Still more specious is the claim of the Fourth-of-July orators, that, health or no health, it is the sallow Americans, and not the robust English, who are really leading the world. But this, again, is a question of temperaments. The Englishman concedes the greater intensity, but prefers a more solid and permanent power. It is the noble masonry and vast canals of Montreal, against the Aladdin’s palaces of Chicago. “I observe,” admits the Englishman, “that an American can accomplish more, at a single effort, than any other man on earth; but I also observe that he exhausts himself in the achievement. Kane, a delicate invalid, astounds the world by his two Arctic winters,—and then dies in tropical Cuba.” The solution is simple; nervous energy is grand, and so is muscular power; combine the two, and you move the world.
We shall assume, as admitted, therefore, the deficiency of physical health in America, and the need of a great amendment. But into the general question of cause and cure we do not propose to enter. In view of the vast variety of special theories, and the inadequacy of any one, (or any dozen,) we shall forbear. To our thinking, the best diagnosis of the universal American disease is to be found in Audral’s famous description of the cholera: “Anatomical characteristics, insufficient;—cause, mysterious; —nature, hypothetical;—symptoms, characteristic;—diagnosis, easy;—treatment, very doubtful.”
Every man must have his hobby, however, and It is a great deal to ride only one hobby at a time. For the present we disavow all minor ones. We forbear giving our pet arguments in defence of animal food, and in opposition to tobacco, coffee, and india-rubbers. We will not criticize the old-school physician whom we once knew, who boasted of not having performed a thorough ablution for twenty-five years; nor will we question the physiological orthodoxy of Miss Sedgwick’s New England artist, who represented the Goddess of Health with a pair of flannel drawers on. Still less should we think of debating (or of tasting) Kennedy’s Medical Discovery, or R.R.R., or the Cow Pepsin. We know our aim, and will pursue it with a single eye.
“The wise for cure on exercise depend,”
saith Dryden,—and that is our hobby.
A great physician has said, “I know not which is most indispensable for the support of the frame,—food or exercise.” But who, in this community, really takes exercise? Even the mechanic commonly confines himself to one set of muscles; the blacksmith acquires strength in his right arm, and the dancing-master in his left leg. But the professional or business man, what muscles has he at all? The tradition, that Phidippides ran from Athens to Sparta, one hundred and twenty miles, in two days, seems to us Americans as mythical as the Golden Fleece. Even to ride sixty miles in a day, to walk thirty, to run five, or to swim one, would cost, most men among us a fit of illness, and many their lives. Let any man test his physical condition, we will not say by sawing his own cord of wood, but by an hour in the gymnasium or at cricket, and his enfeebled muscular apparatus will groan with rheumatism for a week. Or let him test the strength of his arms and chest by raising and lowering himself a few times upon a horizontal bar, or hanging by the arms to a rope, and he will probably agree with Galen in pronouncing it robustum validumque laborem. Yet so manifestly are these things within the reach of common constitutions, that a few weeks or months of judicious practice will renovate his whole system, and the most vigorous exercise will refresh him like a cold bath.
To a well-regulated frame, mere physical exertion, even for an uninteresting object, is a great enjoyment, which is, of course, enhanced by the excitement of games and sports. To almost every man there is joy in the memory of these things; they are the happiest associations of his boyhood. It does not
