of mind as inevitably comes from
walking on busy city streets and which makes an excellent recreation
in the midst of one's work. For it is quite impossible in our day to
walk along city streets absorbed in abstract mental {138} occupations.
One of the objections to walking is that after a while it can be
accomplished as a matter of routine without necessarily taking one's
mind away from subjects in which it has been absorbed. It is quite
impossible for this to happen, however, on modern city streets. "The
outside of a horse", it used to be said, "is good for the inside of a
man." The main reason for this was because it is impossible for a man
to ride horseback, unless his mount is a veritable old Dobbin, without
paying strict attention to the animal. The same thing is true as
regards city pedestrianism, especially since the coming of the auto
has made it necessary to watch our steps and look where we go.
A great many people would be ever so much better in health if they
walked to business or to school every morning instead of riding, for
the young need it even more than the older people. Especially is this
true for all those who follow sedentary occupations. Clerks in
lawyers' offices, typewriters and stenographers, secretaries--all
those who have to sit down much during the day--need the brisk walking
and need it not merely of a Sunday or a Saturday afternoon, but every
day in the year. Many of them, if they walked two and three miles to
{139} the office, would probably require only fifteen minutes, at most
half an hour, more than if they took a train or trolley, but they
would have secured a good hour of exercise in the open air.
On the other hand the unfortunate crowding of trolley and elevated and
subway trains in the busy hours when people go to and from their work
makes an extremely uncomfortable and often rather depressing
commencement and completion of the day's work. I know of nothing that
makes a worse beginning for the day than to have to stand for half an
hour or longer in a swaying, bumping car, hanging to a strap, crushed
and crowded by people getting in and out. The effect of coming home
under such circumstances after a reasonably long day's work is even
more serious, and any little sacrifice that will enable people to
avoid it will do them a great deal of good. Fifteen or twenty minutes
of extra time morning and evening would often suffice for this and
would at the same time add a bracing walk in the open air to the day's
routine.
When first begun, such a practice would make one tired and sore, but
that condition would pass in the course of a few days and be replaced
by a healthy feeling of satisfaction {140} that would be well worth
all the effort required. We should need ever so much less medicine for
appetite and for constipation if this were true. A great many people
who stand during the day would probably deem it quite out of the
question for them to walk three miles or more to and from their
business, for their feet get so tired that they feel that they could
not endure it. What they need more than anything else, however, is
exercise that will bring about a stimulation of the circulation in
their feet. Standing is very depressing to the circulation. It leads
to compression of the veins and hence interference with the return
circulation, with lowered nutrition which often predisposes to flat
foot or yielding arch and tends to create corns and callouses: walking
in reasonably well fitting shoes on the contrary tends to make the
feet ever so much less sensitive Our soldiers have had that experience
and have learned some very precious lessons with regard to the care of
their feet, the principal one being that the best possible remedy for
foot troubles is to exercise the feet vigorously in walking and
running, provided the shoes permit proper foot use.
I have often known clerks and floorwalkers {141} who have to stand all
day or move but a few steps at intervals, who were so tired at night
that they felt the one thing they could do was to sit down for a while
after dinner and then go to bed, but who came to feel ever so much
better after a brisk walk home. It was rather hard to persuade them
that, exhausted as they felt, they would actually get rested and not
more tired from vigorous walking, but once they tried it, they knew
the exercise was what they needed. The air in stores is often dry and
uncomfortable for those who are in them all day. It is usually and
quite properly regulated for the customers who come in from the
streets expecting to get warm without delay. In dry, cold weather
particularly, an evening walk home sets the blood in circulation until
it gets thoroughly oxidized and the whole body feels better. Such a
brisk walk will often prevent the development of flat foot, especially
if care is taken to spring properly from the ball of the foot, in the
good, old-fashioned heel and toe method of walking. Once flat foot has
developed, walking probably is more difficult, but even then, with
properly fitting shoes, the patients will be the better for a good
walk after their work is over. It requires some will power to acquire
the {142} habit, but once formed, the benefit and pleasure derived
make it easy to keep up the practice.
Those who walk thus regularly will often find that their evening
tiredness is not so marked, and they will feel much more like going
out for some diversion than they otherwise would. Probably nothing is
more dispiriting in the course of time than to come home merely to eat
dinner, sit down after dinner and grow sleepy on one's chair until one
feels quite miserable, and then go to bed. There should be always,
unless in very inclement weather, an outing before bedtime, and this
should be looked forward to. It will often forestall the feeling that
the day is over after dinner and so keep the individual from settling
down into the dozy discomfort of an after-dinner nap as the closing
scene of the day. Good habits in this matter require an effort of the
will to form; bad habits almost seem to form of themselves and then
require a special effort to break.
It is surprising how many of the dreads and anxiety neuroses and
psycho-neurotic solicitudes and neurasthenic disquietudes and other
more or less morbid mental states disappear under the influence of a
brisk walk for three or {143} four miles or more every day. I have
tried this prescription on all sorts of people, including particularly
myself, and I know for certain that when troubles are accumulating the
thing to do is to get outdoors more, especially for walking; then the
incubus begins to lift. Clergymen, university professors, members of
religious orders, school teachers, as well as bankers, clerks and
business people of various kinds, have been subjected to the influence
of this prescription with decided benefit. Some of them assert that
they never felt so well as since they have formed the habit of walking
every day. It must, however, be _every_ day, and it must not merely be
a mile or so but it must be at least three miles. That means for a
good many people about an hour spent in actual walking, but it is well
worth the time and effort. Above all, it repays not only in health and
in better feelings but in the increased amount of work that can be
done on the day itself. A whole day passed indoors will often contain
many wasted hours, while if a walk of a couple of miles is planned for
the morning and one for a couple of miles more in the afternoon, very
satisfactory study or other work can be done in the intervals. Almost
needless to say, a brisk walk in the {144} cooler weather will create
an appetite where it did not exist before. Women often need counsel in
this matter more than men, and regular walking for them is indeed a
counsel of health. Very few women in these modern times walk much, and
to walk more than a mile seems to them a hardship. This is responsible
for more of the supersensitiveness and nervous complaints of all kinds
to which women are liable than anything else that I know of. It is
also one important factor in the production of the constipation to
which women are so much more liable than men. We see many
advertisements with regard to the jolts to which the body is subjected
every time the heel is put down and of the means that should be taken
to prevent them, but it must not be forgotten that men and women were
meant by nature to walk erect and that this recurring jolt has a very
definite effect in stimulating peristalsis and favoring the movement
of the contents of the intestines. Besides, if the walking is brisk,
the breathing is deeper and there is some massage of the liver, as
also of the other abdominal viscera, while other organs are affected
favorably. Walking for women--regular, everyday walking--would be
indeed a precious habit, but now {145} that women have occupations
more and more outside of the house, this is one of the things they
must make up their minds to do, if they are to maintain health,
remembering that making up the mind is really making up the will.
Over and over again I have seen a great many of the troubles of the
menopause or change of life in women disappear or become ever so much
less bothersome as the result of the formation of regular habits of
walking out of doors every day. Unfortunately, there is a definite
tendency about this time for women to withdraw more and more from
public appearances and to live to a considerable extent in retirement
at home. Nothing could be much worse for them. They need, above all,
to get out and to have a number of interests, and if these interests
can only be so arranged as to demand rather prolonged walks, so much
the better. This is more particularly true for the unmarried woman who
is going through this critical time, and the question of walking
regularly every day for three or four miles must be proposed to her.
It will require a considerable effort of the will. More than two miles
at the beginning will probably be too tiring, but the amount can be
gradually increased {146} until at least four miles on the average is
covered every day. Above all, for the feelings of discomfort in the
cardiac region so often noticed at this time, regular walking is the
best remedy in most cases, always of course presupposing that there is
no organic heart condition, for in that case only a physician can give
the proper direction for each case. By the exercise of the lungs that
it requires, it will probably save most people from colds and coughs
which they have had to endure every winter. Lastly be it said that
practically all men and women, though more particularly the men who
have lived well beyond the Psalmist's limit of threescore and ten,
have been regular daily walkers, or else they have taken exercise in
some form in the open air which is the equivalent of walking. One of
the most distinguished of English physicians, Sir Hermann Weber, who
died just after the end of the war in London, was in his ninety-fifth
year. He had practised medicine regularly until the age of eighty and
continued in excellent health and vigor until just before his death.
During the last year of life, he contributed an interesting article to
the _British Medical Journal_ on the "Influence of Muscular Exercise
on Longevity." He attributed his vigor at the age of {147} ninety-five
as well as the prolongation of his life to his practice of spending
every day two or three hours in the open air. He walked, as a rule,
forty to fifty miles a week. Even in the most inclement weather he
rarely did less than thirty miles a week. Many another octogenarian
and nonagenarian has attributed his good health and long life to the
habit of regular daily exercise in the open.
Instead of using up energy, the will so used brings out latent stores
of energy that would not otherwise be employed and thus adds to the
available amount of vitality for the individual. Doctor Thomas Addis
Emmet, only just dead, over ninety, in his younger years as a busy
medical practitioner never kept a horse. It would not be difficult to
cite many other examples among men who lived to advanced old age and
who considered that they owed their good health and long life to daily
habits of outdoor exercise.
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