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Cornell University Library 
 
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Cornell University 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031283256 
 
DAILY 
 TRAINING. 
 
Daily Training 
 
 E. F. BENSON 
 
 <^ and iJ' 
 
 EUSTACE H. MILES. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
 31, West Twenty-Third Street 
 J903 
 
PllINTED Br 
 
 KELLY'S DIBEOTOBIES LTD., 
 
 LONDON AND KINGSTON. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following pages contain certain rules and sug- 
 gestions concerning health, and certain simple and 
 sensible ways in which it may, we hope, be ac- 
 quired and maintained at a very small expense of 
 time and self-denial, by a large number of people 
 who are naturally accustomed to feel not very well. 
 The book is founded on notes made by its two 
 authors who, though they lead for the most part 
 very different lives, are agreed on certain broad 
 principles of health herein set forth. One of them, 
 for instance, eats largely of flesh-foods every day, the 
 other has scarcely touched meat for years. But both are 
 accustomed to feel extremely well and to undertake 
 considerable exertion either of mind or body without 
 experiencing any fatigue. One of them takes regular 
 exercise, that is to say he plays an out-door game on 
 most days of his life, while the other who abstains 
 from flesh-foods has little practice of the sort. He will 
 take no out-of-door exercise for several days, work 
 very hard, and ,§nd himself perfectly fit for some 
 severe physical test at the end. But they are both 
 
vi DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 agreed that if the one abandoned flesh-foods (which 
 he does not propose to do) he would cease to require 
 regular exercise, and that if the other took flesh-foods 
 (which he does not propose to do) he would not only 
 be very ill, but would also require regular exercise. 
 One again is seldom seen without some appliance of 
 tobacco in his mouth, because he finds it agreeable 
 and after an experiment of abstinence from it found 
 that it did not make any difference, as far as he 
 could make out, in his general health. The other 
 never smokes at all. One again takes a cold bath 
 in the morning, the other a hot one followed by cold 
 sponging. 
 
 But both are absolutely in accord on far more main 
 points than those on which their practice, at any 
 rate, differs, and they have found it perfectly easy to 
 write this book together without wrangling, on which 
 account they wish to express a pious hope that the 
 very fact that they differ in so many things may 
 have saved them from dogmatism. For it has 
 helped them to realize that even when they are 
 agreed on any point it would be a sheer stupidity to 
 hint that they were therefore right, and in con- 
 sequence they only put forward the points on which 
 they are agreed as suggestions, hoping that others 
 after trial may also agree with them. For universal 
 laws on an empirical matter like health are rare, and 
 the constitutions of men are various. One man's 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 meat, in fact, is literally another man's poison. But 
 in the main the two authors are agreed. They 
 believe that the majority of mankind habitually eat 
 too much and habitually take too much stimulating 
 food and drink. They believe also that most people 
 who do so do not take enough exercise, and that 
 either an increase of exercise or a decrease of 
 stimulant is needed. They believe that the best 
 sorts of exercise are not those of slow pushing move- 
 ments such as are made in the use of dumb-bells, but 
 full brisk extended movements, with much use of the 
 breathing apparatus and the large muscle areas of 
 the body. Similarly they are in accord as regards 
 present systems of training which tend to treat an 
 entire crew or team as if they were identical 
 specimens, not as widely different specimens ; in 
 every day life also they hold that because a certain 
 mode of diet and work suits A, it will not necessarily 
 suit B and C, though B and C might do worse than 
 try it. They also regard the ordinary acceptation of 
 the word " Training " as far too narrow, and hold 
 that to acquire a high fitness of the body is a duty 
 which should be within the reach of everybody, since 
 a mind housed in a fit body is far more capable of 
 good and sustained work than when its shell is im- 
 perfect. For this end they advocate the starting of 
 city athletic clubs like those in certain American 
 towns, being fully convinced that these clubs, with a 
 
viii DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 reasonable attention to matters of diet, would 
 secure for the ordinary city-worker a far higher 
 measure of health than he is at present accustomed 
 to enjoy. 
 
 Finally, they believe that air, light and work (and 
 here they do not mind appearing dogmatic) are three 
 prime remedies in the pharmacy of God. And they 
 feel sure that sensuality is bad for everybody. 
 
 September, 1902. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. — Introductory i 
 
 II. — Fallacies and Defects in Present Systems 
 
 OF Training 27 
 
 III. — Exercise and Exercises .... 62 
 
 IV. — Diet and Stimulants 94 
 
 V. — Water, Heat and Light . . . .130 
 
 VI. — Air and Breathing 157 
 
 VII. — Sleep, Rest and Relaxation . , . 186 
 
 VIII. — The Influence of Training on Mind 
 
 and Morals 218 
 
 IX. — Training for Special Events . . . 239 
 
 X. — Remedial 263 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Exercise II. — First Position 
 
 . To face page 80 
 
 Exercise II. — Second Position . 
 
 ., 80 
 
 Exercise II. — Both Arms Together . 
 
 . „ „ 80 
 
 Exercise VIII . . . . 
 
 „ 8r 
 
 Exercise IX. — First Position . 
 
 . » „ 82 
 
 Exercise IX. — Second Position 
 
 „ „ 82 
 
 Exercise XIII. — First Position . 
 
 • „ „ 83 
 
 Exercise XIII. — Second Position 
 
 ■ „ „ 83 
 
 Exercise XIV 
 
 ■ „ „ 84 
 
DAILY TRAINING 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Among the many notable discoveries made 
 by the Anglo-Saxon race during the nine- 
 teenth century there is none more curious, 
 none perhaps which wiU turn out to have 
 been more concerned with the well-being of 
 the race itself, than that which we may 
 broadly call the discovery of Athletics. In 
 itself this discovery was natural enough, 
 since the love of sport, the pitting of the 
 wit of man against animals, or against his 
 fellows, has always been strongly inherent 
 
DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 among us ; but after thirty years of the new 
 regime we are apt to under-estimate the 
 extraordinary difference between the aver- 
 age middle-class Englishman of to-day, in 
 the matter of athletics, and the English- 
 man of the late sixties. For to put it 
 generally, games have been, if not invented, 
 at any rate nationalized since then; a large 
 class of professional or semi-professional 
 players has come into existence, and an 
 innumerable company of amateurs who play 
 games for their own sake, and for the sake 
 of the increased measure of health which 
 most men find that they thereby enjoy. 
 That this movement at present is in the 
 exuberance of its riotous juvenihty, which 
 coming years will tame and quiet, is pro- 
 bable, but it is also probable that with this 
 modification will come a more scientific 
 method of playing games, which wiU convert 
 the mere animal pleasure of using muscles 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 and lungs into a system which, by their fit 
 and reasonable use, ensures for their users 
 not only a greatly increased power in mere 
 strength and agility, but a greatly in- 
 creased power of mental quickness and 
 moral strength. The discipline, the quick 
 obedience, the endurance which were found 
 to be necessary for the games in them- 
 selves, will be consciously used in other 
 ways and with objects vastly more im- 
 portant than mere athletic excellence. In 
 fact, the standing luck of the Anglo-Saxons 
 is here again typified : that which they 
 began simply for purposes of amusement, 
 Nature is converting and will further con- 
 vert into an element, not only of physical, 
 but of mental and moral pre-eminence. 
 
 Indeed, it was time that some new strain 
 of growth, as it were, was imported. For 
 decades upon decades the country Ufe Qf 
 
 England had been gradually drained out of 
 
 I* 
 
DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 the country altogether by colonization and 
 emigration, and by centralization into its 
 towns ; and the inevitable health which 
 waits upon those who live mainly in the 
 open air, whose diet is simple and whole- 
 some foods, was being undermined by close 
 quarters, insufficient oxygen, and more than 
 suificient stimulants, while those of the 
 upper classes who still lived much in the 
 country hunted six days out of the seven, 
 and drank seven nights out of the same 
 number. For the good old Englishman 
 type, " one of the rare old sort," as it is the 
 fashion to call it, cannot in the light of to- 
 day be fairly thought to be a very efficient 
 or wholesome specimen. In fact, instead 
 of admiring the life which certain not very 
 critical observers have told us " made them 
 what they were," we ought rather to admire 
 the wQnderful constitutions nature had givei^ 
 them, which did not sooner break up under 
 
INTRODUCTORY. S 
 
 the extraordinarily unhealthy rigime of 
 riding off every day some of the excessive 
 port wine consumed the evening before. 
 No doubt those works of fiction which ad- 
 miringly record their feats make such a 
 class to appear to us larger and more wide- 
 spread than it really was ; it is merely the 
 admiration which we deprecate. 
 
 But by this wise provision of nature, 
 simultaneously with the crowding into 
 towns (a feature, by the way, not of decadent 
 but of increasing national energy, and in- 
 evitable to successful competition), came 
 this new feature, the rise of athleticism, 
 and the desire and necessity for the health 
 which athleticism both demands and, on 
 the other hand, brings with it. It is 
 requisite, in order to excel at any game 
 which demands fleetness of foot, quickness 
 of movement, accuracy of eye, to live, 
 broadly speaking, in a sober and rational 
 
DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 manner. Drunken meteors have reeled and 
 will reel again over the athletic heavens, 
 men who are built in such iron mould that 
 excess appears not to interfere with their 
 excellence, but on the one hand their 
 brilliance is but short-lived, and on the other 
 they are in themselves exceptional ; for 
 we may say that the average scratch player 
 at golf, for instance, will certainly not 
 remain on that desirable mark for six 
 months if he drinks a bottle of port every 
 night, and empties his box of cigarettes in 
 two days. Thus athleticism, on the whole, 
 encourages among its million votaries a 
 more sensible and moderate way of life than 
 they would, but for it, have enjoyed, and 
 by it they now, and their children in the 
 future, will inevitably be the fitter citizens. 
 The green fields of England are depopulated 
 it is true, and a thicker and ever-spreading 
 pall of smoke rises above the clanking 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 manufacturing towns and fog-ridden skies 
 under which the cities hum Hke swarming 
 hives ; but how on Saturday afternoons 
 are the fields populated again, and how 
 the sand-pits crumble under the illiterate 
 strokes of delving stockbrokers, to whom 
 at the moment the little half-hidden ball 
 is of more importance than the miles and 
 millions of the Rand or the salvation of their 
 souls ! 
 
 Nor is this movement confined to those 
 who have the money and the occasional 
 leisure to play games. When before in the 
 history of the nation has there been such a 
 phenomenon as the weekly crowds at Cup 
 ties, or the rapt lines of spectators at county 
 cricket matches, watching with the intens- 
 est interest the games they never play, and 
 knowing the athletic history of heroes they 
 have never spoken to ? That the pleasure 
 and excitement of betting enter into their 
 
DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 enthusiasm is, of course, undeniable, but we 
 do not for a moment believe that this 
 accounts for all of it. There is something 
 else as well, and that something is the ad- 
 miration and envy of the fitness of physical 
 excellence. Or when before was seen so 
 curious a sight as the ordinary bookstall 
 groaning under magazines, the sole aim and 
 purpose of which is to teach their readers 
 how to obtain physical strength ? The 
 " genial broad-shouldered Englishman " of 
 an earlier day was content to be broad- 
 shouldered ; nowadays every one wants to 
 know how the broad shoulders are to be 
 acquired. But the " genial broad-should- 
 ered Englishman " of an earlier day was sub- 
 sequently content to recline himself on a 
 curtained feather-bed in a most microbeous 
 room, witb windows shut ; now we tear 
 down our curtains, fling open our windows, 
 and plunge ourselves (without knowing 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 why, it is true) into freezing baths before 
 we begin the work of the day. 
 
 To say that athletics are entirely respon- 
 sible for the healthier way of life pursued 
 by the average Englishman of to-day as 
 compared to the average Englishman of 
 forty years ago, would be of course an asser- 
 tion utterly beyond the mark. On the 
 other hand, it is quite certainly within the 
 mark to say that athletics have appre- 
 ciably contributed to it, inasmuch as they 
 both demand, as mentioned before, a 
 sobriety and moderation in life as an essen- 
 tial to continued success, and themselves 
 directly contribute to health as well as 
 demanding the conditions that are likely 
 to lead to it. At the same time the science 
 of athletics is at present in its infancy, both 
 whether we consider them as an end in them- 
 selves (a very small affair), or as a means 
 to an end (an immensely large affair). 
 
lo DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 Even the literature of the subject, that with 
 which the bookstalls teem, seems to be full 
 of fallacies, to be dealt with hereafter, and 
 to a large extent to be based on one immense 
 fallacy — namely, that the possession of 
 enormous muscles, and the ability thereby 
 to lift immense weights, is in itself an object 
 worth the attention of a reasonable man. 
 And when one adds to this that the actual 
 acquirement of such power is in itself not 
 always a very safe process, possibly leading 
 to strain and involving misuse of the muscles 
 themselves, it is not too much to say that 
 if this, namely, the acquiring of huge muscles 
 and the mere power they give, at the sacri- 
 fice in many cases of quickness, and in some 
 at the risk of positive injury, were all, such 
 practice would be Athleticism gone crazy. 
 On the other hand, these periodicals would 
 probably retort by saying, " What is the 
 use of being able merely to hit a golf ball 
 
INTRODUCTORY. ii 
 
 two hundred yards, make a totally untake- 
 able stroke at racquets, hit over the pavilion 
 at Lord's, or put in a hot shot at Asso- 
 ciation ? " To this we readily answer, 
 " There is no use in it at all in itself." But 
 what is useful is to be possessed of the quick- 
 ness, not only of muscle and eye, which is 
 necessary to such a performance, but the 
 quickness of seeing an opportunity, and the 
 having the body in such perfect poise, in 
 such perfect obedience to the will, that as 
 soon as the opportunity occurs it instantly 
 and correctly takes advantage of it. The 
 acquisition of mere muscular force cannot 
 produce this, and the professional strong 
 man who could lift a wiry golf player from 
 the ground with one hand will, unless he is 
 something more than a professional strong 
 man, be easily outdriven by the other. This 
 borders on the vital question — namely. 
 What is the use of athletics ? And the 
 
12 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 answer is that they are a help towards train- 
 ing, by which is meant not the cultiva- 
 tion of a particular set of muscles in order 
 to attain excellence at a particular game, 
 still less the cultivation of slow moving 
 muscles of ponderous size adapted only for 
 the moving of heavy bodies, but the fitness 
 of the entire body to execute the, orders of 
 the will rapidly and correctly, the health 
 necessary and incidental to this, the endur- 
 ance and strength which will result from it. 
 Nor is this fitness, which we desire to see 
 the birthright of the entire race, at all con- 
 fined to the body only, for to have the body 
 in subjection in this manner necessarily 
 contributes to the mental and moral health 
 of a man. That his mind and morals may 
 be extremely healthy, though he does not 
 know a cricket-bat from a golf-club, goes 
 without saying ; but that athletics, from 
 their engrossing nature to (we believe) the 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 13 
 
 average person, from the healthy fatigue 
 which they produce, from their insistence 
 that a man should abstain from excess of 
 food and drink and other habits more in- 
 jurious, contribute to the health of mind 
 and morals, is, we believe, beyond question. 
 Training, in other words, in the bigger sense 
 in which we wish to apply the term, has for 
 its object not only fitness for any or for 
 every athletic exercise, but fitness for all 
 work mental as well as bodily. Yet it is 
 nearly as much a mistake to devote all one's 
 time to keeping perfectly well, as it is to 
 disregard health altogether. We believe, in 
 fact, that certain rules of life, certain habits 
 and certain daily exercises produce the 
 state of body which we denote by the 
 phrase being in Training, and that this adapts 
 its owner, in so far as he is adaptable, for 
 any work he has to do. Not that there is 
 any one fixed mode of life, any one diet. 
 
14 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 or any one exercise which will suit every- 
 body, but there are certain general lines 
 of health, broad paths which should be 
 approximately followed, or at any rate 
 given a trial. For in these matters the 
 personal equation must be taken into consi- 
 deration, and the diet and exercise that are 
 beneficial to the heavily-built man of four- 
 teen stone are not only not necessarily bene- 
 ficial to a light-weight, but may be positively 
 injurious, though, of course, it is perfectly 
 true. that frankly unwholesome diet or con- 
 tinuance of unhealthy habits would be in- 
 jurious both for the one and the other. On 
 this point ordinary systems of training, 
 even when in such competent hands as 
 those who have charge of the University 
 crews, seem to us capable of being bettered. 
 The entire crew, broadly speaking, are 
 treated as if they were eight identical speci- 
 mens of one machine, as if what is the best 
 
INTRODUCTORY. iS 
 
 for one must necessarily be the best for all. 
 This assumption is not only not proved; 
 it is on the face of it highly improbable. 
 
 But it is infinitely more important that 
 a city full of folk living, by the exigencies 
 of their work, under far from favourable 
 conditions, should be in decent health, than 
 that a boatful of strong young men, living 
 in the best conditions, should be at the tip- 
 top of excellence of which they are capable 
 on a given morning ; and in the considera- 
 tion of the question of training, what we say 
 is submitted to the attention not only of 
 those who have some definite athletic trial 
 in front of ihem, though it is hoped that 
 even these may find something of profit 
 herein, but of those who have to lead a 
 sedentary hfe, which does not naturally 
 suit them, and find that their health, and 
 through their health their work, suffers. 
 No doubt in such cases there must be com- 
 
i6 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 promise to a certain degree ; for some 
 persons unfavourable hours of work^ or ill- 
 ventilated rooms are practically (at present 
 anyhow) unavoidable, but even here there 
 will be found to be possible not only certain 
 rules which will mitigate the ill-results that 
 would naturally follow, but certain correc- 
 tive measures which will, to some extent, 
 prevent the ill-results following at all. 
 
 It is in the crowded life of cities that 
 these difficulties most beset the problem of 
 how to bring health within the reach, not 
 of course of those who suffer from definite 
 disease, for that is the work of doctors and 
 physicians, but of those who in surroundings 
 which suited them would naturally be 
 healthy. Hard brain-v\^ork, for instance, 
 especially in a dead and vitiated atmos- 
 phere, though it produces merely headache 
 in some, produces in many others (both the 
 present writers are cases in point) violent 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 17 
 
 appetite, and the natural impulse is to take 
 large quantities of solid food. The result 
 of this would of course be extreme somno- 
 lence, and a subsequent awakening from a 
 sleep that is as different from nature- 
 demanded sleep as is light from darkness, 
 with an extreme attack of general inability. 
 Now such a meal as this, which produced in 
 the brain-worker somnolence and inability, 
 would very likely have produced in the man 
 who was shooting all day nothing but an 
 added zest for his sport. In the one case 
 the food goes, so to speak, to the right 
 place ; in the other to the wrong one. Yet 
 
 how comparatively few of us study our 
 
 * 
 
 health even in so superficial a manner as to 
 know that appetite, when one lives in abnormal 
 conditions, is not by any means the same 
 thing as appetite when one Uves wholesomely 
 in the open air. And how many fewer 
 have the sense, even if they know it, to put 
 
i8 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 the lesson into practice, and deliberately 
 alter their diet to suit the conditions under 
 which they are bound to live. 
 
 Again, there are many who, when able to 
 take exercise, are healthy and fit for any 
 work that they may have to do, in whom 
 the difficulty, almost the impossibility, of 
 getting it in the ordinary way in towns, 
 produces a marked decline in health and 
 consequently in output of work. Here, in 
 a chapter devoted to the consideration of 
 the question as applied to those who must 
 live in towns, we shall discuss the possi- 
 bility of athletic clubs to be brought within 
 the means of those to whom such clubs as 
 at present exist are not, by reason of ex- 
 pense and other causes, in any way acces- 
 sible. For all these, also, we shall suggest 
 such daily exercises as can be taken in a 
 minimum of time in the minimum of space, 
 which have for their object not the acquisi- 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 19 
 
 tion of huge muscles, but the acquisition of 
 healthy nerves and muscles, prompt to 
 obey, and swift to act. For these, too, as 
 indeed for everyone, certain perfectly simple 
 hints will be given about the use of air, 
 and how to breathe properly, the use of 
 water, warm to cleanse, hot or cold to 
 brace, and hot vapour baths to counteract 
 that persistent clogging of the passages of 
 the skin which more particularly besets 
 those whose life is passed in towns, where 
 there is less air, less exercise, more dirt, and 
 a tendency in all to indulge excessively (con- 
 sidering t«he conditions) in food and stimu- 
 lants. 
 
 Within the last few decades, it is perfectly 
 true, the strides that have been made 
 towards the ultimate sanitary perfection of 
 living are enormous. Vast sums of money 
 are quite properly spent annually on secur- 
 ing for town and country dwellers alike, in 
 
 2* 
 
20 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 answer to the demands made by scientific 
 investigators into the theory of microbes^ 
 pure water supplies, ventilation and light 
 in dwelling-rooms, systems of drainage and 
 disinfectants, and inspections of food which 
 shall reduce, as far as possible, such dangers 
 as are universally incident to life and health. 
 Yet in a way, admirable as such expenditure 
 and research is, admirable also as are the 
 results which have followed it, these natural 
 provisions for health deal more with the 
 surroundings of the body than with the 
 body itself. Tenement houses are built on 
 the most approved sanitary prindples, but 
 that done it is left to the discretion of the 
 inhabitants of them (provided they do not 
 keep pigs or poultry in their bedrooms) to 
 decide as to how they shall live in them. 
 Board schools are built with rooms con- 
 taining so many cubic feet of air per person, 
 but that done the teachers are allowed to 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 21 
 
 keep the windows hermetically closed. In- 
 spectors of food, again quite properly, 
 destroy barrows of decaying fish, and impose 
 fines on their vendors, but no instruction is 
 given to either rich or poor as to the nature 
 of foods, and in consequence, with the best 
 will in the world, they take quantities of 
 an expensive and stimulating food, when 
 what they really need is a cheap and 
 nutritious one. Interesting and costly ex- 
 periments are made as to the bacilli of 
 various diseases, and numberless means of 
 dealing with them are suggested in text- 
 books, but what is not done is to inform 
 people, except in the vaguest manner, as to 
 how they may prevent such bacilli finding 
 a suitable, nay a possible, home in their 
 bodies. 
 
 Instead, it is here our intention to go to 
 the object itself, to the putting of the body 
 in such condition as will render it not only. 
 
22 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 from its inherent health, far less liable to be 
 attacked by disease, but as will make it as 
 far as possible a fit servant of the will, ready 
 and prompt to act, unclogged by the debris 
 of excess, far more capable of work than was 
 its wont, and capable, too, of better work. 
 It will thus be saved not from disease only, 
 but from a continual condition of being 
 slightly unfit, even in the case of those who 
 (rightly in comparison with the general 
 average of health) consider themselves 
 healthy. Nor is such a benefit, if obtain- 
 able, limited to the present, for historically 
 it is perfectly certain that both the bodily 
 and mental health of any one generation 
 depend very largely on the condition of 
 the previous generation ; since habits which 
 are the progenitors of tendencies can be 
 formed by any one in whom the will-power 
 is ever so little alive. Further, in this 
 wonderful intermingling of mind and body 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 23 
 
 which we know as man, there is no change 
 possible to one which does not affect the 
 other, and just as deficiencies of mind pro- 
 duce physical ill-health, so a more healthy 
 and cleanly condition of body produces a 
 more healthy and cleanly mind. For who 
 shall say of how much immorality bodily 
 stimulants and overfeeding are not the law- 
 ful and genuine parents, or for how much 
 depression, morose spirits, and stagnated 
 languor of mind that organ known as the 
 liver is not entirely responsible ? 
 
 Hitherto training has been, and still is, 
 largely regarded as a sort of monopoly of 
 the few, and is considered by many to be 
 mysteriously connected with beefsteaks and 
 a total abstinence from tobacco. That such 
 practices come under the head of certain 
 special species of training, and no doubt in 
 many cases are admirably fitted for the pro- 
 duction of the highest possible excellence 
 
24 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 in one or other branch of athletics, is quite 
 possible; but what we mean by Training, 
 by the sort of Training, that is, which is 
 within the reach, and lies almost in the 
 sphere of duty, of everyone, is a less 
 specialized and infinitely more important 
 condition, for it means, as we have said 
 before, a condition of body that will enable 
 one to get the most possible out of oneself, 
 whether the work in hand is mental, spiri- 
 tual, or merely physical. But in the ensuing 
 pages it is to be hoped that the reader will 
 find an absence of dogmatism ; such at any 
 rate has been one of the chief objects of the 
 authors. Theories and suggestions wiU be 
 put. forward, for instance, about the use of 
 simpler foods ; but it is to be remembered 
 that they are, though supported by sohd 
 evidence, only meant to be theories and 
 suggestions worth trying, we venture to 
 hope, in those cases where the ordinary 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 25 
 
 heavy meat meal prodiices on its consumer 
 somnolence and disinclination to activity. 
 Again, in the way of exercises, certain brisk 
 full movements instead of dumb-bells, the 
 use of which many find laborious, monotonous 
 and wearying, are put forward as worth a 
 trial, seeing that in many instances they 
 have given satisfactory results. The book, 
 in fact, is meant to be anything rather than 
 a beaten hedged-in path beyond the bounds 
 of which none may stray, for this is exactly 
 what seems to the authors to be the defect 
 in most existing systems of training. It is 
 meant rather to show a not unpleasant 
 track leading, as it were, through fields, 
 and mainly, it is hoped, in the right 
 direction. 
 
 Finally, even at the risk of wearisome 
 reiteration, the word " Training " throughout 
 is to be understood not in the sense of 
 Training for merely some special athletic 
 
26 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 eventj though it includes such, but Training 
 for the ordinary work-a-day businesses of 
 hfe, so that we may be able to do them 
 better, quicker, with more taste for them, 
 and with less fatigue. 
 
27 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FALLACIES AND DEFECTS IN PRESENT 
 SYSTEMS OF TRAINING. 
 
 Without for the moment taking into con- 
 sideration those miUions of London who 
 stifle in crowded slums, on insufficient or 
 unsuitable food, and many of whom have 
 inherited from birth some taint of consti- 
 tution, and concerning ourselves for the 
 moment only with those within whose reach, 
 broadly speaking, are all the expedients 
 known for insuring health, we should find it 
 curious and probably depressing to ascer- 
 tain, if we could, what proportion felt well, 
 given they had no definite cause of ill- 
 
28 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 health which it was out of their power to 
 remove. Many wotld put down their com- 
 paratively lower level of health while living 
 in London to the fact that they were work- 
 ing hard. This, if true, is a sad and sober- 
 ing reflection, since it would seem to imply 
 that Nature had not designed the average 
 healthy individual to work hard ; and 
 though it is probably infinitely better that 
 people should work hard, and feel slightly 
 below par all the time, than that they should 
 devote their whole time to keeping well, 
 yet it would be unsatisfactory if we were 
 forced to believe that continued hard work 
 cannot be compatible with continued good 
 health. Many again would say that they 
 never feel well without exercise, and that it 
 is impossible to get exercise in London. 
 That they can get sufficient exercise any- 
 where, with a very small expense of time, 
 we hope to show in a later chapter ; but, in 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 29 
 
 the meantime, have such tried deUberately 
 and unswervingly to eat far less than they 
 feel incHned, or to use some sort of definite 
 selection in the matter of what they eat ? 
 Others again would (quite rightly) put down 
 their slight but chronic indisposition to an 
 absence of air ; such perhaps do not know 
 what an immensely increased supply of air 
 everyone can get by always keeping bed- 
 room windows wide open. 
 
 Now to many such the idea of using 
 training as a means of merely keeping well 
 is probably novel. They are accustomed to 
 feel slightly unwell — that perhaps is too 
 strong a term — when they are in a town and 
 at work, and having always felt thus have 
 acquiesced in what we may caU a vicious 
 habit. But they have always understood 
 training to mean a regime of fixed exercise 
 (founded on beefsteaks), which is as im- 
 possible for them as it would also be unsuit- 
 
30 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 able for them ; or, in a modified form, twenty 
 minutes or half an hour with dumb-bells 
 every morning and evening. Many have 
 probably tried dumb-bells ; some, no doubt, 
 reap considerable benefit from their use, but 
 not a few, and both the present writers are 
 among them, after giving them a good trial, 
 loathe the sight of them. And numbers, in 
 such a case, have abandoned themselves, 
 with more or less content, to continuing to 
 feel slightly below par, and praying for the 
 holidays. 
 
 Now the use of dumb-bells and developers 
 is becoming something of a fetish, of a 
 cherished idol, and, backed as it is by well- 
 known names, is a formidable-looking god 
 to throw stones at. But there seem to the 
 present writers to be many grave objections 
 to such systems as are constantly followed, 
 whether they are used by athletes or by 
 the much larger class of those who merely 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 31 
 
 wish to get exercise from them. The prima 
 facie objection in the case of both is their ex- 
 treme monotony. It is necessary apparently 
 to raise the arms slowly in turn (bending 
 the elbow till the dumb-bell is level with the 
 shoulder) upwards of a hundred times or 
 more : it is necessary to do the same again 
 with the backs of the hands out, to extend 
 the arms from the shoulder outwards, from 
 the shoulder upwards, to bend the wrists to 
 and fro (still with these infernal implements 
 grasped in the hands), to make motions as 
 if drawing water first on one side and then 
 on the other, to hit out, with the weight in 
 the hands, at an imaginary foe ; in fact to 
 push, raise, or pull this weight in practically 
 every direction that it will go, a vast number 
 of times. "Developers" have, as a rule, 
 the same defects ; the movements are 
 slow, and a continued effort against per- 
 manent resistance, while the greater part of 
 
32 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 the exercise which they give is not for the 
 greater muscles. Then follow — we are inten- 
 tionally vague, and wish to show only the 
 general lines of many systems — exercises for 
 the muscles of the stomach and of the legs. 
 For the breathing muscles of the chest, 
 there are also exercises which not being con- 
 cerned for the most part with these dead- 
 weights we have found generally excellent. 
 The masters of such systems also, as a rule, 
 advocate practising in front of a looking- 
 glass, stripped as far as may be, in order to 
 observe the play of the muscles. This also 
 is admirable advice. 
 
 Now it will be noticed at once with regard 
 to these exercises that by far the majority of 
 them are for the arms, and that even when, 
 as in certain of them, the object is to develop 
 the breathing muscles, the hands still hold 
 the dumb-bells. In other words, some- 
 thing like three-quarters of the ordinary 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 33 
 
 dumb-bell exercises, as advised and prac- 
 tised, are exercises in which the stress of 
 the movements lies on muscles of the wrist 
 and fore-arm, biceps, triceps, and deltoid 
 (the shoulder muscle). What is the result if 
 the instructions are conscientiously ob- 
 served ? That the muscles of the arms get 
 developed ludicrously out of proportion to 
 the rest of the body, for no purpose as far 
 as we can see except that of lifting and 
 holding weights. The far larger and more 
 important thigh muscles and calf muscles, 
 the great muscles of the trunk and chest, 
 have perhaps in some of these systems no 
 more work to do, when added together, 
 than the muscles of the arm alone. For 
 certain ga,mes it is of course necessary to 
 have considerable power in the arm, yet 
 (even for games) it is of far more importance 
 to have the larger muscles adequately 
 developed. But granted (with certain im- 
 
 3 
 
34 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 portant reservations to be stated hereafter) 
 that such exercises are good for certain 
 games, we contend that they are, if not 
 harmful, at any rate most ill-adapted for 
 the proper development of the whole body, 
 and for supplying exercise to those who 
 need it, particularly in town life, for the sake 
 of health. Certain muscles, those of the 
 shoulder and arm, are exercised out of all 
 proportion, whereas the larger body muscles, 
 those in fact which are particularly needed 
 for the correct and healthful carriage of the 
 body, so as to provide the heart and the 
 organs of breathing and digestion with free 
 room to work in, are left comparatively 
 neglected. Indeed, as far as health goes, 
 it would be probably better for the man 
 who has to sit at a desk for six or seven hours 
 a day to sit upright only, and take no exer- 
 cise at all, than to go religiously through 
 his course before coming to his office, and 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 35 
 
 then do his work in the cramped and 
 huddled position which is natural to many 
 people. But, and this is an even more 
 serious charge, some exercises recommended 
 in certain systems, pursued no doubt by 
 people who for years have been in search of 
 strength, advocate exercises which are 
 positively risky, with regard to strain on 
 certain parts of the body, exercises in fact 
 which might tend to increase the strength 
 of a strong man, but would be almost dan- 
 gerous for a less strongly-developed one. 
 Again, and this objection apphes to athletes 
 even more than to the ordinary man in 
 search of health by means of daily exercise, 
 are not these slow movements of dumb-bells 
 and slow steady resistance against india- 
 rubber productive of quite the wrong sort 
 of strength ? No doubt the incessant 
 raising of a dumb-bell above the head, a 
 heavy pushing stroke, will tend to enable 
 
 3* 
 
36 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 the pusher to raise greater and greater 
 weights above the head, but does the 
 ordinary man,- does the athlete himself 
 desire to get strength of that kind ? For 
 the ordinary man, in the first place, does the 
 development of fore-arm, biceps, or triceps 
 tend in any way to increase his health, 
 except inasmuch as the exertion thus put 
 forth certainly enlarges some few muscles 
 and tends to produce action of the skin by 
 reason of heat ? As far as muscular deve- 
 lopment goes he would do far better to exer- 
 cise the larger muscle-areas, and for the 
 other, a Turkish bath will give him the 
 equivalent of a week's exercising. The 
 fallacy that lies at the bottom of this dumb- 
 bell and " developer " work, in fact, is 
 that large and prominent muscles imply not 
 only strength but health. That the use of 
 muscles tends to both is undeniable, but for 
 purposes of health the muscles employed are 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 37 
 
 mainly the unimportant ones, while for pur- 
 poses of strength, valuable chiefly to those 
 who wish to employ muscles with a view to 
 excellence in athletics, the strength obtained 
 is wholly the wrong sort of strength. 
 
 It is here that the dumb-bell and deve- 
 loper system goes utterly and hopelessly 
 astray. Used as an adjunct, it will assist 
 a weak muscle to arrive at a certain girth 
 and bulk, but considered as a cause of any 
 successful stroke at a game, it is much more 
 an enemy than a friend. For at all games, 
 with a possible exception perhaps in the case 
 of rowing, as far as strength comes into the 
 question, it comes in as a motor-power to 
 produce speed, whereas dumb-bell exercises 
 have for their object, as a whole, the slow 
 pushing of gradually increased weights. 
 A modicum of strength is of course 
 necessary to propel anything anywhere, 
 but the main thing, the thing to be ac- 
 
38 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 quired, is speed in the muscle, in order 
 to impart velocity to the object. And 
 the muscles of those whose sole train- 
 ing is dumb-bell exercise are admirably 
 unfitted to impart it. The weights they 
 can lift are no doubt prodigious, but we 
 doiibt whether any man reared entirely on 
 dumb-bells (and the more he had of that diet, 
 the better for our point) could hit a ball 
 over the pavilion at Lord's, make a really 
 difficult force at tennis, drive a golf ball 
 two hundred yards, turn a fast outside 
 back-bracket at skating, or send in a really 
 hot shot at Association football. In fact, 
 the more developed he was on dumb-bell 
 lines, the less likely he would be to be able 
 to do any of these things ; the muscle 
 acquired is of the wrong order, it has sacri- 
 ficed its speed for bulk, it is the strong engine 
 of the luggage-train, not the strong engine 
 of the greyhound express. And if this is 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 39 
 
 not so, how does it come about that some 
 professional strong man has never yet 
 attained immense pre-eminence in any 
 branch of athletics, if such strength were 
 the desirable sort ? Surfely in his spare 
 moments he might send a few balls over the 
 gasworks at Kennington, or drive the green 
 of the long hole at Sandwich. At golf, par- 
 ticularly, there is no limit to the weight of 
 his club, he may use what weapon he 
 pleases, and since the carry of a ball is 
 wholly dependent on its starting velocity, 
 he with his great strength should be able to 
 send it beyond the dreams of any medal- 
 winner. But as a matter of fact he cannot, 
 not because he misjudges it, for many 
 strong men, we believe, have an excellent 
 eye, but because his muscles, trained to 
 overcome resistance by slow, prolonged effort, 
 cannot act fast. Ah, if dumb-bells could 
 speak, what a tale they would have to tell ! 
 
40 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 They would also cease to be dumb-bells ; 
 this woiild be an advantage. 
 
 In addition to this the dumb-bell man 
 is continually putting a comparatively long 
 strain on himself. To hit a half-volley at 
 cricket, to drive a golf ball is a short con- 
 centrated effortj and one in which the 
 whole swing and weight of the body assists. 
 But to raise an iron bar above the head is a 
 long strain : the bar is slowly pushed up, 
 arteries dilate, the face is suffused, the 
 heart and the blood-vessels, though perhaps 
 not taxed beyond what they were meant to 
 bear — what that is one cannot say — are, 
 at any rate, largely taxed. Meantime the 
 arm, the function of which is mainly speed, 
 moves slowly and with the utmost effort. 
 From its length, in comparison to its girth, 
 it was quite clearly designed for quickness, 
 and yet the poor victim has been gradually 
 trained, by means of most tedious exer- 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 41 
 
 cises, to become a cart-horse instead of a 
 racer. Pure gymnastics, which only turn 
 the arms into legs, are bad enough — dumb- 
 bells turn the arms into a lift at a second- 
 rate hotel. It would be as sensible, in the 
 hopes to acquire rapidity of finger at the 
 pianoforte, to train each finger separately 
 to lift heavy weights. Finally, what is the 
 result if an abnormally developed man has 
 by reason of rheumatism or other causes to 
 drop his exercises ? It is not, we believe, yet 
 proved, but the opinion of medical men 
 tends to show that if one has developed a 
 muscle to very great bulk in the past, and 
 then drops its use, a sort of fatty degenera- 
 tion sets in. Cheerful. 
 
 To recapitulate, the results we arrive at 
 are as follows : Dumb-bell and developer 
 exercises as a whole, according to the 
 generality of received systems, are ex- 
 tremely monotonous. A motion is repeated 
 
42 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 many times, for the sake of obtaining bulk 
 in a certain muscle — in order to produce 
 quantity rather than quality , in fact. These 
 motions take a considerable time owing to 
 their number, and for the most part they are 
 dull, owing to the slowness of the movement 
 occasioned by the weight, to be moved, which, 
 as the patient gets stronger, is gradually 
 increased. The slowness, the push of the 
 movement, rather than the drive of the 
 movement, is often recommended : the 
 movements, we are told, should be made 
 slowly. 
 
 In the second place, certain muscles, 
 for instance, of the f prearm _ and arm, are 
 exercised unduly, unless the truth is that 
 the business of man is not to keep well and 
 be fit for his work, but like Sisyphus to roll 
 a stone up a hill. Just as these are unduly 
 exercised, so others are unfairly omitted 
 or slurred over, the larger and more im- 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 43 
 
 portant muscles of the chest and trunk are 
 starved of exercise in comparison to the 
 arm-muscles. Also in certain systems certain 
 muscles are wrongly used : muscles that are 
 meant for support chiefly, as far as we can 
 judge of the purpose of the human frame, 
 are deluded into becoming muscles of motion, 
 with the result that the naturally quiescent 
 nerves and tissues underlying them are 
 improperly excited. 
 
 Thirdly, supposing that this great develop- 
 ment of muscle (chiefly muscle in the arm) 
 is successfully attained, does it serve any 
 practical use whatever as regards either 
 health or use ? As far as health goes, 
 it passes the bounds of imagination to con- 
 ceive that the main organs of the body will 
 be benefited by excessive biceps, whereas 
 as regards strength, for all purposes ex- 
 cept the lifting and holding of weights, it 
 is extremely doubtful whether an increase 
 
44 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 of such strength does not imply a corre- 
 sponding decrease in speed and agiHty. 
 The fastest runners are not those with pro- 
 digious muscleSj the hardest hitters have 
 not a swollen biceps. The test, in fact, 
 of fitness and power of the body lies not in 
 measurements, but in the ability to perform 
 certain movements with correctness and 
 rapidity, to be able to make complex 
 movements, to be capable of endurance, and 
 to perform such movements with economy 
 of effort. 
 
 Many reservations must be made, how- 
 ever, in what appears to be an all-round 
 condemnation, and if we criticise the system 
 of the most prominent of the dumb-bell 
 advocates, Mr. Sandow, we shall certainly 
 find a great deal to praise in what he says. 
 His remarks about practising before a mirror, 
 for instance, are excellent, since to observe 
 the play of the muscles is, or ought to be 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 45 
 
 to anyone with an eye for movement^ of 
 immense interest, and takes off (this he 
 does not say) from the unspeakable tedium 
 of the exercise itself. So, too, when he 
 advises cold water, open windows, moderate 
 diet, abstention from anything which dis- 
 agrees, he has nought which is not advis- 
 able. Equally true, too, is his insistence on 
 attention of the most fixed order to the 
 work in hand, though perhaps he does not 
 sufficiently allow for the period in which a 
 set exercise indulged in so often as some 
 of his, must, almost necessarily, become 
 mechanical and automatic. For just as it 
 would be impossible that a practised player 
 at any game should consciously attend to 
 what he is doing (he sees, for instance, a 
 ball which is certainly a half-volley, but 
 does not know he thinks about half -volleys 
 at all, yet hits correctly), so after a time a 
 dumb-bell exercise becomes (or should be- 
 
46 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 come) mechanical. That perhaps is its 
 strength : that certainly is its weakness. 
 For this reason : all exercises are, or should 
 be, exercises towards an end. When that 
 end is attained, there is no longer any need 
 for them, unless the end be merely to alter 
 the circulation of the blood ; and something 
 fresh, for the sake of stimulus and interest, 
 should be begun. By these dumb-bell exer- 
 cises, strength sufficient for the purposes of 
 life can be no doubt attained ; but after 
 that, unless our mission is to lift weights, 
 they are superfluous. That the muscles of 
 the arm, that all muscles in fact should be 
 in a state of efficiency is highly desirable, 
 but in a sedentary life, in the life for which 
 exercises are most obviously useful, it is 
 the large muscle-areas, the muscles which 
 the stillness of sitting tends to degenerate, 
 that should be kept up to the scratch. The 
 inability, in fact, to sit habitually in a chair 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 4; 
 
 in a position in which the lungs and heart 
 will act naturally, is a greater defect than 
 the inability to raise 561bs. above the head 
 in the left hand. Practically perfect health 
 is compatible with an abnormally weak fore- 
 arm and wrist : abnormal weakness, on the 
 other hand, of the muscles of the chest and 
 abdomen always implies imperfect health. 
 
 Finally, the personal equation is not suffi- 
 ciently considered in any system of exercise 
 that has come across our notice. There is 
 Chart I. for children. Chart II. for boys 
 between 14 and 18, Chart III. for adults. 
 Any system of weight-moving, such as dumb- 
 bells, will never satisfactorily fill such a need 
 as here exists, unless the teacher will see 
 and examine personally (provided also he 
 has the requisite knowledge) each one of 
 his pupils. A thick-set boy of fifteen, 
 though he weighs the same as a tall lanky 
 boy of the same age, requires a perfectly 
 
48 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 different set of exercises to produce in him 
 fit and robust manhood, while the tall lanky 
 boy may be injured by exercises that are 
 good for the average boy of his age and 
 weight. But that there are exercises which 
 are practically good for everybody we fully 
 believe. Of this we treat later. Again, for 
 people who wish to excel at games, to begin 
 with dumb-bells seems a mistake, for it 
 teaches first the slow movement, whereas 
 speed of movement should come first. That 
 they give bulk to the muscles is undeniable, 
 and there is a great deal to be said for bulk, 
 if only it has the power of speed. In any 
 case these dumb-bell and developer exer- 
 cises should be alternated with quick, full 
 movements, so as to preserve the speed of 
 the action of the muscles. 
 
 Now most people who feel the need of, 
 and are better for, regular exercise are 
 accustomed, when they have leisure and 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 49 
 
 opportunity, to play some sort of game ; and 
 how enormously this tendency is increasing 
 is shown, to take one instance alone, by the 
 huge number of golf links which have 
 sprung up all over the kingdom, and in par- 
 ticular round and close to London, accessible 
 to the city man in summer for a short round 
 perhaps when he returns home in the 
 evening, and certainly used by him on 
 Saturday afternoon and probably Sunday. 
 He does not, as a matter of fact, hurry 
 home in order to practise his beloved dumb- 
 bells, he is not late for dinner because he 
 cannot leave his dumb-bells, but because he 
 will finish his round at golf. A game, in 
 fact, is more enjoyed by most people than 
 mere exercise for the sake of exercise. The 
 dumb-bells are used when a game is not to 
 be had. But these dumb-bell exercises, as 
 we have pointed out, do not, except in so 
 far as they may strengthen an inordinately 
 
 4 
 
so DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 weak muscle J improve or help a man's 
 game, unless we consider weight-lifting a 
 game. Six months' continuous exercise of 
 the slow pushing and pulling order to over- 
 come the inertia of the dumb-bell or the con- 
 traction of india-rubber will probably not 
 lengthen his drive, since they do not teach 
 speed of movement. That the long driver 
 at golf may be very strong is beyond ques- 
 tion, but it is equally beyond question that 
 the professional strong man will incessantly 
 be out-driven by a player whose muscles 
 are half the size of the other's, because the 
 latter has cultivated swiftness of move- 
 ment, the former has not. It is for this 
 among other reasons that in the chapter 
 on exercises we advocate, at any rate, 
 until great speed has become easy, not the 
 use of dumb-bells — anyhow not of dumb- 
 bells of more than nominal weight — but a 
 system of brisk, full movements, increasing 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 51 
 
 not in regard to the resistance to be over- 
 come, but in their own complexity. They 
 require the same concentration of atten- 
 tion, but they are not fatiguing, although 
 they give full exercise to the muscles. For 
 it is a great error to suppose, as so many do, 
 that fatigue is a criterion of exercise, that 
 one has not had enough exercise, in fact, 
 until one feels tired. Indeed, the converse, 
 or something like the converse, is more 
 nearly true, namely, that exercise which 
 leaves one tired is either excessive or more 
 probably is of the wrong sort. Fatigue is, 
 perhaps, necessary if very severe exercise 
 has been gone through, but it is a thing not 
 to be sought after, and if possible to be 
 avoided. As far as it is concerned with the 
 muscles themselves, it shows that they have 
 been overtaxed (an automatic signal put 
 out by nature, saying, " Stop ";, but pro- 
 bably in many cases feelings of fatigue 
 
 A* 
 
52 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 arise from other causes, and a very little 
 exercise will produce it, not because the 
 muscles are overtaxed, but because there 
 is something wrong with other organs of 
 the body. Morning fatigue, the disinclina- 
 tion to get up after a good night's rest, not 
 from laziness pure and simple, but from 
 genuine languor, is an extreme instance of 
 this. But the dumb-bell user will not 
 get over this by putting in a vast amount 
 of work for the biceps and triceps, though 
 a couple of minutes spent in using certain 
 larger muscle^areas, with the accompaniment 
 it may be of massage, which one C9,n easily 
 administer himself, will probably largely 
 alleviate it. But instead he flexes the arm 
 a hundred and twenty times, lifting, to each 
 shoulder, perhaps, in all a dead weight of 
 960 lbs. 
 
 Furthermore, these dumb-bell exercises, in 
 which the weight of the dumb-bells is gradui- 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 53 
 
 ally increased, become after a year or two 
 very severe indeed, and one would like to 
 know the collective opinion of doctors on 
 such a point as this. Can it be good for a 
 man of forty-five or fifty to manipulate 
 weights like these, performing say for half- 
 an-hour a day a series of exercises with them, 
 some of which at any rate entail consider- 
 able strain ? And if these exercises are not 
 good, what is he to do ? If after some years 
 of hard work at them he does drop them, 
 does he not become liable, or tend to become 
 liable, to a fatty degeneration of the muscles, 
 or at any rate to an increase of fat over the 
 muscles ? In the meantime, if the course 
 has been " successful," if the man is enor- 
 mously developed in the muscles, parti- 
 cularly of the arm and shoulder, it will quite 
 assuredly be extremely difficult, if not im- 
 possible, for him to change those muscles 
 whose birth and breeding is due to these 
 
54 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 slow pushing movements that are intended 
 to overcome the inertia of dead weight, 
 into muscles which have to deal swift, not 
 heavy, blows at objects which for practical 
 purposes (golf balls, tennis balls, even cricket 
 balls) have hardly any inertia at all. In 
 other words, he will find it difficult to be- 
 come even passably proficient at games 
 which require rapidity of striking — and it is 
 hard to name the game which does not — 
 and yet entail almost no strain on the heart 
 and arteries, in order to supply the place 
 of those heavy exercises which he feels 
 himself unable, without risk, to continue. 
 Besides this, it seems not unlikely that the 
 perpetual straining may deaden the fineness 
 of touch and judgment so necessary in most 
 games. But the quick, brisk movements 
 such as we recommend in the chapter on 
 exercises seem to us to be singularly without 
 the disadvantages of dumb-bell systems, as 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 55 
 
 regards monotony, for their very speed is 
 undoubtedly exhilarating ; nor do they 
 admit of any risk in the way of straining, 
 while they exercise the muscles more than 
 dumb-bells do, though they do not so much 
 strengthen them. They are, therefore, quite 
 as health-giving, since health, unless a man 
 is positively suffering from muscular feeble- 
 ness, has practically nothing to do with 
 sheer muscular strength, while it has a great 
 deal to do with muscular fitness. On the 
 other hand, they have this great advantage 
 over dumb-bell systems, namely, that they 
 directly and rapidly tend to increase the 
 speed with which the muscles can make 
 their effort, and thus for that very large 
 class of people who desire to play games, 
 and do so whenever they can, these move- 
 ments are of the greatest help even in learn- 
 ing the game, and also in keeping the 
 muscles in actual and absolute practice for 
 
56 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 the game itself. They help, in fact, the 
 right sort of muscle, they teach the light, 
 rapid stroke which drives a ball. For the_ 
 special exercises for each game, exercises 
 which have been tested and found of service, 
 we shall have to refer readers to the volumes 
 on those games, which will subsequently 
 appear, though even in the general list given 
 in the chapter on exercise in this volume, 
 no doubt they will pick out some that will 
 be of service to them, whatever game they 
 may wish to be in practice for. 
 
 But it is to the ordinary unathletic man, 
 the man who does not really care about 
 being in practice for a game, that we quite 
 as sincerely recommend them, for it is our 
 hope that he will find them, as we ourselves 
 have done, pleasant and exhilarating (where 
 we have found dumb-bells tedious and 
 wearisome), economical in point of time, 
 though they give, so we believe, more exer- 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 57 
 
 cise than dumb-bells do, without strain 
 and without fatigue. But they do not, 
 and not for a moment do we claim it for 
 them, increase the actual bulk of the muscles 
 with anything approaching the rapidity 
 possible in dumb-bell exercises, and if a man 
 happens to want a sixteen-inch biceps with- 
 out delay (or reason) it will be mere waste 
 of time for him to use them. 
 ' There are many other points in which 
 systems of training, in common with these 
 dumb-bell exercises, seem to be defective, 
 which need not be mentioned here. It is 
 perfectly true that, as a whole, men in 
 training — say a week after they have been 
 training — are in excellent health. But this 
 health we soberly believe to be realisable 
 by men living in towns, with sedentary 
 occupations, and, as they say, no oppor- 
 tunity for exercise. The man who must 
 be in London six days out of the seven. 
 
58 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 practically abandons the attempt to keep 
 in good health, without knowing what easy 
 aids lie ready to his hand. He has no idea 
 how much simple treatments, in the way of 
 heat, baths, exposure of the body to the 
 air, can do for him in the way of enabling 
 that wonderful mechanism, the skin, which 
 never sleeps, but works night and day at 
 its business of cleansing, to have a fair 
 chance. Such a man has a cold, and 
 acquiesces in this state of things, saying 
 he always has a cold in February, as if he 
 were rather doing his duty than otherwise. 
 It never occurs to him that to have a cold 
 is to be unhealthy, that in such a case there 
 is inflammation, and the mucous membrane 
 is working double tides to throw it off. 
 Such inflammation, of course, must have a 
 cause, and is usually put down, often cor- 
 rectly, to sitting in a draught, or not chang- 
 ing when wet. But when one is really 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 59 
 
 well, living, let us say, in the country, and 
 getting wet perhaps two or three times a 
 day, one does not catch cold. In London 
 under such circumstances many people do. 
 Why ? Not because it is London, but be- 
 cause they are below par, liable to attack. 
 And it is a gross mistake on their part to 
 acquiesce in such a state of things. It is 
 in most cases easily remediable, and that 
 with little expense of time, and none at all 
 in money for doctors' bills and abhorrent 
 drugs. 
 
 Finally with regard to training and prac- 
 tice for certain games, there are two fal- 
 lacies, commonly considered truisms, which 
 are worth commenting on. The first is 
 that mere practice is conducive to ex- 
 cellence, than which astounding statement 
 there was never anything less proven. It 
 is dreadful to think of the amount of time 
 which real enthusiasts give to lone and 
 
6o DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 solitary practice without ever dreaming that 
 what they are doing is probably merely 
 emphasizing and making more radical an 
 already existing fault. Such an enthusiast 
 (and the professors of his game encourage 
 him in it) will take half a dozen golf balls 
 on to a lonely upland, or half a dozen 
 racquet balls into a lonely court, and there 
 continue with unabated zest to do things 
 wrong. Such practice is merely pernicious. 
 A second fallacy, connected with this 
 point, is that style is unattainable. For 
 what is style ? Apparent ease to the man 
 who knows little about it : real ease to the 
 man who does know. And this ease is — 
 with certain exceptions, as in a tour de 
 force necessary to get out of difficulties — 
 certainly acquirable. Awkwardness and 
 effort are, as a rule, the effect of bad teach- 
 ing or no teaching. For it must be remem- 
 bered that while a ball an inch above the 
 
FALLACIES IN PRESENT SYSTEMS. 6i 
 
 net at tennis, a back bracket at skating, a 
 .slog over the pavilion at Lord's, to repeat 
 instances already used, are natural, in the 
 sense that they are compassable without 
 misuse of the human frame, yet they imply 
 accurate and complex movements, which 
 no one person would guess for himself. 
 We say " guess " advisedly, for all games 
 are empirical. 
 
 And thus having to a certain extent 
 cleared the ground we will pass to con- 
 struction. 
 
62 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 
 
 It will not in this chapter be necessary to 
 go at all deeply into the physiological 
 effects and changes wrought in the body 
 by exercise, but at the same time for those 
 interested in the subject it will be well to 
 sketch in the merest outline the general 
 effect of exercise, and give the reasons why 
 (a rule so universal as to be considered as 
 practically without exception) those who 
 take exercise, especially when they take it 
 in air, where there is a sufficiency of oxygen, 
 are in better health than those who do not. 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 63 
 
 Now every organ in the body is either 
 in itself a muscle or a system of muscles, 
 or is controlled by muscles. That is to say, 
 none of the infinite processes incidental not 
 only to any movement, but to even per- 
 fectly passive life, are independent of mus- 
 cular action, automatic it may be, and uncon- 
 scious or sub-conscious, but still muscular. 
 
 The action of the heart itself, for instance, 
 which is, in ordinary circumstances, entirely 
 automatic and absolutely essential to life, 
 consists in the alternate contraction and ex- 
 pansion of muscle, which sends the blood 
 to all parts of the body ; and the heart, like 
 all other muscles, can be made stronger 
 with suitable exercises, can be overtaxed 
 by undue strain, and can lapse into feeble- 
 ness and degeneration if it is not rightly 
 and fully used. For the health of all 
 muscles, apart from their proper nourish- 
 ment by food and air, lies in their proper use. 
 
64 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 All muscles which are within our reach, 
 so to speak, which by an effort of will on 
 our part are made to move some portion of 
 the body, are controlled by nerves, which 
 transmit the message, as through a tele- 
 graph wire, from the brain to the required 
 place. By constant use it is possible, as 
 in the case of walking (in itself a rather 
 complicated movement), so to accustom the 
 nerves to send their messages that, after a 
 time, the action of the muscles become 
 automatic, and we are conscious of no effort 
 of .will to make them work. The instinct of 
 self-protection is another instance of this 
 automatic .use of muscles ; a man will put 
 up his arm or duck his head to avoid a blow 
 without consciously bidding the muscles of 
 the arm or neck to act. Not only does 
 continued use of a proper kind give this 
 speed to the communication between brain 
 and muscle, but — granted proper nourish- 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 6$ 
 
 ment — it gives strength and health to the 
 muscles used ; and, broadly speaking, the 
 man who has all the muscles of his body 
 in perfect working order, is physically a 
 thoroughly healthy man. 
 
 Now the full effects of muscular move- 
 ment are far too complicated to be spoken of 
 with any completeness. Three, however, of 
 the simplest and most obvious may be men- 
 tioned. Exercise, as everyone knows, is 
 productive first of quickened respiration, 
 quickened circulation, and heat. Just as 
 an engine burns coal in order to produce the 
 steam which moves it, so the muscles con- 
 sume material in their working, and this 
 consumption of material again gives rise 
 to waste products partly given off (in the 
 form of carbonic acid gas) by the lungs, 
 which therefore are called upon to supply a 
 greater amount of oxygen. Hence the 
 quickened respiration. Similarly, more blood 
 
 5 
 
66 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 is required to feed the working part, hence 
 the heart is called upon to supply it with 
 greater speed. And thirdly, since exercise 
 produces heat, and heat perspiration, the 
 pores of the skin are called upon to open 
 for the purpose of exudation, and pass out 
 with the sweat many waste products.* 
 Exercise, in short, develops not only the 
 particular muscles used, but whatever 
 muscle is used, the heart and the lungs as 
 well (since they have muscles of their own, 
 which are called upon to work), and it gets 
 rid of waste products in the body by means 
 immediately of the skin, and, if certain most 
 important muscles are used, by facilitating 
 the action of the kidneys and bowels. It 
 also, as we have seen above, quickens the 
 co-ordination of brain, nerve and muscle. 
 
 * Perspiration, it may also be noticed, regulates the temperature of 
 the skin by evaporation. Thus on a hot day after we have cooled 
 down from exercise we feel considerably less warm than before the 
 exercise. " Text-book of Physiology," Schafer, Part I., p. 669. 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 6y 
 
 until with practice many movements be- 
 come automatic instead of comparatively 
 slow. At the same time it uses up nervous 
 force just as it does muscular force, but 
 only temporarily, since rest and sleep auto- 
 matically (and nobody yet knows how) 
 restore both. 
 
 This brief sketch wiU be enough for the 
 moment to show why proper exercise is 
 beneficial to the body, and it will explain 
 in a rough and ready manner why respira- 
 tion and circulation are quickened, and why 
 exercise produces (or should produce) appe- 
 tite. Actual consumption of materials has 
 taken place, and in addition waste pro- 
 ducts, which give rise to uric acid in the 
 system, have been removed. But though 
 in general these effects (except when from 
 serious weakness of the heart exercise is 
 positively dangerous) are beneficial to 
 everybody, it does not in the least follow 
 
68 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 that any haphazard exercise is beneficial 
 to everybody. Certain movements, which 
 are to be highly recommended to the robust, 
 would if they were attempted by a man 
 whose muscles were not so developed, be 
 either impossible to him, or, if effected, 
 would strain rather than strengthen him. 
 Again, the object in general of exercise is 
 (apart from its three results mentioned 
 above) to brisken and strengthen har- 
 moniously, and not to cause immense deve- 
 lopment of one or two sets of muscles, 
 leaving the others comparatively neglected. 
 Of course, if there is special weakness in 
 any part it may be highly desirable to 
 strengthen that part, but as we have said 
 above, what we may call mere " Biceps- 
 culture " is, though charming for the biceps, 
 as long as the arm does not get muscle- 
 bound, no better a contributor to general 
 health than would be the cultivation of 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 69 
 
 any other one muscle in the body, while 
 there are many which it would be far more 
 useful to cultivate than this. For by the 
 use of the biceps, let us say, no other organ 
 of the body (except in so far as quickened 
 respiration and circulation is the result 
 of muscular effort) is directly benefited, 
 whereas by the use of the extensive muscles 
 of the chest in a proper manner, freedom 
 and strength are directly procured for the 
 lungs, or by the use of the muscles of the 
 abdomen in a proper manner, the action of 
 certain internal organs is facihtated. 
 
 Now the main principles on which we base 
 the system of exercise we recommend are 
 these. Complete development of the mus- 
 cular system is aimed at, and rapid obedience 
 of the muscles to the will. The muscles 
 should be exercised to their full extent — 
 i.e., they should make the full movement 
 which their contraction allows — this fast 
 
70 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 full contraction is associated with the name 
 of Mr. Macdonald Smith — and they should 
 also be made efficient in arrested move- 
 ments ; that is to say, they should be able 
 even in the middle of a rapid full move- 
 ment to stop at once, being in complete 
 control of the will, even as a wolf, and 
 this is one of the seven wonders of the world, 
 can check his spring while in mid-air. How ? 
 God knows. Mere size of muscle, we be- 
 lieve, is in no way a criterion either of 
 health or of the sort of strength which we 
 consider to be desirable, and it is infinitely 
 better for a man to have muscles of but 
 average size, provided they are prompt 
 and obedient, than to be a Farnese Her- 
 cules, if the bulk of muscle which he has 
 made for himself is but slow moving and 
 incapable of briskness. The Farnese Her- 
 cules no doubt could lift weights of prodi- 
 gious heaviness, but if the acquisition of 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 71 
 
 this power has been attained at the cost of 
 speed and promptitude, we altogether fail 
 to see how he is benefited. Correctness 
 and control are the first objects of muscle- 
 culture ; by proper practice comes endur- 
 ance, speed, and often very great muscular 
 power. But power — slow weight-lifting 
 power — should be considered not as the 
 first, still less as the only object of exercise, 
 but as a probable result. Furthermore, 
 though the lifting of dumb-bells is exceed- 
 ingly useful in bringing an exceptionally 
 weak muscle up to the general level of the 
 others, dumb-bell work is, in itself, slow 
 movement, and though even its continued 
 use may not be altogether destructive of 
 quickness, yet it cannot in any way be con- 
 sidered as conducive to it. It leads in fact, 
 in the main, to efficiency in weight-lifting, 
 which both in itself seems somewhat useless, 
 is hardly thought as enjoyable, even by 
 
72 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 its own enthusiasts, as are games by their 
 thousands of votaries, and is, except under 
 the most careful tuition and supervision, 
 dangerous. But in these quick full move- 
 ments practised either with no weights at 
 all, or at the most with exceedingly light 
 ones, there is no risk of strain. Again, 
 while to judge by the letters and testimonials 
 sent to well-known schools of physical cul- 
 ture (and published by them) the increase 
 of bulk in muscle seems to be considered 
 in itself a desirable object, the acquisition 
 of this bulk appears even in successful 
 cases to be a somewhat slow and laborious 
 process, and entails more than half an 
 hour's dumb-bell practice of slow move- 
 ments every day. As supplementary to 
 brisk movements, it is more than possible 
 that these mere bulk-acquiring move- 
 ments have their uses, but to base an entire 
 system on them is to miss the point, so it 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 73 
 
 seems to us, of the culture of muscles, if not 
 to ruin the muscles themselves. It is also 
 most important to see that the exercise for 
 each muscle shall be that for which the 
 muscle is naturally adapted ; and exer- 
 cises designed to bring the muscles of the 
 fingers or wrists into their utmost state of 
 efficiency will be evidently utterly different 
 from those by which we cultivate the muscles 
 of the loins, the back, or the chest. For 
 fingers and wrists are obviously designed 
 (and are regularly used) for far more rapid 
 movement than the muscles of the back, 
 loins, or chest, and. to attempt to make these 
 larger muscle areas work with the same 
 rapidity as the fingers attain in piano play- 
 ing, is to give not only an impossible task, 
 but a most unsuitable one. Or again, to 
 try to accustom the fingers to sustain the 
 weight borne every moment by the muscles 
 of the neck would even, if it were possible. 
 
74 DAILY TKAINING. 
 
 utterly unfit them for the rapid movements 
 which are natural to them. Agairi, the 
 muscles of the legs are designed to bear 
 and to move the whole weight of the body, 
 and it is thus obvious that exercises suitable 
 for development of the arms may be highly 
 unsuitable for the development of the legs, 
 which from their greater natural bulk 
 (designed for the continual shifting and sus- 
 taining of weight) are not able to move 
 with the flick of the wrist. And it is here 
 also that dumb-bells and indeed gymnastics 
 generally seem to us to go wrong. It is to the 
 arms in dumb-bell exercise that all this slow 
 weight-moving is assigned, while really the 
 essence of gymnastics seems to be to treat 
 the arms like legs, and let them bear the whole 
 weight of the body either passive or in motion. 
 Thus it appears to us a truer and more 
 sensible way of exercise to give each muscle, 
 as far as may be, the kind of work for which 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 75 
 
 it was intended : to give to the wrists, 
 fingers, forearms, exercises of great speed, 
 to give to the muscles of the legs exer- 
 cises of speed certainly (but of less speed, 
 since they are weight-carriers), of balance 
 and of flexibility (thus enabling the body 
 to start quickly in any required direction) 
 and of sustaining power, to give to the big 
 areas of muscle round the spine, abdomen 
 and loins exercises that will enable them to 
 do more easily their pillar-like work, and 
 allow the underlying organs of the body 
 free play, to give to the muscles of the 
 ribs and chest that power of expansion 
 and contraction which will enable the lungs 
 to breathe fully at aU times, and in emer- 
 gency quickly, so that when greater demands 
 are made by the working body for supplies of 
 oxygen, they may be readily supphed with- 
 out a struggle for breath. And if these 
 things are possible — as we entirely believe — we 
 
76 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 hold that the man who has attained them 
 through exercise will be a greater debtor to 
 exercise than he who can lift large weights 
 with limbs required for other purposes. 
 
 One of the very best times for exercise, 
 and also for most people the most convenient, 
 is early in the morning before breakfast. The 
 • body is (or should be) fresh and untired, 
 and by exercise it is given a good start for 
 the day, and fortified against the congesting 
 effects of the long sedentary work which 
 must perhaps necessarily consume the 
 greater part of the ensuing hours. On the 
 other hand, some people habitually devote 
 the freshness of the morning to brain-work, 
 for the brain like the body should be fittest 
 then, and one of the present writers always 
 does his hardest brain-work immediately 
 on waking, reserving his exercise for later. 
 In any case, it is far better to take exercise 
 on an empty stomach than after a meal, 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 77 
 
 since in the latter case the energy of the body 
 is largely occupied with the work of diges- 
 tion, which will be imperfectly, or at any rate 
 slowly, performed, if it is taxed simultaneously 
 by other calls on it. Again, in order to 
 give full and easy play to the muscles, as 
 little clothing as possible should be worn, 
 since they are thus unimpeded in the move- 
 ments, and also because, as mentioned in 
 the chapter on light and air, there is nothing 
 more hardening and invigorating to the 
 body than exposure to fresh air. The exer- 
 cise itself will very soon warm the body, 
 though perhaps at first those unaccustomed 
 to exposure wiU find it wiser to take their 
 hot bath or hot and cold bath before exer- 
 cise, so as to start already warmed. But all 
 those who are accustomed to have a cold 
 bath, and feel no chill afterwards, may 
 safely begin with the exercises, and reserve 
 the delightful thrill of* the water for after- 
 
78 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 wards, when they are even warmer from 
 the exercise than they would have been on 
 getting out of bed. 
 
 Be sure also that there is plenty of air 
 in the room, for you will use more when you 
 are exercising by reason of the quickened 
 respiration. Your window, it is to be hoped, 
 has been open all night. It is reaUy a pity 
 to shut it. Then stand before a looking- 
 glass, so that you may, by the sight of the 
 reflected movement in front of you, be sure 
 you are doing it fuUy and correctly, and 
 may the more easily fix your attention 
 wholly and entirely on what you are doing. 
 For it is by attention that you will acquire 
 ease and facihty till, as in learning a thing 
 by heart, the movements eventually become 
 if not automatic, at least extremely easy.* 
 
 * These exercises, it may be added, bear no claim to be considered 
 wholly original ; many of them, in fact, are taken direct from other 
 systems, especially the Macdonald Smith system, which can be heartily 
 recommended ; some few we believe are new. They are offered not 
 as final or complete exercises, but as a selection from the best which 
 we can give at present. Suggested improvements will be welcomed. 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 79 
 
 The following exercises are for the most 
 part exercises of full contraction and full 
 extension. The full extension should be 
 not only made but also held for a fraction 
 of time. The parts of the body which are 
 not being used should be kept quiet and 
 easy for the sake of self-control, economy, 
 and gracefulness. Each exercise is from one 
 position (i) to another (2), and then back 
 again. This we may accompany by saying 
 to ourselves " 1-2, 1-2." As a variant, we 
 may alter the time, and say " 1-2-1, 2-1-2," 
 and so on, changing the pace, intervening 
 time, etc. There must be no dulness. The 
 photographs are of people who do not use 
 dumb-bells. 
 
 Exercise I. — (For the wrist and forearm.) 
 
 Clench the right hand, holding it out straight in front 
 of you, with the back of the hand downwards. Unclasp 
 the fingers with a snap and simultaneously move the 
 whole hand round on the pivot of the wrist and fore- 
 arm as far as it will go. Then come back as smartly as 
 possible to the original clenched hand position. Repeat 
 
8o DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 about twenty times, making the movement as quickly 
 as you can in both directions without sacrificing cor- 
 rectness or fulness. Then do the same with the left 
 hand. 
 
 ExKRCiSE II. — (For upper arm.) 
 
 Extend the arm out at full stretch from the shoulder 
 sideways, with hand and fingers completely extended 
 and palm downwards ; then bend it as smartly as pos- 
 sible to its full extent at the elbow, bringing the hand 
 close to the head, with its palm, not its back, nearest to 
 the head, and at the same time clenching the fist. Go 
 back to former position again as smartly as possible. 
 Repeat from twenty to thirty times. Exercise the left 
 arm in the same way. See Photograph. Afterwards 
 both arms may be exercised together. 
 
 Exercise III. — (Shoulder and chest muscles.) 
 
 Bring the hands together at full extent of arms in 
 front of the face. From there bring them quickly back 
 till they are in a line with the shoulders, at the same 
 time drawing in a long breath. Return them to the 
 first position, expelling the breath. With a very little 
 practice it will be found that they can be brought 
 back considerably further than the line of the shoulders. 
 Repeat ten times. 
 
 Exercise IV. — (Shoulder and chest muscles.) 
 
 Stand erect with the arms by the side. Then raise 
 them slowly outwards, still at their full extent, till they 
 meet above the head, drawing in a long breath all the 
 time. Pause for a moment in the second position, still 
 
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EXERCISE VIII. 
 
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EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 8i 
 
 holding the breath, then lower the arms, slowly expelling 
 the breath, till they are again at the side with shoulders 
 drooped. Hold the breath out for a moment, and 
 repeat six or eight times. 
 
 Exercise V. — (Breathing muscles of chest and abdomen.) 
 
 Standing erect draw a long breath, inflating first the 
 lower, then the middle, and lastly the upper part of the 
 chest. Hold the breath a moment, then expel the air, 
 first emptying the lower, then the middle and then the 
 upper part of the chest. Hold the breath out for a 
 moment, and repeat six or eight times, stopping directly 
 there is any feeling of giddiness. 
 Exercise VI. — (Muscles of the ankle and calf.) 
 
 Stand on each foot in turn and with the other 
 pointed in front, bend the ankle upwards and down- 
 wards, and from side to side, and then in a circling 
 movement, to its full extent, as rapidly as possible. 
 Repeat about twenty times. 
 
 Exercise VII. — (Muscles of the knee and thigh.) 
 
 Stand on each foot in turn, and flex the knee as 
 smartly as possible backwards to its full extent. Bring 
 it back, heel down toe up, to its full stretch. Repeat 
 ten times. 
 
 Exercise VIII. — (Balancing exercise for muscles of 
 thigh and calf.) 
 
 Stand on one foot, and bring the other slowly up- 
 wards and forwards to full extent of the leg, bending 
 the body back to preserve balance. Draw the leg back 
 
82 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 till it is reaching out to its full extent behind the back, 
 leaning forwards at the same time with the body, and 
 stretching out the arm corresponding to the extended 
 leg to its full extent. Repeat with each foot half a 
 dozen times. See Photograph. 
 Exercise IX. — (Muscles of ankle, knee and hip.) 
 
 Stand on left foot and turn the right inwards till the 
 toe is at right angles to the side of the left foot. Then 
 reverse it as smartly as possible to its full extent so 
 that the heel of the right foot is touching the side of the 
 left, and the toe pointing at right angles outwards. 
 Repeat ten times with each foot. See Photograph. 
 
 Exercise X. — (For hips and abdomen.) (From Health 
 and Strength, April, 1902.) 
 
 Stand straight, heels together, hands on the waist 
 with thumbs to the back and fingers pointing forwards 
 and downwards. Then keeping the legs still and the 
 head facing forward all the time, sway the body round 
 and round, going as far back, as far forward and down, 
 and as far to the sides as you can. Do this slowly and 
 see that the abdominal muscles feel a strong play, and 
 make three circles with the trunk. Then stand still 
 and straight again and stretch the body as high as you 
 can, but without rising off the feet, so that the leg 
 muscles have perfect rest. Stretch out and up after 
 every three circles, and stop the moment the slightest 
 feeling of tiredness comes. 
 
 [If this exercise does not seem to suit the individual, 
 then it may be preferable to make a swift movement as 
 
EXKRCISE IX.— FIRST POSITION. 
 
 {To faic fO'^'e 82 
 
EXERCISE IX.— SECOND IMJSITIOX. 
 
 \^To faii pa:^€ S2. 
 
EXERCISE XIII.— FIRST 
 
 POSITION. 
 
 [ To face pai^ 
 
 .83. 
 
EXERCISE XIII.— SECOND I'OSITION. 
 
 \_To face page 83. 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 83 
 
 if to pick up objects from the ground first in front of you, 
 then on one side, then on the other, then above you.] 
 
 Exercise XI. — (For muscles of the trunk and back.) 
 
 Stand firm on both feet all the time, and keeping 
 the head facing forwards, swing the trunk round first to 
 the left and then to the right, letting the arms move 
 freely to help the swing. Do not strain, but try to 
 increase the extent of the turn gradually day by day. 
 Repeat half a dozen times. 
 
 Exercise XII. — (For muscles of back and leg.) 
 
 Lie flat on the floor, with hands clasped behind the 
 head. Draw right knee sharply up towards the chest, 
 then kick it back to the full extent of the leg, stretching 
 out toes as far as they will go. Do the same with left 
 foot, and repeat ten times. 
 
 Exercise XIII. — (Neck and trunk and shoulders.) 
 
 Stand with feet and knees straight. Then turn the 
 head round with moderate rapidity as far as it will go 
 to the right, letting the body follow it. Remain for a 
 moment, shrug the right shoulder, and revert the 
 position, turning the head as far as possible to the left. 
 Then shrug the left shoulder. Repeat six times. 
 [With this exercise too great speed of movement should 
 not be attempted at first, until the muscles of the 
 neck have become pliant with exercise. Before long, 
 however, the head can with ease be turned so far 
 round that the eyes will cover a circle and a hal/l\ See 
 Photograph. 
 
 6* 
 
§4 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 Exercise XIV. — (Combined exercise for arms, legs and 
 trunk.) 
 
 Stand in an easy position, slightly sideways, the 
 weight on the left foot. Then take a rapid stride 
 forward with the right foot, the toe of the left still 
 remaining on the ground, and simultaneously lunge 
 forward as rapidly as possible with right arm to its full 
 extent, following it with a forward and downward 
 motion of the body. Recover smartly to the original 
 position. Do the same with the left foot and arm, 
 repeating ten or twelve times. Later on the lunge 
 can be made in other directions as well as straight 
 forwards. 
 
 Now this list of fourteen exercises which 
 we have extracted from a much larger 
 number will, we believe, be found sufficient 
 to exercise in a healthy and reasonable 
 manner a very large proportion of the 
 muscles of the body. They may seem, 
 especially to anyone who has been accus- 
 tomed to long exercises with heavy dumb- 
 bells, mere child's play, but if they are given 
 a trial, and especially if the utmost rapidity 
 is used in making those movements where 
 

 
 
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EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 85 
 
 rapidity is enjoined, they will, we think, 
 be found not unsatisfactory. Those people 
 who are accustomed to gauge their exercise 
 by the fatigue which it produces may not, 
 it is true, be pleased with them, but for 
 our part we do not for a moment believe 
 that fatigue is any criterion of satisfactory 
 exercise. It is perfectly easy to fatigue 
 oneself in a very few minutes by unsuit- 
 able exercises, just as it is easy for a man 
 accustomed to walk rapidly to feel real 
 sensations of fatigue if he has to walk very 
 slowly for half an hour. Yet no one would 
 say that he had therefore enjoyed more 
 satisfactory exercise. For to use a muscle 
 wrongly is in itself fatiguing, and for this 
 reason exercises of the muscles of the arms 
 should be far more rapid than exercises for 
 the legs, and exercises for the legs in the 
 same way more rapid than those for the 
 chest and abdomen. It would be out of 
 
86 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 the question to try to make the breathing 
 muscles exercise themselves with the rapidity 
 that is easy to the muscles of the ankle, and 
 in the same way it is useless to exercise the 
 muscles of the wrist only as fast as it is 
 reasonable to exercise the muscles of the 
 abdomen. They are adapted for widely 
 different purposes ; use then each for its 
 own. 
 
 The advantage which we claim for such 
 exercises is that they give exercise 
 and do pot produce fatigue. Furthermore, 
 they take far less time than ordinary 
 courses of dumb-beU exercise, they re- 
 quire no apparatus whatever, they pro- 
 duce briskness of movement, and will keep 
 the muscles in better condition for games 
 and athletics than do mere slow strength- 
 producing movements. But we should not 
 for a moment urge a man who played games 
 regularly to use at any rate all these exer- 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 87 
 
 cises on those days when he is playing, for it 
 is certain that some muscles, if not aU, will 
 be quite sufficiently exercised by the game, 
 and thus it is mere waste of time on his part, 
 and unnecessary expenditure of energy to 
 add to that which is already sufficient. 
 On the other hand, most games — at any 
 rate as they are played by most people — 
 will not exercise all the muscles which even 
 this list covers, and a man might with advan- 
 tage exercise those by these means. 
 
 With regard to the increase in the number 
 of times each exercise is done, it is quite 
 impossible to lay down any general rule, 
 since anyone whose muscles are already 
 accustomed to rapid movement wiU be able 
 to increase the exercise more quickly than 
 one who is not ; but as a general guide for 
 everyone it may be said that none of the 
 exercises should be repeated more than once 
 or twice after the least feehng of fatigue or 
 
88 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 aching begins. But far more important 
 than mere repetition is the rapidity of move- 
 ment with which one does those that are 
 meant to be rapidj and it is infinitely 
 better to do such exercises only half the 
 number of times suggested, with concentra- 
 tion and speed, than twice the number if 
 they are done slackly or not fully. The 
 first essentials are to do them correctly and 
 rapidly ; the endurance and strength to 
 repeat them many times with correctness 
 and rapidity will come of their own accord. 
 But the correctness is also a sine qua non : 
 for it is the intelligent and faithful obedi- 
 ence of the body to the wiU which is no less 
 an object of exercise than the efficiency of 
 the body "considered by itself, and just as 
 to practise these exercises correctly is the 
 foundation of a good habit, so to practise 
 them incorrectly is the foundation of a 
 bad one. 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 89 
 
 For athletes, then, we beheve that they 
 will help in a marked degree to keep the 
 muscles in good tone when there is forced 
 on them a period of inaction from games. 
 This effect would not be obtainable 
 from dumb-bell exercises, since the latter 
 for the most part are slow movements which 
 are not of the least good as practice for 
 games, but (though undoubtedly strength- 
 giving) if used alone rather prejudicial to speed 
 than otherwise. And for non-athletic people 
 and athletes alike, they will help to keep the 
 body in good health, not only because, for 
 reasons given above, exercise is healthy, but 
 because many of them are specially devoted 
 to using those large muscle-areas of the 
 body on which the proper daily working of 
 the system depends, and these are exercised 
 without risk of straining, whereas to exer- 
 cise them with heavy dumb-bells in the 
 hands has before now produced, and wiU 
 
90 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 again produce, injury. Furthermore, the 
 body is far less Uable to be attacked by 
 definite disease if it is in a healthy condition, 
 while also the daily hardening which it will 
 experience in the system of exposure which 
 we recommend, will render it considerably 
 less prone to catch cold by reason of 
 draughts or change of temperatures, which 
 otherwise are often the immediate causes 
 of chill. 
 
 Now, though games are more to be 
 recommended than mere exercise for those 
 who can afford the time and money for 
 them, inasmuch as the enjoyment derived 
 from them is greater (the benefit derived 
 being therefore greater),* and all sorts of 
 
 * " As certain as it is that a country walk through fine scenery is 
 more invigorating than an equq,! number of steps up and down a hall, 
 so certain is it that the muscular activity of a game, accompanied by the 
 ordinary exhilaration, invigorates more than the same amount of mus- 
 cular activity in the shape of gymnastics." — Herbert Spencer, in Facts 
 and Comments. 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 91 
 
 qualities are called out, which mere exer- 
 cises do not demand, it must not be sup- 
 posed that all games (or for that matter 
 all exercises) are suitable to aU ages and con- 
 stitutions. For in the human body speed 
 (as in these exercises) is naturally developed 
 before strength, and a lad of twenty will 
 beat a man of forty in a hundred yards' 
 race, though he has not nearly the same 
 amount of pure physical force at his dis- 
 posal. Short and violent exercises, exer- 
 cises demanding top speed, or a swift stroke, 
 are natural to youth, and, broadly speaking, 
 as with advancing years (even though a 
 man is still in his prime) strength increases, 
 speed somewhat diminishes. Thus, though 
 exercise and exercises are quite undoubt- 
 edly good for a young boy, it seems by 
 the example of nature herself, that exercises 
 demanding strength and continued effort 
 are bad. Thus for children we should never 
 
92 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 recommend dumb-bell or developer exer- 
 cises at all, except with weights and resist- 
 ances so small that they practically call 
 forth no extra strength to manipulate, but 
 which serve in so far as the hand is occupied 
 to fix the child's attention on what he is 
 doing. Even in later years strength, or 
 at any rate that sort of strength which is 
 measured and accompanied by very bulky 
 muscles, not only does not assist, but even 
 hinders speed of any movement ; and though 
 a certain amount of strength is required 
 for movement of any kind, it is (though 
 it is possible not to have enough) also 
 possible to have too much of the wrong 
 sort. Of course, if a man's physical ambi- 
 tion is limited to weight-lifting, there is 
 nothing more to be said : let him continu- 
 ally lift weights. But if it is in the direction 
 either of good health or athletic excellence, 
 we think he can do better than practise 
 
EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. 93 
 
 habitually with dumb-bells, or " grips," or 
 other strain-producing apparatus. 
 
 Finally, exercise in company with others 
 is more entertaining and likely to be then 
 done both better and more beneficially 
 than exercise practised alone, and it is with 
 this among other objects that we have 
 advocated in the chapter on Mind and 
 Morals the formation of city clubs where 
 both practice-exercises hke those given 
 above could be done in classes, and also 
 such games as squash, badminton, fives, and 
 covered tennis be played. In the separate 
 volumes which deal with individual games 
 will be found special practice-exercises for 
 those games, some of which can take the 
 place of the general exercises given above, 
 since they exercise the same muscles, but in 
 a way more directly adapted for the games 
 in question. 
 
94 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DIET AND STIMULANTS. 
 
 Dogmatism on any subject is dangerous : 
 in matters of food it is fatal. One man's 
 meat is literally another man's poison, and 
 because one of the writers knows that per- 
 sonally he can digest without the sUghtest 
 discomfort a heavy supper, sleep the sleep" 
 of the just, and rise cheerful and hungry for 
 breakfast, he would be making a great 
 mistake in recommending such a course for 
 a dyspeptic person, with a view to the 
 strengthening of his digestive processes. In 
 fact, if a naturally dyspeptic person per- 
 severed in such a system, this unfortunate 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 95 
 
 scribe would probably be summoned to 
 attend — with shame and dishonour — a 
 coroner's inquest. On the other hand, 
 should the dyspeptic so far win him over as 
 to make him give what he would call a 
 " fair trial " to a simple diet, " the only 
 diet " he would say " on which it is possible 
 to keep fairly weU," he would, if it was per- 
 severed with, be probably asked in a public 
 place what he knew about this suicide. But 
 the moral of these gloomy reflections is clear 
 enough : namely, that in questions of 
 eating and drinking and smoking, what is 
 to be ascertained is the diet which wiU 
 keep A or B in good health for the proper 
 performance of a citizen's duties. What- 
 ever diet (or absence of diet) continues to 
 give good resvdts after a protracted trial 
 is almost certainly good for the individual 
 in question. Whether it would be good for 
 another individual it is impossible to say. 
 
96 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 but if any one person^ even though he hved 
 exclusively on green cigars and Egyptian 
 mummies, continued to be in his most 
 excellent health on such a diet, it would be 
 foolish to urge him, except on the score of 
 expense in the way of import duties, to 
 change it. 
 
 But the majority of people are not at their 
 best, and know it. When they are in hard 
 work which, as far as we can see in the pre- 
 sent highly competitive state of the world, 
 is becoming the normal condition for man, 
 their bodily health, and in particular their 
 bodily activity, sensibly declines. Then 
 perhaps there comes a lull, and they rush 
 off into the country to be out of doors all 
 day, and play games, or shoot or hunt, and 
 get sensibly better. They have more 
 appetite for food, and as a natural conse- 
 quence digest it better, since wholesome 
 appetite is a fair enough sign-post pointing 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 97 
 
 to the pleasant place called " Eat." Then 
 the lull ceases ; they go back to work again, 
 with a gradual decline of appetite. At 
 these cross-roads, so to speak, for the most 
 part they take the wrong turning, and con- 
 tinue to eat much as before. Horrors 
 ensue. 
 
 The fact is that most people when taking a 
 great deal of exercise are able to digest, and, 
 what is not less important, to assimilate, 
 not only larger quantities of food than they 
 can assimilate when in full sedentary work, 
 but a different sort of food. As a rule they 
 know of only one change of diet, alluded to 
 contemptuously as " Vegetarianism," and 
 connected in their minds with huge platefuls 
 of damp cabbage, of which the most valu- 
 able salts have been boiled out and thrown 
 away by an ignorant cook. They are 
 further " put off " by what appears to most 
 people preposterous notions about the sin, 
 
 7 
 
98 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 no less, of eating animal food. In fact, 
 bad cooking and tactless enthusiasm have 
 hand in hand done their utmost to ruin the 
 vegetarian cause. To eat damp cabbage can 
 be, by no conceivable process, good for any- 
 body, and to shun animal food because it im- 
 plies death to an animal is a motive which does 
 not appeal to the majority, who, without ex- 
 amining any possible truth it may contain, 
 label it a fad. And there is nothing which in 
 the minds of ordinary people, who most natur- 
 ally and sensibly do not wish to spend the 
 whole of their lives in discovering the diet 
 which best suits them, is more strongly 
 prejudicial to any examination of a new 
 system than to suspect it of being faddy. 
 They naturally desire a regime of which the 
 common-sense appeals to them, and the 
 common-sense of that which is ordinarily 
 called vegetarianism is far to seek. Many 
 people have found that the amount, of 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 99 
 
 meat which they usually eat is not very good 
 for them : that three flesh meals a day 
 are excessive in the way of animal food ; on 
 the other hand they must have something 
 substituted for the meat, and they turn to 
 vegetarianism, and perhaps try a meal at 
 some vegetarian eating-house. One of the 
 present writers tried it. For an hour or rather 
 less he felt that he would never eat again 
 as long as he lived, then, almost without 
 transition, he felt that he wished to eat 
 the whole world round. And he fled back 
 to the fleshpots of Egypt. 
 
 But nowadays vegetarianism is studied 
 by certain people in a spirit of scientific 
 investigation, and its results, rationally 
 arrived at, are likely to prove of the most 
 permanent value. It is the greatest pos- 
 sible mistake to suppose that all vegetables 
 and fruits are equally supporting ; some are 
 highly nutritious, others are hardly nutri- 
 
 7* 
 
loo DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 tious at all, and to load the stomach with 
 immense masses of a food which has a low 
 nutritious value, in order to get sufficient 
 nutriment, will probably produce results 
 on health worse even than those from which 
 the man who found that he was taking ex- 
 cessive quantities of animal food tried to 
 escape.* 
 
 Briefly, then, the scientific view of food 
 in general is as follows.- 
 
 Food has to supply waste of tissue and 
 make repairs. 
 
 Food has to supply heat (fuel for the 
 continual combustion of the body) and a 
 certain amount of fat. 
 
 Food — so it is usually asserted and largely 
 
 * ' ' Many men are attempting to carry the diet of youth on into middle 
 life and age, or the diet that was quite correct for an active outdoor life 
 into a life of sedentary office work in a town ; or if they fall into neither 
 of these errors they are generally completely ignorant with regard to 
 the relative value and importance of foods, so that they either starve 
 themselves on vegetables or herbs containing little or no albumen, or, 
 on the other hand, overfeed themselves. . . ." — Dr. Alexander Haig. 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. loi 
 
 believed — has to give the stomach a certain 
 amount of fibrous matter to supply bulk 
 which will enable the system, by natural 
 means, to cleanse and flush itself inter- 
 nally, and throw off the waste for which it 
 has no use, but which exists in greater or 
 smaller quantities in all foods. 
 
 Incidentally, also, food should be of such 
 taste and nature as easily to excite the saliva, 
 which is almost indispensable to procure 
 digestion. 
 
 Now the one great necessity without which 
 we die is proteid, because proteid sup- 
 plies (and nothing else in the world supplies) 
 the waste which daily and hourly goes on 
 in the body. It is present in conveniently 
 large quantities in all meat foods, which is 
 one of the main causes of their being eaten, 
 but it is present also in large quantities in 
 cheese, milk-proteid, grains, nuts, and pulses, 
 though in certain other fruits and vegetables 
 
I02 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 it is almost completely absent. It would 
 be practically impossible, for instance, to 
 eat enough cabbages to supply the necessary 
 amount of pure proteid per diem, which 
 must, and this is important, not only be 
 swallowed but be digested. On the other 
 hand, it is easily possible to get enough 
 proteid per diem by a meat diet, but it is 
 even easier to get enough from a diet of 
 grains, nuts, pulses, and milk-proteid,* pro- 
 vided the right sorts are eaten. 
 
 The following abridged table giving the 
 values of certain common articles of diet 
 both in proteids and also in fattening and 
 heating products will make this clear. 
 
 * For the question of milk-proteid in general, see Text-book of 
 Physiology (Schafer), Vol. I., page 135. For Plasmon, Hovis, and 
 other simple foods, see Muscle, Brain and Diet (Sonnenschein 
 &Co.). 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 
 
 103 
 
 TABLE OF FOOD VALUES. 
 
 (ABRIDGED FROM "FAILURES OF VEGETARIANISM.") 
 
 Foods — uncooked, 
 
 unless otherwise 
 
 stated. 
 
 Beef (with moderate 
 amount of fat) . . . 
 
 Mutton (with mode- 
 rate amount of fat) 
 
 Pork 
 
 Fresh fish 
 
 Milk 
 
 Plasmon 
 
 Cheddar cheese 
 
 Eggs (white) 
 
 Eggs (yolk) 
 
 Hovis bread 
 
 Wholemeal bread 
 (" Manhu " is similar) 
 
 White bread 
 
 Boiled rice 
 
 Macaroni 
 
 Dried peas 
 
 Lentils 
 
 Haricots 
 
 Potatoes 
 
 Turnips 
 
 Onions 
 
 Cabbage 
 
 Tomatoes 
 
 Cucumbers 
 
 Apples 
 
 Plums 
 
 Cherries 
 
 Strawberries 
 
 Bananas 
 
 Lemons 
 
 Dried dates 
 
 Dried figs 
 
 Chestnuts 
 
 Walnuts 
 
 Sweet almonds 
 
 Cocoa bean 
 
 Proteid. 
 
 Fat. 
 
 20 
 
 i-S 
 
 14- S 
 
 I9-S 
 
 12. 
 
 26.2 
 
 lo-S 
 
 2.5 
 
 2-3 
 
 4- 
 
 69 
 
 
 33-4 
 
 26.8 
 
 12.6 
 
 0.2s 
 
 16.2 
 
 3I-7S 
 
 9-9 
 
 1.6 
 
 6.3 
 
 1.2 
 
 6.Sto3 
 
 1.0 
 
 S.o 
 
 0.1 
 
 10.89 
 
 0-4S 
 
 21.0 
 
 1.8 
 
 23.0 
 
 2.0 
 
 23.0 
 
 2-3 
 
 r.2 
 
 O.I 
 
 0.9 
 
 0.15 
 
 1.6 
 
 0-3 
 
 1.8 
 
 0.4 
 
 1-3 
 
 0.2 
 
 0.81 
 
 0.1 
 
 0.4 
 
 
 I.O 
 
 
 0.8 
 
 
 1.0 
 
 
 1.5103 
 
 
 1.0 
 
 
 4-4 
 
 
 SS 
 
 
 10. 1 
 
 lO.O 
 
 15.6 
 
 62.6 
 
 24.0 
 
 54- 
 
 6.3 
 
 50-44 
 
 Carbo-hydrates. 
 
 4-S 
 
 42-3 
 44.8 
 
 Si-2 
 41.9 
 76.05 
 S5-4 
 58-4 
 55-8 
 19. 1 
 5.0 
 
 63 
 
 5.8 
 
 5.0 
 
 2.1 
 
 12.5 
 
 14.8 
 
 8.9 
 
 6.3 
 
 22.9 
 
 8-3 
 65.7 
 62.8 
 
 7-4 
 10.0 
 4.20 
 
 Salts. 
 
 1-3 
 
 0.8 
 
 I.I 
 
 I. 
 
 0.7 
 
 8.5 
 
 3-9 
 
 1.2 
 1.2 
 
 1.0 
 
 0.3 
 
 0.64 
 
 2.6 
 
 2.7 
 
 3-2 
 
 0.9 
 
 0.8 
 
 0.6 
 
 1-3 
 
 0.76 
 
 0.4 
 
 0.4 
 
 o-S 
 0.5 
 0.7 
 0.9 
 0.5 
 i-S 
 
 2-3 
 
 2.7 
 2.9 
 30 
 2.75 
 
I04 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 It is obvious then, that as far as the theo- 
 retical reasons for eating food at all are 
 concerned, it is perfectly easy to obtain all 
 the essentials for support without touching 
 animal food, and without in any way 
 loading the stomach with unnecessary bulk ; 
 and leaving out of the question, for the 
 present, the economical advantage of adopt- 
 ing these simple foods, there is one enormous 
 advantage which they possess for many. 
 These are they who, especially in town life, 
 and when they are not able to take the 
 requisite amount of exercise, suffer chronic- 
 ally from slight biliousness or congested liver, 
 and the depression attendant thereon, who 
 feel sleepy or fatigued when in better health 
 they would feel neither. Their ailments may 
 rarely or never amount to what they would 
 call " an attack," but habitually they are 
 slightly clogged. Now in nine cases out of 
 ten this feeling is due to the presence of 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 105 
 
 uric acid in the body, which is produced in 
 -larger quantities than the system, without 
 the aid of daily perspiration, which gets 
 rid of acids to a large extent through the 
 skin, can throw off. This uric acid is a pro- 
 duct of waste within the body, and the foods 
 which cause it are (to a much larger extent 
 than aU others) flesh foods. 
 
 Many people know this without knowing 
 it ; in other words, many men who have an 
 attack of biliousness, lumbago, or gout (all 
 direct results of the presence of uric acid in 
 the body), at once cut off, even without 
 consulting a doctor, their daily consump- 
 tion of flesh. But then their ignorance 
 makes them suffer, for they most likely in 
 the curtaUment of flesh-food do not take 
 enough proteid, with the effect that after a 
 day or two of such treatment they feel 
 lowered. Naturally : they have been 
 starving. And the lowered feehng they put 
 
106 DAILY TRAINING. 
 J 
 
 down to the absence of flesh-food, whereas 
 it is chiefly the absence of proteid from 
 which they are suffering. They could easily 
 have avoided this by eating instead of flesh 
 some of the fleshless foods which are valu- 
 able in proteid, and they can — humanly 
 speaking — if the abstinence from fliesh- 
 foods, as is almost invariably the case, 
 relieves their attack, guard against such 
 attacks in the future, by a diet, complete 
 or modified, of the kind which has relieved 
 them. But, and this is highly important, 
 it is a fatal mistake not to take enough 
 proteid, and not to remember that it is 
 easily possible to eat heavy meals without 
 taking enough. Four or five ounces per 
 diem of proteid, not only swallowed but 
 digested, is said to be the average required. 
 
 Now there are many people in excellent 
 health who live in the ordinary manner 
 i.e., on a varied diet including meat, and as 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 107 
 
 long as they are well^ there seems to be no 
 reason, except to be humane and to save 
 the money they spend in food — and that 
 may be a great inducement — why they 
 should try a new diet when their present 
 one suits them well, except that, for all 
 they can tell, another diet might suit them 
 better. At the same time there are cer- 
 tainly many people who are perfectly aware 
 that they have periodical attacks of liver or 
 biliousness directly traceable to diet, and 
 many others who put themselves down as 
 having chronically bad digestions, with 
 which any food is continually liable to 
 disagree. It is to these particularly that a 
 trial of the simpler foods is recommended, 
 whether they are adopted in toto, or used to 
 modify existing diet. Similarly, also, the 
 simpler foods are recommended as worth 
 a trial by athletes who are in training for 
 some special event, to whom either economy 
 
io8 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 is an object (for a most varied diet of simpler 
 foods can be had at a daily cost of less than 
 a shilling), or whom the present heavy though 
 wholesome meals do not suit. Furthermore, 
 it is quite possible, as we said, that even 
 those who consider themselves well might be 
 still better without flesh-foods. 
 
 Another effect of this simpler food diet 
 is that it has been found by trial to lessen 
 greatly the desire for stimulants. Why 
 this should be so is a question for physio- 
 logists, and cannot be discussed here. It 
 may, however, be taken as a fact. And 
 those who have tried the diet fairly (and 
 one of the present writers has lived on 
 simple foods — i.e., scarcely touched meat in 
 any form for some years) find that abstinence 
 from meat directly increases the activity 
 and promptitude, not only of the body, 
 but of the mind, while both mind and body 
 are capable of doing far harder and better 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 109 
 
 work than before. The simpler food diet 
 by itself will probably be found adequate 
 to reduce the excessive uric acid in the body 
 to practically nil — i.e., natural means will be 
 sufficient to cope with it; but it is useful 
 to remember that alkalis may also be used 
 as a preventive or cure. 
 
 Another alteration in diet, which we 
 give with the reiterated proviso that it 
 may not suit everybody, is the habit 
 of having no breakfast, or if any, only 
 a fruit breakfast. A very great number 
 of people do not feel hungry immediately 
 on rising, and in America this plan is largely 
 adopted even by those who have to start 
 the day with severe physical work. For 
 those who do feel hungry on rising it seems 
 most probable that breakfast is indicated, 
 but on the other hand it is more than 
 possible that for those who do not, break- 
 fast is not indicated. And to eat a typical 
 
no DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 English breakfast, consisting probably of 
 fish and meat, washed down with tea — 
 which cannot be recommended as a fluid 
 likely to help digestion. When one does not 
 want it, is really to require a daily miracle 
 from the inside if one is so unreasonable as 
 to demand that it shall dispose of these 
 things without more ado. Similarly, to limit 
 one's eating to two meals a day has been 
 found by many to be a valuable aid to 
 health, though others, on the other hand, find 
 that the quantity they really feel that they 
 require, if they only eat twice, is apt to 
 overload the stomach. 
 
 Again, it is probably not good for anybody 
 to take violent exertion of the body, or do 
 headwork immediately after or before any 
 meal. With many people it is unfortunately 
 impossible to prevent this; a man's only 
 free time for his exercise may be imme- 
 diately after lunch, or he may have to con- 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. m 
 
 tinue his deskwork till immediately before. 
 In such cases this must be taken as a neces- 
 sary evil ; for exercise even immediately 
 after a meal will probably be better for a 
 man than none at all, while not to work up 
 to the meal may mean neglect of work, 
 which is more culpable than indigestion. 
 For such, a light meal is strongly recom- 
 mended, and in particular a meal as free of 
 flesh-foods as the eater can manage. 
 
 It is of the greatest importance that what- 
 ever diet is found to suit the individual 
 taste, this diet should be eaten slowly and 
 thoroughly masticated, otherwise the most 
 suitable and wholesome food may both 
 disagree with the eater, and lose most of 
 its nourishing value. Nuts are a good 
 example of this — they have an odious repu- 
 tation for indigestibility which is quite 
 unfounded, for they are perfectly easy of 
 digestion to most people if only they are 
 
112 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 very thoroughly masticated. But swallowed 
 in large pieces, in any pieces in fact except 
 the smallest, they are exceedingly indi- 
 gestible. Similarly, also, many nuts are 
 extremely rich in proteids (the chestnut, 
 for instance, containing 14-6 per cent., the 
 peanut* upwards of 28 per cent, of proteid), 
 but in order to get at the proteid they must 
 be bitten almost to powder and thoroughly 
 mixed with saliva. Otherwise they are not 
 distributed {i.e., digested), but are passed 
 through the body in the same way as chests 
 of gold (securely fastened up) can be sent 
 by train, so to speak, through a country 
 without enriching it. It is of equal import- 
 ance thoroughly to masticate all starchy 
 foods (bread, potatoes, &c.), so that the 
 saliva may penetrate them and begin the 
 work of digestion in the mouth, and it is 
 largely for this reason that doctors recom- 
 
 * Though this really belongs to the Pulse family. 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 113 
 
 mend toast or biscuits to dyspeptic patients 
 
 rather than bread, because it is impossible 
 
 to swallow crisp toast without properly 
 
 biting it, whereas lumps of soft bread can 
 
 be swallowed without actual pain. On this 
 
 point we adopt a fearless dogmatism, and 
 
 assert that it is good for nobody to swallow 
 
 unmasticated food, both because the act 
 
 of mastication is part of the digestive 
 
 process, and because mastication itself 
 
 renders the nutritive elements of the food 
 
 accessible to the stomach. Thtis less bulk 
 
 of food is needed, there is less waste, and 
 
 the digestive juices of the stomach are 
 
 not, so to speak, called on to make violent 
 
 assaults on what they receive, to behave 
 
 like burglars, wresting what is valuable 
 
 from the food. The burglary is done by 
 
 the teeth, which, by the way, seem to be 
 
 kept in better repair by mere mastication 
 
 than by any other means, and the 
 
 8 
 
114 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 energy otherwise used by the stomach re- 
 mains undrawn upon. Also, if one bites 
 food well it is far easier to know correctly 
 when one has eaten enough ; lumps of food 
 bolted are for the time being " locked up " ; 
 it is uncertain whether they are going to 
 satisfy hunger or not. Even if unnutri- 
 tious they will produce a feeling of satiety 
 for the time being, and an hou^r later they 
 may be found wanting. A certain amount 
 of bulk, as we have said, is needed, but 
 beyond that the richer a food is in the 
 desired qualities of power of repair, and of 
 supply of energy, the better is that food, 
 provided it is easily digestible. And its 
 full value cannot be brought into play, 
 especially in the case of starchy foods, 
 without thorough mastication.* 
 
 As to drink and stimulants more regard 
 
 * On the part played by saliva in digestion generally see Text-book 
 of Physiology (Schafer), Vol. I., page 342, &c. 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 115 
 
 if possible must be paid to what we have 
 called " the personal equation " than even 
 in matters of food. Excess of everything — 
 for such is the implication of the word itself 
 — must be bad for everybody, but there is 
 no earthly foundation for supposing that 
 what is excess for one person injures another 
 in the very least. A shower of rain ruins 
 a picture-hat in a few moments : the same 
 shower does not practically injure a loco- 
 motive engine at all, and is absolutely good 
 for sprouting corn. Alcohol for instance, if 
 indulged in at all by one man, will assuredly 
 lead either to excess or to inordinate craving 
 for it, while another man will drink wine 
 at lunch and dinner for years without ever 
 feeling the slightest desire to increase his 
 usual quantity. What he drinks, again, 
 would hopelessly disagree with, or perhaps in- 
 toxicate another man, while it seems as far as 
 
 we can judge to suit him ; he would perhaps 
 
 8* 
 
ii6 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 even be definitely less well without it. It 
 is on this point that preachers of total 
 abstinence J just like vegetarians, are often 
 their own worst foes. They seem to regard 
 the process of fermentation (a natural one 
 after all) as productive of something which 
 is in itself immoral. Drunkenness, of 
 course, is a vice ; we all know that ; but 
 so, and certain teetotallers seem to forget 
 this, is gluttony. They each of them turn 
 man into a brute beast, though what many 
 teetotallers would look approvingly at as 
 " a good hearty meal " appears to us to 
 partake fully as much of the nature of 
 debauchery as does the drinking of a bottle 
 of champagne at dinner. The question of 
 drinking, in fact, seems to us one that each 
 man must settle for himself, by finding out 
 experimentally whether he needs stimulant 
 or not. Probably the healthier he is the 
 less he needs it, and to spur a horse that 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 117 
 
 is already going as well as the rider has any 
 right to expect is both a cruelty and a false 
 use of energy. It seems certain, also, that 
 most people who take stimulants at all 
 take more than they really need, partly 
 because of the pleasant effect of stimulant in 
 the heightened vividity it gives (leaving 
 anything like drunkenness out of the ques- 
 tion), and because of the taste of alcoholic 
 beverages, which nine out of ten people find 
 most palatable. Here again preachers, of 
 total abstinence put forward an argument 
 so silly that it is scarcely worth combating 
 (were it not for the fact that it is so often 
 repeated), when they say that what we have 
 called " heightened vividity " is the thin 
 end of intoxication. It is nothing of the 
 kind. Food itself is a stimulant as well as 
 a nutriment; a mutton chop or a welsh 
 rarebit when one is hungry gives heightened 
 vividity ; so also does whisky and soda. 
 
ii8 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 But, and here we tread more sensible 
 ground, it must be remembered that 
 alcohol is not a nourishing stimulant, and 
 that its effect quickly wears off, leaving 
 reaction, however slight, in everybody. 
 Nor must we keep out of the question what 
 the continued effects of alcohol are. Its 
 bad results may not be apparent for a long 
 time. In certain cases there are bad 
 results ; in certain other cases apparently 
 there are none. Authorities on training are 
 universally agreed that very little, if any, 
 should be taken when the training has 
 begun ; and they are unquestionably right, 
 because the object of training is to produce 
 before a certain date or during a certain 
 period a specimen .of manhood at its highest 
 possible physical level, strung up and main- 
 tained at concert pitch. To do this the 
 whole structure must be sound, and stimulant 
 then appears to be of the nature of a tem- 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 119 
 
 porary prop, which has again and again 
 to be set up afresh. Also, repeatedly apphed 
 stimulant followed by repeated reaction is 
 not ideal. 
 
 The same remarks apply to the ordinary 
 individual in a less degree ; for though he 
 should aim at ideal health, he does not 
 want the sort of health which a boat-race 
 crew want. In fact, in a necessarily seden- 
 tary life it would be exceedingly incon- 
 venient to him ; for to maintain it it seems 
 necessary to have hard daily exercise, 
 quantities of open air, and hours which are 
 practically impossible for the ordinary man 
 who has to do his daily work. An ab- 
 stemious man who has been accustomed to 
 alcohol may easily, if he drops its use 
 altogether, find himself continuing to desire 
 it, at an expense of nervous fretting which 
 will cost him more than the possible gain 
 in health may be worth. But when any man 
 
I20 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 who takes alcohol finds himself desiring it 
 more and more and in increased quantities, 
 if even at one meal, let us say, he is \inable 
 to get it, and finds himself fretting for it, 
 we have no hesitation in begging him at 
 whatever cost to drop it altogether and at 
 once. We do not say he is on the high road 
 to become a drunkard, but somewhere ahead 
 of him there easily may be that high road. 
 We should further advise everybody to try 
 at any rate what is the effect of drinking 
 alcohol, let us say, once a day only. Of 
 course, the difficulty which faces most people 
 is what to drink instead ; and, as far as 
 pleasure goes, the difficulty is a real one. 
 We cordially recommend total abstainers to 
 try to find a solution. Various non-alco- 
 holic drinks have from time to time been 
 sedulously advertised, but most of them 
 are abhorrent to the ordinary palate, being 
 sickly sweet. 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 121 
 
 Here comes in the question of the general 
 regulation of drinks, which, theoretically, 
 we are afraid, is a most uncomfortable 
 gospel. For the effect of drinking cold 
 things during a meal, except in very small 
 quantities, is without doubt digestively 
 criminal : since the result of pouring cold 
 aspersions into the stomach whUe it is busy 
 with digestion is to lower its temperature 
 at the time when heat is needed, and also 
 to weaken and water down the digestive 
 juices.* There is no getting over this : long 
 drinks on hot days at lunch are not to be 
 recommended. But even here the baffled 
 voluptuary may find a way out which is 
 not so disagreeable. He may by all means 
 have his long drink half an hour before 
 lunch, or at a rather long interval after. 
 If he choose after, he will find, especially 
 
 * On the excitation of the gastric juices by suggestion only, see 
 Schafer, Text-book of Physiology, Vol. I., page 349. 
 
122 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 if he has eaten fruit at lunch, that he does 
 not want it, and that though the satisfac- 
 tion of a real throatful of cold liquid is 
 denied him, he will have taken during lixnch 
 quite sufficient liquid to satisfy his thirst. 
 But that is the best we can do for him, and 
 we will not insult him by saying that plenty 
 of hot water or hot water and lemon is 
 delicious, and so much nicer than whisky and 
 soda iced. For it is not nearly so nice. 
 
 Finally, with regard to that other soother 
 and strengthener, tobacco, we have no sym- 
 pathy with extremists, and we assert that 
 the moderate use of tobacco will not and 
 cannot reduce the ordinary constitution to 
 a wreck in ten years, while in many cases 
 it is absolutely beneficial, at least for the 
 time, as a nerve-sedative. Many people, one 
 of the present writers is one, finds that he 
 can work more steadily and with less rest- 
 lessness when smoking. But, and here is 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 123 
 
 a warning, if, after a spell of hard work of 
 three or four hours, you find the ash-tray a 
 pile of cigarette ends, most of them pro- 
 bably smoked only half-consciously, take 
 steps. Put the box of cigarettes in another 
 room, so that you have to get up in order 
 to procure one. Then, if you find yourself 
 wondering whether it is worth while getting 
 one, you may be quite certain that you do 
 not really want it. Furthermore, tobacco 
 is not nearly so insidious as alcohol ; it is 
 perfectly easy for every one who smokes 
 to know whether it suits him. Many 
 people it does not suit at all, and most of 
 them know it. Here we should recommend 
 all smokers to try the effect of abstinence 
 for a couple of days, or at any rate of ab- 
 stinence up till dinner-time. This would 
 separate the sheep from the goats : many — 
 the present writer is one again — will find 
 that apparently no good effects ensue, and 
 
124 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 a certain restlessness is the only result. 
 Others will find themselves distinctly better 
 both in energy and in accuracy of eye and 
 keenness of perception. These we should 
 recommend to drop it altogether, and for 
 their comfort the writer can assure them 
 that, having tried this experiment himself, 
 he found that the craving for it lasted only 
 a few days, and that during those few days 
 it was always possible to neutralise it for 
 periods of an hour or so, by chewing an 
 ordinary dried camomile-flower (2d. per 
 ounce), the extreme and rather pleasant 
 bitterness of which renders the thought of 
 tobacco literally abhorrent as long as the 
 taste of it remains in the mouth. 
 
 But here again strict training for a 
 special event almost, if not quite, unani- 
 mously demands a total abstinence from 
 tobacco from the beginning of training. 
 The use of this we confess ourselves utterly 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 125 
 
 unable to see, since we do not believe 
 at all that, as in the case of drink, to take 
 a little necessarily means a desire for more, 
 but rather the extinguishing of the desire 
 for the time being. The case is, in fact, in 
 our judgment, a parallel to the shower of 
 rain on the locomotive : it is inconceivable 
 almost that it should do so much harm as 
 its uncompromising opponents assert, and 
 in many cases we believe its very moderate 
 use would save a certain amount of rest- 
 lessness, which in present systems of train- 
 ing is far more common than it ought to 
 be. It is not in fact rare, whereas it should 
 be not only rare, but almost unknown. 
 For training is supposed to be the ideal 
 way of living with a view to complete phy- 
 sical fitness, but under most systems severe 
 training entails an almost total cessation of 
 brain work, while it does not imply a total 
 cessation of mental worry. Men often get 
 
126 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 fidgetty and stale before their weeks of 
 training are nearly over, and this is due 
 partly, no doubt, to the absurd system of 
 training a whole crew, for instance, as 
 if they were identical specimens of the 
 same man, but also to the very fact 
 that brain work is practically tabooed, 
 just as tobacco is tabooed. Neither, in 
 strict moderation, we believe, particularly 
 brain-work, can possibly be as bad as they 
 are frequently accused of being, and both 
 might very possibly be found a sedative for 
 a body that is bursting with condition. 
 Besides, if training unfits a man for brain- 
 work there is something probably wrong 
 with the system of training, whereas if any 
 brain-work unfits a man for training, it is 
 seriously to be considered whether it is 
 worth while to train at all.* 
 
 * "The process of training that has to be undergone by athletes 
 nowadays is reduced to hard-and-fast rules. That these rules are not 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 127 
 
 For the right training, so we beUeve, is 
 that which shall enable a man — this is no 
 fanciful idea, but one that has and is now 
 being put into practice by both the writers 
 — to be capable of hard brain-work during the 
 whole time that he is putting his body into 
 the best possible condition both for general 
 health and also for a special event. The 
 mens sana should not be left out of the 
 corpore sano, and health consists in the 
 efficiency not of one at the cost of the other, 
 but of both to the benefit of each. Finally, 
 with regard to special training, we believe 
 that it cannot possibly fail to be injurious 
 
 so good or scientific as could be wished is a matter for regret. The 
 work of training is left to ' trainers, ' and they are men who, learning 
 from their predecessors whatever facts were known to them, build up a 
 code of rules framed largely on imperfect experience, and added on to 
 by what they themselves have believed to be useful. Medical men of 
 reliable knowledge and sound professional attainments have seldom 
 lent themselves to consider seriously the subject of training, and so 
 place the subject on a sure scientific footing. . . . Many a man 
 breaks down in training from being made the subject of some imper- 
 fect or unsuitable regime." — Dr. James Cantlie, in "The Book of 
 Health." 
 
128 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 to a man to go out of severe training with 
 the completeness and suddenness with which 
 many do when the event is over. After a 
 training of weeks, the desire for certain 
 foods and stimulants, if they were in them- 
 selves unhealthy, should have ceased, the 
 body in fact should have been brought into 
 such a condition that it would feel by now 
 a natural repugnance for them. If, then, 
 this repugnance, or at any rate absence of 
 desire is not felt, either they were not un- 
 healthy, and might have been allowed in 
 moderation, or the resumption of them with 
 that extreme freedom — not to say excess — 
 which marks the end of training, is only 
 compassed with a certain effort. Is it 
 worth while ? 
 
 Finally^ also, with regard to general 
 training, the acquirement that is of really 
 good health, which is within the reach of the 
 majority, and incumbent upon all to 
 
DIET AND STIMULANTS. 129 
 
 attempt, a fair trial of simpler foods is re- 
 commended to all who habitually feel 
 slightly indisposed when working hard, and 
 who are cut off to a large extent from regular 
 exercise, and is suggested, if only on the 
 ground of expense, to many others. Similarly, 
 a diminution in stimulants is recommended 
 to all who habitually take them, in order that 
 they may find for themselves what the 
 effect' (on themselves only) is. Similarly, 
 also, with regard to smoking : for the con- 
 census of professional trainers is dead 
 against it, as a foe both to eye and endur- 
 ance. Some, we believe, will not find it so, 
 but anyone may, and very likely the majority 
 will. In any case, it will hurt nobody to 
 drop it for a week or two. 
 
 9 
 
I30 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WATERj HEAT AND LIGHT. 
 
 It is not our intention to speak in any 
 special manner about prescribed remedies 
 for different ailments, since our concern is 
 with the general standard of health and 
 fitness rather than with temporary ailments, 
 for which in many cases some special treat- 
 ment is the most convenient remedy. But 
 our object being to show how by a proper 
 mode of life the body may be put into a 
 state of health in which it is the least likely 
 to need any help from drugs or special treat- 
 ment, it would be clearly out of place, and 
 imply a want of faith on our part in our 
 present system if we thought it in the 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 131 
 
 least necessary to talk much about remedial 
 treatments. But there are certain simple 
 applications of water and heat, which 
 though they may be adopted remedially, 
 are yet part of a rational and healthy 
 mode of life — that is to say, they can both 
 be used by anyone suffering from some 
 definite complaint, and at the same time 
 belong to the daily and regular regime of 
 the thoroughly healthy man. The different 
 sorts of baths, for instance, are, if rightly 
 and scientifically used, both remedial, and 
 will form part of the daily treatment of the 
 healthy body. 
 
 As far as concerns the upper classes, at 
 any rate, there is probably no race in the 
 world which nowadays* uses so much water 
 as the Anglo-Saxon ; but our manner of 
 
 * " To-day we take baths as a matter of course. Apart from the 
 pleasure of washing and of having washed, we know that soft warm 
 water can remove ' the dried-up epidermis or scarf-skin, the deposit of 
 sweaty and oily matter, to say nothing of the dirt and impurities 
 
132 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 using it is, to a large extent, luxurious 
 rather than practical, sensuous rather than 
 sensible. The morning cold bath, for in- 
 stance, which some Frenchman the other 
 day wittily called the " Englishman's castle," 
 is, though eminently healthy and invigorat- 
 ing for some people, neither healthy nor 
 invigorating for all, and cleansing for none 
 except in a slight degree. The cold bath, 
 indeed, is a sort of fetish ; it is re- 
 garded as a piece of ritual belonging to 
 the scheme of things which " makes us 
 Englishmen what we are," and to criticise 
 the use. of cold baths is something like 
 " taking the breeks off a Hielander." But 
 for the sake of those thousands who have 
 
 derived from the air and the particles rubbed off from our clothing. ' 
 But ' we realise with difficulty that the bath W£is but rarely met with in 
 houses built even forty years ago. Bathing in those days, and there- 
 fore, of course, swimming, formed no portjon of the school curri- 
 culum, the gradual introduction of first one, and then the other, being 
 among the salutary results of recent educational development.'" — 
 Dr. Malcolm Morris, in "The Book of Health." 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 133 
 
 cold baths because it is their habit, and feel 
 rather chilled and dispirited than other- 
 wise by the process, it is perhaps worth 
 while to say a few words about cold and 
 other baths. 
 
 Water hot or cold, externally applied, 
 has three main functions : (i.) to cleanse, 
 (ii.) to promote or equalise circulation, (iii.) 
 to invigorate and harden. It is mainly to 
 its excellent effects with regard to the third 
 of these functions that the complete cold 
 plunge owes its popularity ; for nothing — 
 given that the heart is strong, and the liver 
 not prone to sluggishness — is more delight- 
 fully exhilarating than the sudden thrill of 
 cold water when one is either warm from hours 
 in bed, or hot from violent exercise. But 
 it must be remembered that it is distinctly 
 not given to everyone to be sufficiently 
 robust to be able to indulge in it. There 
 are some people who are clearly benefited — 
 
134 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 as far as we can see — by it ; there are many 
 who are not injured by it, and can continue 
 to take it for the sake of the pleasurable 
 sensation it produces ; but there are also 
 many who are injured by it, who run a risk 
 anyhow in its use. For the shock and con- 
 trast of it is a shock : a sudden drag is put 
 on the racing heart, a sudden check is given 
 to the hot open-pored skin. It is exactly 
 that which is pleasant : it is that also which 
 may be dangerous. Luckily the test of its 
 desirability, or at any rate- harmlessness 
 in any special case, is easy to apply, and if 
 anyone feels chilled after cold bathing, or 
 finds that after it the feet and hands are a 
 little numb and cold, with perhaps a loss 
 of colour under the nails, it is fairly certain 
 that he or she has not the circulation which 
 can be benefited by a cold bath ; but may be 
 hurt by it. Or if anyone finds it necessary 
 to make a very vigorous use of the rough 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 135 
 
 towel afterwards in order to get warm again, 
 the cold bath probably does not suit him. 
 Again, in some it produces a certain torpi- 
 dity of the liver, equally easily indicated ; 
 here, also, we have one of Nature's clear 
 danger-flags waving us off. 
 
 The cold bath suits and probably bene- 
 fits most of those who do not feel 
 these dispiriting after-effects, and the 
 reason for it is obvious. The cold water 
 checks the circulation momentarily ; it 
 is literally a cold sponge on the heart, 
 and it momentarily drives away the blood 
 from the skin. But then, if the bather 
 has good natural reaction, this momentary 
 chill will be succeeded by a fresh assertion 
 of his vigour ; the heart momentarily 
 checked will, combatively, reassert itself, 
 the blood wiU rush back to the skin vessels 
 from which it has been momentarily driven, 
 and the exhilaration of the cold shock will 
 
136 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 be succeeded by a fresh exhilaration of ting- 
 Hng vigour. But in any case a cold bath 
 should not be taken by anyone already 
 cold or chilled ; it is because the body is 
 warm, the heart beating fully, and the cir- 
 culation vigorous that the subsequent 
 reaction is vigorous. But to take a cold 
 bath when one is cold is to demand an 
 effort from something which should be not 
 checked but encouraged. 
 
 As a cleanser, however, the cold bath is, 
 we regret to say, hopelessly incompetent. 
 For to clean the skin properly it is not 
 sufficient to clean the mere surface of the 
 skin. The pores have to be opened and 
 the dirt and waste products, ordinarily in- 
 visible to the eye, taken from them. Now 
 cold water cannot do this, since one of its 
 main effects is to close the pores. But if 
 anyone wants to see what happens when 
 the pores are thoroughly opened and cleaned. 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 137 
 
 let him take a Turkish bath and be well 
 rubbed afterwards. What was ordinarily 
 invisible becomes offensively visible, and 
 though much of what comes away is skin 
 itself, it is skin anyhow of a certain colour, 
 and that colour is neither white nor pink, 
 nor brown, but black. And the colouring 
 matter of that is — dirt. 
 
 Now very hot water has in one respect the 
 same immediate function as very cold 
 water ; it tightens and closes the skin, and 
 a short very hot bath is as invigorating and 
 bracing as a cold one, and may be used with 
 pleasure and effect by those who are not 
 naturally suited to the cold. But after a 
 very short time, if one remains in a hot bath, 
 the opposite effect begins. The heat will 
 now open the pores of the skin, and, as the 
 water soaks in, the skin is again relaxed, 
 and the hot bath becomes the cleanser. For 
 the first few moments, however, the oppo- 
 
138 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 site effect takes place ; the skin is braced 
 and tightened, and thus we find that many 
 of the Japanese, for instance, and some 
 athletes in America, use a short hot bath 
 as we naturally use a cold bath, for an in- 
 vigorator and hardener, and to close the 
 pores of the skin. It is this use of it that 
 we recommend to those who cannot stand 
 a cold bath. 
 
 The hot bath, then, will supply the 
 invigorating functions of the cold, if it is 
 really hot and is not too long. In the same 
 way both it and warm baths supply the 
 cleansing functions which are wanting in the 
 cold bath, and the combination of the two — 
 i.e., a hot or warm bath for purposes of 
 cleansing followed by a cold douche or cold 
 sponging, is perhaps the most perfect appli- 
 cation of water in all its uses that we know, 
 and contains the same principles as the 
 Turkish bath. Those who have bath- 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 139 
 
 rooms will, of course, find this method easy 
 enough to manage, but those who have not 
 can get a perfectly adequate substitute in 
 a large basin of cold water with which they 
 will sponge themselves after the ordinary 
 hip-bath or sponging-tin in their rooms and 
 while still standing in it. Those, however, 
 whom the cold bath does not suit, would be 
 wise to use only cool, not cold water, after 
 the hot bath. A further benefit of this 
 combination of hot and cold water lies in 
 the hardening effect which the change of 
 temperature produces on the skin, for it 
 accustoms it to sudden changes of tem- 
 perature, and renders it far less liable to 
 catch cold. This, in view of the number of 
 colds that people certainly catch by getting 
 chilled after being hot, is a great advantage. 
 The best, as also far the pleasantest water 
 to wash in is soft water, approaching as 
 nearly as possible to pure or distilled water. 
 
HO DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 which from its purity and freedom from 
 suspended mineral matter is more eager, so 
 to speak, to take dirt, etc., into solution — 
 that is to say, to wash it off. But distilled 
 water is expensive ; rain water, which comes 
 nearest to it, not always to be had ; while 
 in chalky districts the water is hard. This 
 hardness may, howeVer, be taken off by the 
 addition of a little oatmeal, or soda, or bath 
 salts, which it will be found give the water 
 the advantages of soft water ; soap, for 
 instance, lathers much more readily in it, 
 and thus its efficiency as a cleanser is in- 
 creased. Hard water also, if continually 
 used, certainly has a sort of drying and un- 
 pleasant effect on delicate skins, making 
 them less supple and elastic, and diminish- 
 ing their power of natural healthy action. 
 The remedy mentioned above largely alle- 
 viates this. 
 
 With regard to the third of the main 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 141 
 
 functions of water — namely, to promote and 
 equalise circulation, this effect, though ob- 
 tained from a complete bath (as, for instance, 
 a hot bath when one is chilled) is more par- 
 ticularly to be got from partial baths. 
 Many people, for instance, suffer from cold 
 feet and hands, and such know how unsatis- 
 factory is the effect, when working, for 
 instance, on a cold day, of warming the 
 hands at the fire ; for this relief is hardly 
 more than momentary, and as soon as the . 
 mere surface heat obtained is exhausted, 
 the hands are just exactly as cold as they 
 were before. But a remedy far more satis- 
 factory in its effects and just as simple 
 lies at the nearest hot and cold-water taps, 
 and anyone who tries the effect of letting 
 the hot water run over his hands for a few 
 moments followed by the cold water (com- 
 bining the two in exactly the same way as 
 suggested for the complete bath, but repeat- 
 
142 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 ing the process a few times) and then drying 
 them thoroughly with a httle friction, will 
 quite certainly find the need of constant 
 excursions to the fire much curtailed. For 
 this is a warming on sound principles — the 
 faulty circulation in the hands is remedied, 
 the blood is stimulated to flow there natur- 
 ally, and in consequence the effect is far 
 more lasting than the momentary relief 
 of the external heat from the blaze. 
 
 In the same way with cold feet, though 
 it would be extravagant and foolish to 
 recommend any busy man to put in his 
 office a hot and a cold foot-bath, into which 
 in the presence of his admiring clerks he 
 should in the middle of the morning dip 
 his feet, yet many will find the habit of 
 cold feet greatly reduced if at the morning 
 bath (whether they have a hot bath or a 
 cold) they apply first hot then cold water 
 to their feet. Again, at night cold feet are a 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 143 
 
 definite and common cause of insomnia, 
 which many unwisely remedy by heaping 
 the bedclothes over them till they restore 
 heat to the feet by immoderate clothing 
 over the whole body. We have suggested 
 in the chapter on sleep the expedient of an 
 extra coverlet over the feet, and the hot 
 bottle is another remedy. But there are 
 many to whom the hot bottle is of a grue- 
 some nature ; if it is of earthenware there 
 is the collision with the toe sometime during 
 the night, while if it is of india-rubber there 
 is something clammy and snail-like about it 
 when it has grown cold. The far more 
 thorough and satisfactory system for any 
 confirmed sufferer, because it tends directly 
 to improve the circulation in the feet, and 
 to harden them by the change of tem- 
 perature, is the hot foot-bath, succeeded by 
 cold sponging and rubbing before going to 
 bed, or after going to bed if there is insomnia. 
 
144 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 This is particularly efficacious if repeated a 
 time or two. The tingling warmth, due to 
 the restoration of circulation, is far more 
 beneficial and pleasant than the unwilling 
 haling down of the blood to the feet, as it 
 were, by means of a hot water bottle. 
 
 In more directly remedial aspects, we may 
 just allude to the value of wet-packs for 
 various parts of the body, a common and 
 excellent instance of which is a cold com- 
 press (covered with flannel) round the 
 throat as a cure for sore throat, or cold 
 water bandages (also covered with flannel) 
 for local sprains or inflammations. Such 
 things, however, border on medical ques- 
 tions, and though excellent and simple 
 remedies, are of too specialised a character 
 to be more than alluded to. 
 
 Lying half-way, as it were, between the 
 agents of water and heat comes the Turkish 
 bath, that solacer in the life of many city 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 145 
 
 men, who but for it would undoubtedly, 
 in the conditions under which they Uve, 
 become confirmed dyspeptics. By it, in a 
 short time, the effects which exercise 
 has on the skin are produced ; by it also, 
 if it is followed, as it should be, by 
 rubbing and massage, actual (though pas- 
 sive) exercise is obtained. Thus it coun- 
 teracts to a great extent what we have before 
 called the " acidity " of city-life, due to 
 its general lack of exercise, and the ten- 
 dency it often produces to over-eat in pro- 
 portion to the exercise taken. But frequent 
 Turkish baths, though an excellent substi- 
 tute for exercise, an excellent corrective 
 for that which advertisements elegantly call 
 " errors of diet," and even an excellent 
 adjunct to exercise, should be taken as a 
 faute de mieux, except in the case perhaps 
 of very corpulent people, who find it, 
 
 rightly, almost essential to keep down the 
 
 10 
 
146 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 excess of fat. For while the heat produces 
 about the same effect on the skin as would 
 heat derived from physical exertion, and 
 while massage produces about the same effect 
 on the muscles as does physical exercise, 
 yet the absence of fresh air in this bath is 
 a large defect ; though, it is true, it is to a 
 certain extent compensated by the fact that 
 the whole body is exposed to the air for a 
 considerable time. But considered as treat- 
 ment, it is artificial rather than natural ; 
 and though certainly the skin and general 
 health of men employed in a Turkish bath 
 as masseurs is in excellent condition, yet the 
 excessive heat (excessive, that is, in respect 
 of the temperatures that the human body 
 seems naturally adapted to encounter) is 
 probably in the long run somewhat trying to. 
 the system, while the cold plunge imme- 
 diately after (to many the best part of the 
 bath) is distinctly bad for those for whom 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 147 
 
 cold baths are bad. But as a substitute for 
 exercise, and a general means of health to 
 sedentary and city-workers, it is probably 
 the best yet contrived. Everyone, how- 
 ever, should rest well after it, and lie in the 
 coohng-room for at least half an hour, since 
 the bath itself is violent, so to speak, and 
 demands recuperative measures, and also 
 because after a long exposure in the hot 
 room even the cold douche will not at once 
 restore firmness to the skin. But with this 
 precaution taken the bath is not only an 
 excellent remedy for colds, but also an excel- 
 lent preventive against them, by reason 
 mainly of the hardening effect which the 
 sudden change of the temperature produces. 
 As a cleanser, finally, the Turkish bath is 
 quite unrivalled. 
 
 Of late years physicians and others, both 
 here and in other countries, notably Den- 
 mark, Germany, and America, have accepted 
 
 10* 
 
148 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 and striven to bring within the range of 
 practical therapeutics the incalculably 
 health-giving and remedial power of heat 
 and light. This subject will be touched on 
 in another chapter in connection with the 
 exposure of the body to the air, while part 
 of it is too special (as, for instance, the 
 treatment of lupus with the violet rays of 
 the spectrum) to be more than alluded to. 
 The principle of it all is that light is as tonic 
 to the body of a man as it is to a plant, and 
 that just as a plant is sickly and pale if 
 given insuf&cient light, so the body if stinted 
 in this becomes weakly and inefficient, a 
 cellar-grown plant. Following this clue, 
 experiment has estabhshed beyond doubt 
 that for anaemia of certain kinds the best 
 possible remedy is exposure to heat and 
 light, and in Germany there is more than one 
 sun-cure for this, the course of treatment 
 being that patients pass hours in the sun 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 149 
 
 every day with practically no clothes on. 
 Here in England, and especially in London, 
 such treatment is seldom possible, the two 
 great drawbacks being lack of sun and 
 lack of privacy*, and in consequence artifi- 
 cial light has been resorted to, not as being 
 better than sunlight, but as the best substi- 
 tute for it. Here the body is exposed to a 
 violent illumination of electric light (the 
 eyes and head being protected), and is given 
 a Ught-bath in the same way as a Ttirkish 
 bath gives a purely heat bath. Incident- 
 ally, it is true, the bath of electric light is 
 extremely hot (a temperature far above 
 that of the ordinary Turkish bath being 
 reached without inconvenience or danger), 
 but the main object is to administer the 
 tonic of light, and of that which light 
 becomes when it has passed through the 
 
 » An open-air treatment can now be had at " Broadlands," Medstead 
 (Hampshire). 
 
ISO DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 surface-skin. Of its extraordinary effects in 
 cases of anaemia, for instance, it is outside 
 our province to speak, but in a modified 
 form, i.e., by exposure when possible of 
 the body to sunhght, and the constant and 
 unvarying desirabihty of hving in Ught 
 rooms, much of its beneficial effects can be 
 enjoyed, and should be, by everyone. 
 Indeed, to take the long continued effect 
 of light, not on an individual but on a race, 
 how much of the gaiety of the southern 
 nations may perhaps be directly due to 
 sunshine ? Certainly " a gloomy house," or 
 " a gloomy room," is gloomy in more 
 senses than one, for instinctively light 
 affects the spirits ; it is tonic and invi- 
 gorating to body and mind alike, and ten 
 minutes of exposure of the whole body to 
 the sun, fantastic as it may sound, is as 
 great a dispeller of shadows as is the sun 
 itself. 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 151 
 
 It is with this modified form of sun-bath 
 (not because the sun-bath^ as a treatment, 
 is anything but admirable, but because it 
 is in treatment of disease that it is mainly 
 used) that we have to deal. Everyone 
 knows how invigorating it is to have only 
 the face and hands exposed to the sun, a 
 twentieth part of the body, that is to say, 
 given the sun-bath, not as a medicine, but 
 as a sustainer of general health. Multiply 
 this by twenty then : instead of twenty 
 minutes in the open air, expose the whole 
 body, if possible, when dressing, to direct 
 sun-rays by an open window ; let the fresh 
 air and the sun " have their sweet way." 
 Sunlight, it is sadly true, is not always 
 available, but light is better than no light, 
 and instead of hastening to dress after the 
 bath in the morning, throw the windows 
 wide, and for as long as may be (though 
 taking a feeling of chilliness as a danger 
 
152 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 signal of Nature, indicating clothes) let 
 your body drink in light and air. If you 
 are of imperfect circulation^ get warm first 
 by a hot-bath and exercise, but remember 
 that as long as you are warm, there is no 
 conceivable danger of catching cold, and 
 that on the first hint of cold you are almost 
 certainly in time to dress. Also the endur- 
 ance of exposure increases rapidly, and 
 endurance of exposure is one of the first 
 requisites of serene health, of the health 
 that no more bothers itself about danger of 
 catching cold than the enviable slumberer 
 spoken of in the chapter on sleep bothers 
 himself about getting to sleep. 
 
 No wonder the sun in Greek times was 
 the god Apollo, the young god of health 
 and beauty, of all that keeps men young and 
 vigorous, of all that keeps them sane and 
 efficient. No wonder, also, that from time 
 immemorial the sun has been worshipped 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 153 
 
 as the supreme god, for from what else but 
 his hght comes growth and health ? There 
 he is every -day (or at any rate on some 
 days) marching slowly for our behoof across 
 a beneficent heaven, and we are like children 
 who clench . their teeth when the doctor 
 comes, rather than show their tongue, if 
 we strive by awnings and parasols, and 
 God knows what infamous devices, to shut 
 out that humane physician. Gentlemen, 
 "The Sun." 
 
 "Air and light are essential to the development of the 
 higher forms of animal and vegetable life in full vigour and 
 perfection. The lowest organisms — fungi and bacilli and 
 bacteria whose office in nature appears to be to prey upon 
 and hasten the decomposition of their superiors in the scale 
 of life — love, like other evil things, darkness and close dwel- 
 lings. Bright sunlight (the most potent and valuable of all 
 light) and fresh air (by oxygen the portion of food used as 
 fuel is burnt, and heat and all forms of energy evolved, and 
 oxygen is required for the changing and removal of waste) 
 are as inimical to them as they are beneficial to the more 
 perfect forms above them. The action of light is known 
 with less precision than that of oxygen. It appears, how- 
 
154 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 ever, to be essential to the perfect formation of the red cells 
 of the blood — its most vital constituents. Persons who are 
 deprived of light grow pale and bloodless. Young women 
 brought from the country asservants or shop girls, and kept 
 in cellar kitchens or dark work-rooms, notoriously suffer in 
 this way. Miners also are a pallid, anaemic class. The 
 want of fresh air has something to do with the result no 
 doubt ; yet patients in a well-lighted hospital ward appear to 
 recover more quickly, as a rule, than those in darker rooms 
 equally well ventilated. [Compare the interesting statistics 
 collected in St. Petersburg by Sir James Wylie.] Altogether 
 common experience and observation confirm the conclusion 
 which science has hardly yet formulated, that light has a 
 powerful and favourable influence upon animal life. Human 
 beings grow blanched just as plants do, for the want of it. 
 And it is not a question of colour merely ; vitality is seri- 
 ously lowered also. This is largely felt in great towns 
 shaded by fog and smoke-clouds. Some recent remarkable 
 experiments have shown that the electric light exerts a 
 favourable influence on vegetation, second only to sunlight. 
 It is possible that it may in like manner foster animal life.'' 
 Dr. W. B. Cheadle in " The Book of Health." 
 
 In addition to the experiments on vegetation, at Cornell 
 University in America, and by Professor Siemens in Eng- 
 land, recent experiments have shown the value of electric 
 light in general, and of certain colour-rays in particular, in 
 the treatment of various diseases such as gout and its sisters 
 and cousins, nervousness, lupus, and so on. There are 
 
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT. 155 
 
 already several establishments in London where electric 
 light cures are to be obtained. Dr. Forbes Winslow in his 
 treatise on Light speaks even more emphatically than Dr. 
 Cheadle does about the bad effects of the absence of light. 
 He says : — 
 
 " It is a well-established fact that, as the effect of isolation 
 from the stimulus of light, the fibrine, albumen and red 
 blood-cells become diminished in quantity, and the serum, 
 or watery portion of the vital fluid, augmented in volume, 
 thus inducing a disease known as lukaemia, in which white 
 instead of red blood-cells are developed. This exclusion 
 from the sun produces the sickly, flabby, pale, anaemic con- 
 dition of the face, or ex-sanguined ghost-like forms so often 
 seen amongst those not freely exposed to air and light. The 
 absence of these essential elements of health deteriorates by 
 materially altering the physical composition of the blood, 
 thus seriously prostrating the vital strength, enfeebling the 
 nervous energy, and ultimately inducing organic changes in 
 the structure of the heart, brain and muscular tissue." 
 
 The use of water as a means of curing disease and of 
 preserving health was revived early in this century by 
 Priessnitz and his many followers. In 1896 the oldest of Ger- 
 man doctors. Professor and Privy Councillor Adolf Kussmaul, 
 of Heidelberg, refused to sign the programme of the commis- 
 sioners for medical examinations, because " of hydropathy 
 our young doctor, when he leaves the schools, knows nothing 
 at all." In the same year Sir Lauder Bruntoii, in his 
 Summer Lectures at St. Bartholomew's, testified to the 
 
156 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 wonderful effects of the wet-sheet-pack ; and the late Dr. 
 Carpenter, Professor of Physiology in the Royal Institution, 
 as well as Dr. Wilson and Lord Lytton, have spoken in 
 praise of this very cheap and simple and pleasant remedy 
 which we heartily recommend for the reader's trial. The 
 late Sir John Forbes wrote most enthusiastically about this 
 and other easy water treatments, which Dr. John Goodman 
 contrasted with the treatments by drugs, stimulants, over- 
 feeding, and so on. As a striking example we may quote 
 his words about Diuretics (which have been among the 
 various means recommended for reducing weight) : — ■ 
 
 '■^Allopathic Diuretics. — Squills^ digitalis, nitric ether, 
 acetate of potash, broom-tops, dandelion, mercury. 
 
 " Hydropathic Diuretics. — Copious water-drinking, hot- 
 air baths, sitz-baths, wet packing, &c. No remedies act 
 more powerfully on the kidneys without injury. Copious 
 drinking of barley-water is good." 
 
157 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AIR AND BREATHING. 
 
 Among all the millions of outside agencies 
 that go to build up and strengthen, or if 
 improperly used to undermine, the health 
 of the human body, there is none so constant 
 in our environment as air. At intervals it 
 is necessary to eat and to sleep. At intervals 
 it is equally essential for us to have light ; 
 but the use of air goes on from birth to 
 death ; completely deprived of it only for 
 a few minutes we die, and it is largely 
 because breathing is so obviously and always 
 essential, because except in definite ill- 
 health it is completely automatic, that 
 
IS8 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 few people even give a thought to the ques- 
 tion, and most would be disposed to laugh 
 if they were told that there are different 
 ways of breathing, some right and some 
 wrong. Consequently, most people with 
 the inherent perverseness of human nature 
 use one of the wrong ways. 
 
 Observe, for instance, the way that the 
 first hundred people you meet down any 
 crowded thoroughfare are breathing, and 
 you will find probably that (leaving out of 
 the question those who are evidently out 
 of breath) more than three quarters have 
 their mouths open, and are breathing 
 through them. That is the wrong way. 
 Many of these may have a physical diffi- 
 culty in getting sufficient air through the 
 nostrils. Some have colds, perhaps, but 
 more have over-large adenoids. Conse- 
 quently if, when you have no cold at all, 
 you find you cannot get enough air through 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. 159 
 
 the nostrils without effort, go straight to 
 a doctor. But probably you can ; therefore, 
 breathe through the nostrils. For nature, 
 who, take her all round, is a safe guide to 
 follow, if she clearly indicates something, 
 has provided three passages by which air 
 may reach the lungs. One is the mouth, 
 two are the nostrils. But the mouth (in 
 addition to its sense of taste most con- 
 veniently placed there) has the duty of 
 carrying food and drink to the stomach. 
 The chances, therefore, are that the nostrils 
 (in addition to their sense of smell, again 
 most conveniently placed there, a sentinel 
 to challenge the air, as it were, as the taste 
 is a sentinel to challenge the food) were 
 designed to give air to the lungs. And they 
 are not ill-contrived. Witness, to take a 
 horrible but convincing instance, the 
 amount of soot and smuts that are pre- 
 vented from reaching the lungs if we breathe 
 
i6o DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 through the nose during a London fog. 
 The nostrils are a sort of filter, tortuous, 
 averting impurities. On the other hand, 
 many advocates of a sensible idea (as in 
 vegetarianism and total abstinence) are 
 their own foes when they say that only the 
 air warmed by the longer passage is good 
 for the lungs and makes them less liable 
 to catch cold. The reverse is probably 
 the case, since people with delicate lungs 
 are cured of their deUcacy or disease in the 
 coldest possible air, if it be dry. 
 
 Anyhow, the air gets to the lungs, other- 
 wise we die ; but the lungs, which are the 
 largest single organ in the human body 
 and in many ways the most adaptable, have 
 this defect, and at the same time this enor- 
 mous advantage in case of disease, that a 
 very small part of them need be used in 
 order to supply sufficient air to the stove 
 of combustion. We can at will (most of 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. i6i 
 
 us do) employ the bottom part of them 
 only, we can (with more difficulty) employ 
 mainly the middle part, or we can with 
 about the same diiiiculty employ the upper 
 part. But since much of the health of any 
 organ or part of the body lies in its use, 
 for not to use an organ either passively 
 or intentionally implies (with the only ex- 
 ception of those organs which are partly 
 intended as storers of energy) its gradual 
 atrophy, it is clearly the path of wisdom to 
 give the lungs their proper work. For 
 " proper work " means not exhaustion to a 
 healthy organ but increase of strength and 
 health. It is on the scabbarded sword that 
 the rust grows. 
 
 In the case of men, the use of the lower 
 part of the lungs may at once be dismissed, 
 for it is without exception natural and 
 habitual, whereas in many women chest- 
 breathing, owing no doubt largely to the 
 
 II 
 
i62 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 use of the old and unscientific corsets, is 
 correspondingly habitual ; and for men the 
 defect lies in hardly ever, except during 
 violent effort, when one is out of breath, 
 using the middle and upper breathing. 
 Roughly speaking, lower breathing is accom- 
 plished by distention of the abdominal part 
 of the apparatus, middle breathing by dis- 
 tention of the part of the body between 
 the ribs, upper breathing by inflation of 
 the chest. In what we call a long breath, 
 and in a yawn, the breathing is complete 
 throughout the whole of the lungs. It is 
 this which is worth cultivation, not only 
 for the sake of the lungs themselves, but 
 for the sake of the control of breathing 
 which is often useful. 
 
 But the main point lies in the habitual 
 use of the whole of the lungs. Take half 
 a dozen long slow breaths, expanding the 
 lungs to the utmost, and again completely 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. 163 
 
 expelling the air, and you will find by ex- 
 periment that you can hold your breath 
 for very much longer than you could do 
 without such preparation, the reason being 
 that you have in the blood a store of oxygen, 
 however minute, that wiU carry you on for 
 an additional number of seconds. The 
 advantages of this are obvious in the case 
 of great bodily exertion when the lungs 
 have difficulty in getting enough oxygen 
 to supply the racing heart, for if they can 
 easily, through thorough practice, come 
 without effort into complete use, they will 
 be able to supply without effort a greater 
 fund of oxygen which automatically (and 
 God knows how) they for ever extract from 
 the air, returning the dead air, carbonic 
 acid gas. In other words, the man who can 
 without effort use the whole of his lungs 
 wiU keep them in a better state of health 
 
 than one who from continued non-use of 
 
 II* 
 
i64 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 the middle and upper parts of them, has not 
 maintained them in similar vigour. Such 
 a maUj also, will be far less liable to be 
 attacked by forms of pulmonary disease 
 than one who has half these organs in a state 
 which corresponds to being " below par " 
 as applied to the whole body. 
 
 Here, as in the case of other muscles, 
 definite exercises are good for increasing 
 the power of the lungs. 
 
 The following will be found invariably 
 useful : — 
 
 (i) Breathe slowly in through the nostrils 
 till the whole of the air cavity is expanded 
 to its fullest capacity. 
 
 (2) Hold the air there from five to ten 
 seconds. 
 
 (3) Breathe it slowly out till the whole 
 of the air cavity is as far as possible 
 empty. 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. 165 
 
 (4) Hold it out for from five to ten 
 seconds. 
 
 At first this exercise will be found fatigu- 
 ing to the lungs and the fatigue will be 
 manifested, if not in giddiness, in a tendency 
 to be out of breath. By all means be out 
 of breath, and, when the breathing is normal 
 again, repeat the exercise, going through it 
 half a dozen times. After a week you will 
 find you can repeat it a dozen times or so 
 without intermission, or the desire for inter- 
 mission. During the breathing in, it will 
 both help the lungs and encourage a greater 
 fulness of breath to raise the arms and 
 shoulders. They should be held in 
 " shrugged " position while the. breath is 
 held, be allowed to drop gradually as the 
 breath goes out, and remain utterly relaxed 
 during the fourth part of the exercise. 
 This exercise will be found most beneficial 
 in enlarging the capacity of the lungs and 
 
i66 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 the power of expansion of the chest, which, 
 by the way, is a far more important thing 
 than the actual size of the chest. The 
 exercise may also be used with the fol- 
 lowing (see Chapter III.) : — 
 
 Stand erect with the arms outstretched 
 and hands together in front of the face. 
 Bring the arms quickly and suddenly back 
 until they are level with the shoulders, still 
 at full stretch, at the same time letting the 
 breath come suddenly and fully into the 
 lungs. After a pause of a second or two, 
 with the chest inflated to its utmost, bring 
 the arms back to the original position, 
 expelling all the breath with the same 
 suddenness. 
 
 These two exercises, it must be repeated, 
 are (especially for those who need them — 
 i.e., those who have not been in the habit 
 of using the whole of the lungs) rather trying, 
 particularly at first ; on no account, there- 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. 167 
 
 fore, strain or exhaust yourself over them. 
 Let the facUity in doing them come slowly. 
 These, like all lung exercise, should be per- 
 formed by an open window or in a room 
 with good ventilation and as free as possible 
 from dust, since the point is to charge the 
 lungs thoroughly with air, which had 
 therefore better be pure air. The open 
 mouth may be used in these exercises, since 
 a full draught of air has to be taken in 
 suddenly. 
 
 But apart from actual exercises for the 
 lungs, an even more important point is that 
 these organs should as far as possible be 
 given, night and day alike, a proper supply 
 of air for their normal and automatic work- 
 ing ; and their one and constant demand is 
 oxygen. Considering how much there is in 
 existence, it is wonderful how rare civilised 
 life has contrived to make it, while builders 
 and architects seem to adopt the uncom- 
 
i68 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 promising attitude of saying, " We will 
 give you air and draughts, or no air and no 
 draughts." Sometimes even, by an excess 
 of diabolical humour, they manage to give 
 one draughts and no air, and render rooms 
 both cold and stuffy ; and the continual 
 breathing of unvivified air, of air which has 
 been exhausted of its oxygen by the breath- 
 ing of other people and not renewed by a 
 constant fresh supply coming in, is probably 
 responsible for as much languor and indis- 
 position as any of the errors of diet men- 
 tioned in the previous chapter. Nor is it 
 the least necessary that because a room is 
 hot the air should be bad ; indeed, one of 
 the reasons why a good fire in the room is 
 healthy is that, if there is an adequate 
 ventilator, the fire by its burning and by 
 the passage of the heat up the chimney 
 induces a current of air, and though it 
 warms a room and may make it even over- 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. 169 
 
 hot, yet that heated air is not nearly so 
 enervating as the air of a cooler and ill- 
 ventilated room. The lungs do not in the 
 least object to be fed with even roasted air, 
 as in a Turkish bath, any more than they 
 dislike air of the utmost extremity of cold ; 
 what they do rebel against is being given 
 vitiated and exhausted air. It is the quahty 
 rather than the temperature of the air we 
 breathe which has to be considered, and many 
 people who say they cannot stand a hot 
 room mean not really a hot room but a 
 stuffy one. 
 
 We have heard a good deal lately about 
 the pohcy of the open door, and recommend 
 to our readers' serious consideration the policy 
 of the open window as much as possible 
 by day and always at night. Unless the 
 head of the bed is immediately by the 
 window (and scarcely even then), it is prac- 
 tically impossible to catch cold when one 
 
I70 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 is in bed and properly covered. To live 
 under canvas, for instance, means to sleep 
 almost invariably in a thorough draught. 
 But those who have tried that delightful 
 mode of life know that to catch cold under 
 such circumstances is almost unknown ; one 
 is constantly wet and is usually in a draught, 
 but one does not catch cold because these 
 things in themselves do not produce a cold 
 in a healthy person, and one's health in 
 such conditions is improved, because one 
 has enough air and probably not too much 
 food. The air itself is tonic, strengthening ; 
 it is largely because in civilised city-life we 
 do not have enough that we are liable to 
 colds. The passages to the lungs, with their 
 lining of mucous membrane, and the lungs 
 themselves, are clogged with impurities, 
 and weak through a mild form of starvation. 
 Feed them. Clean them. 
 
 We do not, however, advise the ordinary 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. 171 
 
 city man deliberately to sit in a draught, 
 though if that were the only plan of getting 
 air it might be far better than his present 
 procedure. Instead, we recommend him to 
 look to his ventilators, and whenever he 
 feels that the office is stuffy let him cut 
 another or two, one low and one high ; 
 let him — and these remarks apply to all 
 dwellers in houses — warm his offices by 
 fires rather than hot pipes, if possible ; 
 for fires assist ventilation while they also 
 give heat, but pipes are valueless except 
 for heat. Furthermore, a screen of paste- 
 board, or if light is wanted, of glass, can often 
 be arranged so that a window may be opened 
 without creating a draught at all ; for 
 though draughts are not, we think, so guilty 
 in the way of cold-giving as their reputa- 
 tion would seem to justify, yet they are 
 uncomfortable. But above all have 
 windows open during sleep, that mighty 
 
172 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 friend of recuperation, when rest aught to 
 be brought to every organ. And the 
 natural rest to give the lungs is to supply 
 them with plenty of pure air, so that their 
 work is made easy for them. Nothing is 
 commoner than long drowsiness and heavi- 
 ness on waking, eyen after perfectly sufficient 
 sleep, and for this nothing is more respon- 
 sible than the fact that we have been 
 breathing all night air which has been 
 steadily deteriorating because drained of its 
 oxygen. Let the windows be shut by all 
 means, if you will, while you are dressing ; 
 but while sleeping, never. 
 
 Though the lungs perform the main part 
 of the breathing, much is done also by the 
 skin, which has this further function of 
 continually striving to throw off those 
 waste products and impurities of the body 
 which rise like scum to the surface. How 
 vastly important these functions are is 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. i73 
 
 shown by the story of Pietro Riario, the boy 
 Cardinal-Archbishop of Florence, who at a 
 feast gilded a child all over to serve as a 
 huge lamp bearer, with the consequence 
 that in a few hours the unfortunate victim 
 died. It is clearly, then, desirable to listen 
 to the demands of the skin, which are as 
 simple and intelligible as those of the lungs, 
 and consist of air, warmth (though to a far 
 less extent than is generally supposed), and 
 cleanliness. It is by clothing and baths 
 that we meet these demands. 
 
 Now our general method of dealing with 
 the skin is to wrap it up and put it in the 
 dark ; in other words we cover it as much 
 as possible, because we say it is dehcate and 
 to expose it gives us colds. It is delicate — 
 that is quite true ; but what has made it 
 dehcate is our habit of covering it up. A 
 woman, for instance, will pass with arms, 
 shoulders, breast, and a large part of the 
 
i;4 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 back bare, out of a heated ball-room into a 
 cool sitting-room and not catch cold, be- 
 cause her skin is used to what — as far as 
 the skin is concerned — is most sanitary 
 and healthy treatment. She does not catch 
 cold, because her skin is used to it, and one 
 of the surest ways to guard against colds 
 is deliberately and every day to accustom 
 it to exposure. Reasons of decency forbid 
 us to make this a public performance, but 
 everyone can and should adopt some course 
 of the following kind. Strip completely on 
 getting up and (whether the bath, hot or 
 cold, is taken immediately or not) go 
 through the other incidentals of dressing, 
 shaving, etc., without clothes on. Simi- 
 larly at night undress completely at once 
 and give the skin ten minutes' airing before 
 getting into bed. At the same time, it is 
 well to avoid any feeling of chill, and if it 
 is cold, sit before the fire a few minutes. 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. 175 
 
 or, better still (unless you find that they 
 keep you awake), have a few minutes at 
 the exercises given above, which will supply 
 a more thorough and invigorating warmth. 
 The eifect of this simple treatment is, as 
 we know from personal experience, quite 
 amazing, both in its hardening virtues, 
 whereby we are far less liable to catch cold 
 at sudden chills or changes of temperature, 
 in its tonic effect on the skin itself, as 
 shewn in a vastly increased firmness and 
 elasticity, and also in the constant and 
 immediate feeling of freshness that it pro- 
 duces. We all know how vivifying is 
 fresh air on the face only ; here the whole 
 skin is invigorated. 
 
 Not less important is the matter of 
 clothing, which should be in the first place 
 as natural as possible, so that it may 
 not distort the natural shape, or cramp a 
 natural movement. In the main, the 
 
176 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 ordinary man's clothing, though ugly 
 enough, is in this respect sensible, except 
 with regard to boots, which really seem to 
 be an invention of the devil so as to thwart 
 in every possible way what was meant to 
 be the natural play of the foot. Toes in a 
 bunch, like asparagus, tightness over the 
 insteps, and the whole infernal contraption 
 strapped on by a cruel string cramping the 
 muscle above the ankle ! A more insani- 
 tary contrivance, or one better calculated 
 to cramp the muscles and distort the shape 
 of the foot, especially if a man take 
 much exercise on his feet, could not be 
 devised. Moreover, there is a sort of idea 
 that boots which conform to the natural 
 shape of the foot must necessarily be 
 clumsy. This is not the case ; but even if it 
 were, it would be the part of sense to go 
 clumsily but healthily shod. What is 
 necessary is to be carefully measured for 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. 177 
 
 boots with the two feet separately, and with 
 
 the weight resting on the foot that is being 
 
 measured, since the weight naturally spreads 
 
 out and flattens the foot, and it is of the 
 
 first importance to have a boot that is not 
 
 cramped when the muscles of the foot are 
 
 being used. It is the toes that chiefly 
 
 suffer in ill-fitting boots, since the boot is, 
 
 as a rule, made broad enough for the foot in 
 
 repose, but does not allow for the spread of 
 
 the toes which takes place (or should take 
 
 place) every time a step is made. At this 
 
 moment it is obvious that the toes are 
 
 being used as a lever to throw the body 
 
 forward to its next step, the whole weight 
 
 is for the moment on them, and their natural 
 
 and reasonable tendency is to flatten out. 
 
 Instead of allowing for this, most bootmakers 
 
 make their boots for the foot in rest, with 
 
 the result that the toes get crushed together 
 
 at each step. This point, doubly important 
 
 12 
 
1/8 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 in the case of children whose feet are still 
 growing is, it is satisfactory to see, being 
 taken into serious consideration at last^ and 
 year by year more children are allowed to 
 wear sandalSj either with or without socks 
 — an admirable institution^ for they give 
 the foot its natural development. Many 
 women's feet are really altogether unfit for 
 walking purposes owing to the persistent 
 way in which they have been cramped from 
 childhood upwards^ following the barbaric 
 and Chinese fashion of considering a small 
 foot a beautiful thing. A delicately made 
 foot of course is, but a foot naturally of 
 moderate size and cramped of its growth is 
 merely a shapeless lump of bent bones and 
 packed flesh. 
 
 Secondly, clothing should be as easy as 
 possible ; there should not be pressure, 
 except for definite medical puposes of sup- 
 port, on any part of a properly developed 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. 179 
 
 body ; for pressure not only prevents the 
 free flow of blood to the capillary vessels 
 of the skin, but checks the play of any 
 muscle which is being used, forbidding its 
 expansion at the moment of its energy, and 
 thus cramping the freedom of its movement. 
 Thirdly, clothing should be as light as is 
 possible consistently with reasonable warmth. 
 What is wanted, therefore, next the skin 
 (in cold weather at any rate) is some material 
 like wool, which is porous and therefore 
 holds in its interstices innumerable little 
 air-chambers that when once warmed by 
 the heat of the body form between it and the 
 outer clothing and air a layer of protection. 
 It is exactly this plan that nature has 
 adopted in the covering of birds, and we 
 find the lower part of the feather-quill 
 clad, not in the hard plumage of its tip, 
 but in soft down which interposes a cushion 
 of air between the body and the atmosphere. 
 
i8o DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 This is especially and markedly the case in 
 aquatic birds^ part of whose body is inces- 
 santly in water; the natural oil of the stiff 
 part of the feathers is absolutely water- 
 proof, while the down near their base pre- 
 vents, by its air and warmth-holding capa- 
 cities, the chill of the water reaching the 
 body. Wool also has this advantage, that 
 it absorbs moisture, and thus a man clad 
 in under-garments of wool will be less liable 
 to take cold if he gets chilled after .violent 
 exercise, since the sweat is to a large extent 
 drawn away from complete contact with the 
 skin. 
 
 On the other hand, cotton or silk next 
 the skin, while it is less warming and has 
 not the full protective advantages of wool, 
 gives more air to the skin, since it does not 
 cling so closely, and thus facilitates the 
 breathing functions of the skin, and also 
 allows more light to pass through it. Much 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. i8i 
 
 must depend on the constitutional vigour 
 of the skin in individual cases, and on its 
 reacting powers. For a person naturally 
 liable to catch cold, wool is certainly the 
 safer clothing. 
 
 Finally, all clothing worn next the skin 
 should be very frequently washed, for it is 
 absorbing all day and every day the waste 
 products of the skin ; it should also be well 
 aired before use and kept if possible, not in 
 hermetically sealed drawers, but where air 
 can get to it. 
 
 Perhaps no change of fashion in the 
 last fifty years is greater than the change 
 that has come over bedrooms. Fifty years 
 ago the ordinary healthy man (if he could 
 afford it) slept in a deep feather-bed into 
 which his unfortunate body sank and was 
 smothered ; his bed was probably draped 
 at the head with large curtains so as to pre- 
 vent anything like a movement of air 
 
1 82 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 getting to him (not that it was very likely, 
 for he kept his windows shut and curtained), 
 while in case of anything so untoward hap- 
 pening he had an additional protection in the 
 shape of a nightcap, while over the whole 
 bed, as likely as not, was a heavy quilt. 
 In fact, the bed gear of fifty years ago 
 was all that bed gear should not be. By 
 degrees the curtains were taken down, the 
 feather mattress was supplanted by a 
 thinner and harder affair which got its 
 elastigity from springs below it, windows 
 were opened, and the nightcap wore out and 
 was not replaced. In fact, the proper rule — 
 the utmost coolness consistent with com- 
 fort — came in. The head should be cool, 
 the body not hot nor smothered airlessly 
 beneath masses of coverlets. The feet, how- 
 ever, unless naturally warm, may with 
 advantage have a rug thrown over them ; 
 for, if they are warm, proper circulation of 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. 183 
 
 the blood is ensured^ and a most fruitful 
 cause of insomnia removed. 
 
 To sum up in one sentence the general 
 principles we have tried to lay down in this 
 chapter, we should say, " When in doubt, 
 open it or take it off " ; the point being that 
 you should whenever possible expose yourself 
 to air. Think for a moment of the different 
 rigime adopted now, not for people in health, 
 but for consumptives, from what those un- 
 fortunates suffered thirty years ago, and 
 think also of the vastly increased percen- 
 tage of recoveries. Thirty years ago patients 
 were sent to warm enervating places, 
 draughts and cold were treated as if they 
 themselves were the microbes of disease. 
 Now air, air, air, and when the damp and 
 dulness of Enghsh winters arrives, up they 
 go into piercing elevations of Swiss moun- 
 tains. And if air wiU heal definite disease, 
 we may take it completely for granted 
 
1 84 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 that so natural a remedy will be highly 
 beneficial to those in health, for it must 
 and does act as a preventive to disease, 
 and is in itself health-giving. So also with 
 clothing : when in doubt take it off, for 
 the more the skin is either directly exposed 
 or, though clad, allowed to get the maximum 
 possible of air and light, the healthier and 
 the more vigorous it will become ; and in- 
 stead of saying, " Put on a coat, or you will 
 catch cold," it wiU be nearer the truth to 
 say, " Continue not to put on a coat and 
 vou will not catch cold." Of course, there 
 are an immense number of days when, 
 especially if one is out in the open air with- 
 out taking exercise, a coat is advisable, since 
 the feeling of being cold is a natural danger 
 signal, and it is then our business to get 
 warm. But the habit of being cold is often 
 due — and this is our point — to a relaxed 
 and unvigorous condition of the skin, and 
 
AIR AND BREATHING. 185 
 
 the coat is, as it were, only a dose to meet 
 a special need, whereas the rational treat- 
 ment is to get the skin into such a condi- 
 tion that the body is less liable to feel 
 cold. And this diminished liability to feel 
 cold is promoted, not by covering the skin 
 up, but by accustoming it to be uncovered. 
 
1 86 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 
 
 The late Sir Andrew Clark once said that 
 he never knew anyone die from insomnia, 
 though he knew of many who had died 
 from trying to cure it. To a man who 
 really suffers from insomnia, perhaps, this 
 is but doubtful consolation, but in any case 
 the latter half of this great doctor's remark 
 is valuable. For probably more poison is 
 taken to remedy insomnia, and on the 
 whole with worse results, than in the alle- 
 viation of any other disease which flesh is 
 heir to. Drugs, especially narcotics, are 
 the most dangerous things in the world to 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 187 
 
 play with, since so many, if taken at all 
 continuously, almost necessitate a gradual 
 increase in quantity. ■ Besides, the morphia 
 habit, or any habit of that sort, is, frankly, 
 the clutch of the fiend, and it would be in- 
 finitely better to die of insomnia (were it 
 possible) than be dragged down to that 
 particular Hell. 
 
 But it is not of these martyrs, whose case 
 is one for doctors (who will most likely be 
 unable to help them), but of the ordinary 
 man who may, perhaps, not be a regularly 
 good sleeper, and of those who are habitually 
 good sleepers, that we propose to speak. 
 People who sleep well, and know nothing 
 about other forms of rest, may, perhaps, 
 find certain things here said, fantastic, but 
 the problem of rest is just as fascinating 
 as the problem of energy, and curious though 
 it sounds, rest can be induced and im- 
 proved even by exercises. 
 
1 88 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 Broadly^ then, rest and recuperation, 
 which is equivalent to the act of gathering 
 energy, and is necessary to the employment 
 of it, may come in three fairly distinct ways, 
 either by sleep, or by mere quiescence, or 
 by intentional and definite relaxation. The 
 two first are purely natural, being the in- 
 stinctive demands of the brain and body 
 after a period of activity ; the third is, at 
 first anyhow, an artificial rest, to be had 
 always at command, and demanding more 
 than mere quiescence to induce it. 
 
 To take sleep first, it should be a condition 
 as automatic as breathing, but by its very 
 nature, by the fact that, in order to arrive 
 at it, both body and mind must pass into 
 and through a quiescent state, so that the 
 condition of unconsciousness may natur- 
 ally come, it has many more foes than the 
 mere taking and expelling of breath. A 
 severe pain in the foot or any remote organ 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 189 
 
 of the body will make sleep difficult, if not 
 impossible, until exhaustion has come, 
 whereas such a pain would not in any way 
 prevent breathing ; or, again, any anxiety 
 or tension of mind will hinder sleep. Con- 
 tinued pain, of course, results in bodily 
 exhaustion, continued anxiety in the cor- 
 responding exhaustion of the mind, the 
 inability to think longer; but these are 
 rather special causes of sleeplessness, which 
 are responsible for a comparatively small 
 percentage of those patients — for they are 
 no less^who habitually sleep badly, either 
 finding difficulty in getting to sleep, or 
 awaking at timeless hours, or awaking, not 
 to sleep again, in very early hours of the 
 morning. These, though one can class all 
 under the general heading of bad sleepers, 
 are divisible into at least two distinct 
 classes, while insomnia may arise from very 
 different causes. 
 
I90 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 Certain general rules apply to everyone 
 in the regulation of the bedroom, and 
 though confirmed bad sleepers may scoff 
 at the notion of furniture and bedgear 
 having anything to do with their own par- 
 ticular thorn in the flesh, it will at any rate 
 be harmless for them to know how a bed- 
 room can be regulated in order to give the 
 best possible conditions. 
 
 In the first place, then, mere stuffiness 
 of a room will be often quite sufficient to 
 wake an ordinarily good sleeper, and if 
 continued, to get him into the habit of sleep- 
 ing badly. If the air in a room gets ex- 
 hausted of its oxygen, he wiU during sleep 
 breathe through his mouth as well as his 
 nostrils, the lungs rebelling against their 
 starvation. This continued for several 
 hours will by the consequent dryness of 
 mouth and throat, and the discomfort 
 ensuing upon it, be quite sufficient to wake 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 191 
 
 him, wake him thoroughly, that is to say, 
 with a sense of uneasiness amounting 
 to positive discomfort. A proper bed- 
 room, therefore, should be incapable of 
 stuffiness, that is to say, a window should 
 always be open, and the room be as 
 free as possible from curtains and carpets. 
 No doubt the absence of them (of carpet, 
 anyhow) affects the stuffiness of a room only 
 in a very small degree, but it has its value in 
 this way, that the air is far freer from dust, 
 which is an important point, if for eight 
 hours or so out of every twenty-four you are 
 breathing that air. But it is true that the 
 influx of light in the early morning tends 
 to wake some people, and the absence of 
 curtains lets in light. For this there are 
 two remedies, both equally simple : have 
 blinds of the ordinary dark-blue stuff 
 which quite effectually excludes light, or 
 better, pass a couple of nights, three or 
 
192 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 four perhaps, in which you are awakened 
 by Hght. After that you will fail to notice 
 it, and one of the present writers, who for 
 years thought he must awake when light 
 came in, found after doing so once only, 
 that it made not the slightest difference, 
 and he who carefully drew curtains, and 
 had the position of a strange bed altered 
 so as to be away from the light has now 
 often awoke, when called, in a blaze of 
 sunshine. 
 
 He is, therefore, you will conjecture, a 
 naturally good sleeper. Naturally, no — that 
 is to say, in early life he was a persistently 
 bad one, who used to adopt all kinds of 
 means to go to sleep, of which presently. 
 But for the last six years his record is this : 
 he has, as far as he remembers, through 
 good and ill report, through such anxieties 
 as are inseparable from life itself, through 
 one attack of typhoid fever, and two of 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 193 
 
 influenza, in spite of hard work up till the 
 time of going to bed (in fact, particularly 
 then, since he finds he works best when the 
 small hours begin to grow bigger), lain awake 
 for never more than one complete hour on 
 three occasions. Once he had coincidently 
 a bad cold, on the other two occasions he 
 failed then, and fails now to account for so 
 extraordinary a proceeding. All told, then, 
 in six years he has been awake for three 
 solid hours when he meant to be asleep. 
 Otherwise, he extinguishes his light — and 
 is called. 
 
 Now the secret of this is, as far as he 
 knows, the complete conviction that he is 
 going to sleep, a conviction not expressed 
 at all, but an acquired instinct. Yet he 
 does not — he says all this at the risk of 
 being accused of egotism, but hoping it 
 may be useful — bother about the matter 
 at all. Once he used to bother about it : 
 
 13 
 
194 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 that was in the days when he slept rather 
 badly; now he does not. Nor does he go to 
 bed in the hopes of going to sleep ; he does 
 not go to bed till he feels^ instinctively again, 
 that it is time. Thirdly, if he has gone to 
 bed early, and is not going to be called till 
 after he has had his fill of sleep (this is rare, 
 since he is a glutton at it), he instantly 
 "reads or gets up instead of trying to go 
 to sleep again (which in itself would do no 
 harm), or instead of wondering why he has 
 awoke. This would do harm, for it par- 
 takes of the nature of " bothering about 
 it." He avoids sleep during the day, this 
 also he thinks is crucial, and if he feels 
 sleepy (sleepy, not to be compared with 
 inclined to rest) he gets up and does some- 
 thing. 
 
 To return for a moment to his bedroom. 
 The windows are open, there is no carpet, 
 he has blankets which vary according to 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 195 
 
 the time of year, but whatever the time of 
 year he has an extra thickness over his 
 feet. In his rare moments of semi-conscious- 
 ness he sometimes (this is towards morning, 
 always when the world is coldest) draws the 
 extra covering over him, and without 
 really waking sleeps again. He also in- 
 variably goes to sleep on his right side and 
 invariably wakes lying on his left. 
 
 We have spoken about this enviable 
 slumberer at some length, because he seems 
 instinctively to have got hold of (no credit 
 to him) some of the points which will be 
 of use to the moderately bad sleeper, whose 
 condition, we maintain, is wrong. If sleep 
 is required, it is as pitiable not to get it 
 as not to be able to eat without indigestion 
 when hungry ; if sleep is not required, it is 
 as foolish to try to induce it as to eat when 
 one is not hungry, also with indigestion. 
 But to draw the lesson from this enviable 
 
 13* 
 
196 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 sluraberer, though much that he does would 
 murder sleep like Macbeth (witness his odious 
 habit of working immediately before going 
 to bed), still much that he does is sensible. 
 Pre-eminently sensible, for instance, is his 
 acquired habit of not bothering about it, 
 for the wondering whether one is going to 
 go to sleep is in many cases quite sufficient 
 to keep one awake. Go to bed assuming 
 naturally, not with insistence, for that 
 would spoil it all, that you are going to sleep, 
 or to use a phrase from hypnotism, make the 
 suggestion that you are. You will not suc- 
 ceed in capturing this attitude the first time 
 you try, nor yet the second, but before long 
 you probably will ; probably, also, when 
 you have done so, you will become a good 
 sleeper. But if this fails, what then ? You 
 will lie awake, that is all, and you will not 
 die of it. But if you fret about it you will 
 lose all the benefit of the act of resting, 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 197 
 
 which is very great. To he stiU with 
 twitching nerves, agonising for sleep, will 
 not only not bring sleep, but it will deprive 
 you of rest. You lie awake. Be it so — at 
 any rate, rest. 
 
 Here innumerable complications enter. 
 You may think it is a noise that is keeping 
 you awake. Someone, who ought to be in 
 bed, is moving about directly above you. 
 Do not get irritated and think over the 
 biting things you will say to-morrow. The 
 morrow will take care of itself. Supposing 
 there was a gale blowing, you would ac- 
 quiesce in the Natural Law, and in conse- 
 quence would go to sleep sooner, because 
 you were not irritated. And irritation, it 
 must be remembered, should be wholly 
 within our control ; in this case to get it in 
 control is an essential preliminary to sleep. 
 While you are cross you will not sleep. 
 Therefore, cease to be cross. A greater 
 
198 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 distraction would calm your irritation ; let 
 the desire for calmness calm it. 
 
 Of great mental anxiety as a cause of 
 insomnia, or of great physical pain, it is not 
 our purpose to speak, for these are excep- 
 tional cases. But the ordinary person must, 
 with an effort — until the act becomes auto- 
 matic — put out of his mind when he goes 
 to bed all interesting things, if he wishes to 
 become a good sleeper. He must, at first 
 anyhow, having definitely told himself that 
 he is going to sleep, consciously let his mind 
 dwell on monotonous affairs. Sheep going 
 through a gap in a hedge is a recognised 
 soporific, and no doubt an excellent one, 
 only he must be absorbed not in each 
 sheep but in the stupifying multitude of 
 them. Similarly he may try to mark out 
 a lawn-tennis court with as few possible 
 liftings of the marking machine, without 
 of course going over any line twice. Or he 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 199 
 
 may say over and over again some passage 
 of poetry, or some familiar form of words, 
 which should be short, so as to procure the 
 benefit of the tedious effect of mere sense- 
 less repetition. But, after he has wasted 
 time — for these things are waste of time if 
 one wants to go to sleep — in this manner, 
 he must take into consideration methods 
 even more simple than these. Cold feet, 
 the least feeling of hunger will easily, 
 especially in a nervous person, induce sleep- 
 lessness. If such causes are present, then 
 additional covering, and some easily diges- 
 tible food — biscuits, fruit, etc., will probably 
 relieve him. Again, washing the face in 
 cold water, also an awakening process, 
 tends to send the blood anywhere but to 
 the brain, which is desirable. A hot- water 
 bottle to the feet serves the same object. 
 Or again, failure of digestion is a common 
 cause of sleeplessness ; if there is a chance 
 
200 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 of this being the cause, drink hot water 
 before going to bed, or cold water with a 
 little bi-carbonate of potash. 
 
 Considering the incalculable benefit which 
 a habit of sleep produces, we do not feel 
 ashamed to write down aids, however tiny, 
 to produce it. For that it is largely a habit 
 is beyond question, and as a habit it is one 
 of the entirely healthful habits — it is essen- 
 tially good. But the contrary habit, that 
 of lying awake, ■ though largely remediable, 
 is not fatal, and its ill-effects are im- 
 measurably neutralized if the will is steadily 
 exerted towards the grasp of that truth. 
 To lie awake, fretting that one cannot go 
 to sleep, is distinctly bad ; to lie awake,, 
 if no remedy short of drug-drinking will 
 cure it, does not appreciably matter, so 
 long as one accepts " rest " as the best 
 possible substitute. 
 
 A different variety of sleeplessness is that 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 201 
 
 which attacks the sufferer early in the morn- 
 ing, say three or four hours before he wishes 
 to get up. For this a somewhat heroic 
 remedy may be tried, since it is always 
 possible that natural awaking may mean 
 one thing — namely, that you have had 
 enough sleep. Therefore, it may be worth 
 while, just once or twice, to try the effect, 
 if you are really broad awake, of getting 
 up instead of encouraging yourself to wake 
 early again by letting this early waking 
 dwell on your mind. You will probably 
 be very tired by the next evening, you 
 may even (in this case the remedy is clearly 
 futile) be too tired to sleep. But it may 
 easily happen that you will sleep that 
 night exceedingly well, and wake at a 
 normal time again. But if again, and yet 
 again you continue to wake early, it is no 
 use persisting in this treatment. Or you 
 may awake, as stated before, owing to the 
 
202 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 airlessness of your room, and the fact that 
 you have been breathing with an open 
 mouth, or, and this is probably a frequent 
 cause of early awakings, you may be 
 engaged for weeks or months together on 
 some absorbing occupation. You sleep at 
 first because tired, and sleep deeply, but as 
 the hours go by the sleep becomes lighter, 
 and before your body regains conscious- 
 ness at all, that strange part of the brain, 
 the subliminal self, or the sub-conscious self, 
 is awake, and begins thinking (gradually 
 arousing the rest of you) of the engrossing 
 occupation. Soon the whole brain is awake, 
 and by the sub-conscious self is reminded, 
 as it were, of the business. Then having 
 once begun thinking about it, it is difficult 
 for you to regain that passivity which is 
 invariably the prelude to sleep, though it 
 need be scarcely more than instantaneous. 
 It is here that the cause of sleeplessness 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 203 
 
 and its remedy we believe largely lie, for 
 it is within the power of all to put them- 
 selves into the control, more or less com- 
 plete, of their sub-conscious self and develop 
 the power of the sub-conscious self until 
 it becomes a real potency. To take an 
 example, how constantly does it happen that 
 after wrestling with some mental difficulty, 
 or trying to remember some name which 
 one knows well, one by instinct dismisses 
 the subject, to find in a few minutes that the 
 difficulty is solved, or the name recollected. 
 That is probably the work of the sub-con- 
 scious part of the brain. In the same way 
 many people can wake themselves at any 
 hour they wish, by telling their sub-con- 
 scious brain (this is what it comes to) to 
 call them. They go to sleep, having ordered 
 their sub-conscious self to call them, and at 
 the appointed hour, it may be long before 
 light, something inside them, which ap- 
 
204 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 parently knows the time, wakes the rest 
 of the sleeping brain and body. And with 
 a Uttle training and practice the power of 
 developing and using the sub-conscious 
 brain increases very quickly. We believe 
 that many early wakers could sleep com- 
 fortably on, by saying that they would 
 not awake till a certain hour. One does 
 not need violence or internal shouting, as 
 it were, to communicate effectually with 
 this sub-conscious self ; a quiet determina- 
 tion of thought for a few moments before 
 going to sleep does the work effectually. 
 This also is invaluable to many who have 
 found that going to sleep when getting into 
 bed was difficult. One has to take it for 
 granted that one is going to sleep, and cease 
 to think about it, emptying the brain of 
 conscious thought as far as may be. You 
 cannot go to sleep in a rage, until the rage 
 has given place to exhaustion. 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 205 
 
 To sum up, then, both for those who find 
 it difficult to go to sleep, and for those who 
 wake early, the following hints are recom- 
 mended : — 
 
 (i.) Do not load your brain with inter- 
 esting stuff, just before going to bed. 
 This will both prevent your going 
 to sleep, and will also tend to wake 
 you up. Try reading a stupid book 
 for a few minutes after getting into 
 bed. 
 
 (ii.) Have as much air as possible in the 
 room, and wear the minimum of 
 bed-clothing that keeps you warm. 
 But have an extra rug over the 
 feet, which you can easily draw over 
 you towards morning, when both the 
 night is coldest, and your vitality 
 lowest. 
 
 (iii.) If you still lie awake, try the effect 
 of some monotonous exercise, like 
 counting sheep going through a gap, 
 marking out a tennis-court, or repeat- 
 
2o6 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 ing some short and familiar form of 
 words. 
 
 (iv.) If you suspect even slight indiges- 
 tion^ take a little bi-carbonate of 
 soda or of potash. 
 
 (v.) Tell yourself quite quietly that you 
 are going to sleep^ but do not rouse 
 yourself to see how you are getting on. 
 
 (vi.) Eat or drink something easily 
 digestible, rice, biscuits, or hot cocoa. 
 
 (vii.) If all these are useless, be quite 
 resigned ; try not to get irritated, do 
 not toss about if you can avoid it. 
 Do not think about interesting things. 
 In fact, if you cannot sleep, take as 
 much rest as you can. Lie utterly 
 relaxed and breathe deep. Finally, 
 with regard to the number of 
 hours of sleep required, it must 
 remain a personal question. Some 
 people do not need more than between 
 five or six, especially in later life, 
 others seem positively to need not 
 less than eight. But the chances are 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 207 
 
 that everyone requires from about 
 five and a half to eight. Less than 
 that minimum is probably insuffi- 
 cient in the long run, more than eight 
 probably unnecessary for anyone in 
 good health. Nor must it be for- 
 gotten that in itself the desire for 
 much sleep is not a healthy sign ; 
 it may easily point to a sluggish 
 liver. 
 
 This brings us to the second division of 
 the subject — namely Rest, which does not 
 only largely diminish the ill-results of not 
 sleeping at night, but is probably good for 
 all hard workers either of mind or body, 
 at certain times during the day, in parti- 
 cular after a long continued stretch of brain- 
 work, when an interval should be taken by 
 the mind ; after a meal, when quiescence 
 on the part of the body leaves the digestion 
 more energy to do its work ; and after 
 physical exercise, when those limbs which 
 
2o8 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 have borne the brunt of it should be left 
 quiescent. A fiat or semi-recumbent posi- 
 tion is the best, one in which the body is 
 completely supported, and no muscular effort 
 is needed to retain it in its position ; and 
 the deep breathing of sleep may be at first 
 imitated and will soon be acquired. The 
 reason for this is that since slow, long 
 breath is the means naturally adopted by 
 the lungs in sleep, it is probably the best 
 method of resting the breathing muscles 
 even when awake. It is a mistake to spend 
 too long over these rests ; if two a day are 
 taken, a quarter of an hour, provided it be 
 real rest, is likely to be sufficient to freshen 
 one up again completely, while if the 
 muscles are left too long relaxed, they will 
 be disinclined to begin work again. 
 
 Now sleep and rest are widely different 
 from relaxation, the third means of recupera- 
 tion mentioned above, since the first two 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 209 
 
 are purely natural, and require merely 
 passivity as a condition, whereas intentional 
 relaxation is at first purely artificial, and 
 requires, even when it has become easy 
 with practice, certain voluntary efforts. It 
 has therefore this initial disadvantage, and in 
 addition this further one, that in the young 
 it is seldom if ever required, since the natural 
 means of recuperation. Sleep and Rest, sup- 
 ply all that is wanted. Unless habits are 
 acquired in childhood or youth, however, 
 there are few people who will ever spare 
 the time to acquire them at all. It re- 
 quires also an exercise of imagination — rest, 
 that is to say, has to be attained self- 
 consciously. 
 
 This all sounds confusing, and with a view 
 to making it rather more intelligible by an 
 easy instance of it, the following is recom- 
 mended. It is of no use merely reading it, 
 the thing has to be tried, and after two or 
 
 14 
 
2IO DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 three trials it will be time enough to say 
 whether the particular individual finds it 
 of value. Thus : — 
 
 Sit straight in any chair with a back to 
 it. Close the eyes and draw a long, slow 
 breath in, gradually lifting up the head, and 
 thinking as far as may be of nothing what- 
 ever. Then breathe slowly out, letting the 
 head drop forwards and the body and spine 
 bend forwards, till the whole attitude is 
 that of something broken or lifeless. Repeat. 
 
 Now this may sound like a meaningless 
 formula to any who have never tried it. 
 But the fact remains that many who have, 
 find — whether it is the imagination that 
 tells them so, or not — that they gain more 
 recuperation from a couple of minutes of 
 this, than they possibly could in the same 
 time-limit of mere rest or sleep. The reason 
 is not far too seek : in sleep and in rest the 
 muscles certainly do rest, but is it not 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 211 
 
 more than possible that a muscle bidden 
 by the will to rest, rests far more com- 
 pletely ? Certainly each of the present 
 writers, if, for instance, he is thoroughly 
 tired, and by the exigencies of life he has 
 to do something else in three minutes by 
 the clock, does not attempt to lie down or 
 go to sleep for three minutes, which he can 
 easily do, but has found by experience that 
 voluntary and intentional relaxation like 
 this, dictated by the will, is far more 
 freshening than either rest or sleep. At any 
 rate he so believes it is, that the illusion is 
 complete. The fact of saying to the 
 muscles, " I will rest," is indeed more imme- 
 diately productive of refreshment than 
 passive rest. This may sound fantastic, but 
 to take a larger instance, how often has it 
 happened that a patient in some serious 
 fever, when exhaustion is the foe to be 
 
 dreaded, has pulled through by an exercise 
 
 14* 
 
212 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 of will, by making an effort, whereas if he 
 had lain passive— in the natural condition 
 for recovery — he would certainly have died ? 
 There are few doctors who would not en- 
 dorse this. And voluntary relaxation, in 
 the same way, is the remedy for milder 
 exhaustion, especially when another busi- 
 ness has to be gone about almost imme- 
 diately. To some, the note " quack " will 
 sound here. But " quack " is worth trying, 
 if it can do no harm. 
 
 The same exercise — one of the present 
 writers has not personally found it so suc- 
 cessful — may be tried standing, or in a more 
 elaborate form, it can be tried lying. From 
 a kneeling position on the floor, with the 
 head forward on the chest, and the spine 
 relaxed, one slowly, but with the vivid idea 
 of rest in one's mind, crumbles down to a 
 lying position, eventually resting on the 
 back, with legs and arms outstretched and 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 213 
 
 separate. The breathing must be full, slow, 
 and rhythmical. Then after a minute or 
 two one rises very quietly. 
 
 Or, again, relaxation in a milder form 
 can hardly fail to be useful to everybody, 
 and many people practise it unconsciously. 
 The commonest form which is known to 
 everyone is stretching at the end of work, 
 and for a few seconds afterwards remaining 
 utterly relaxed. No one has ever stretched 
 — we boldly assert this — without the sub- 
 sequent relaxation, which, quite apart from 
 the relief of a cramped position that stretch- 
 ing gives, gives rest to the body. Similarly, 
 also, every sedentary brain-worker will find 
 that he works best when he is most uncon- 
 scious of his body, when the energy which 
 would be employed in bracing limbs is left 
 unoccupied for the brain to make use of. 
 Mere stillness is of course not at all the same 
 thing, for stillness may go with rigid stiff- 
 
214 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 ness. But the point of relaxation is that 
 during work every muscle that is not em- 
 ployed in that work should have nothing 
 whatever to do, and that after work no 
 muscle should have an3'^thing to do if the 
 work has been physical, and if mental 
 that the brain should be empty. True the 
 will has to say, " Holiday for all, holiday 
 for all," because all rest better so ; but no 
 more. The energy of the whole frame is 
 devoted to rest. 
 
 • 
 
 In the same way, just as when the brain 
 bears the stress of exertion, the body should 
 be completely relaxed, so when one part of 
 the body, the arms or legs, for instance, are 
 actively employed, and above all when 
 storage of energy may be useful, the rest 
 of the body not wanted should be trained 
 to give no trouble, not to require the usage 
 of energy. Innumerable instances of the 
 truth of this present themselves, for in 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 215 
 
 athletics "reserve/' "quietness of action/' 
 all imply the unconscious storage of energy. 
 Force employed is energy gone, and the less 
 unnecessary energy one spends, the more 
 there is left for endurance. Look at a 
 practised racket player and one who does 
 not know how to husband himself ! The 
 one takes two quiet steps and is in easy 
 time, the other rushes to the corner, is there 
 before there is any need, and has to make a 
 call on his muscles to check himself. Result, 
 one has expended no energy, practically 
 speaking, in getting there, the other has 
 parted with energy twice, once to start with 
 violence, once to check himself with violence. 
 This repeated twice a minute for half-an hour 
 will leave one fresh, the other beaten. 
 
 Here we have an instance of intentional 
 sparing, a thing related to relaxation, for 
 both are an economy of force. And in this 
 body of ours, so " fearfully and wonderfully 
 
2i6 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 made," servant as it is or should be to the 
 will, a conscious command is far more 
 binding than a laisser aller. A man with a 
 severe headache may be unable to go to 
 sleep in the ordinary course, but let him 
 learn to know and practise the use of the 
 huge power of will that is lying chiefly 
 dormant within him, and he will not only 
 be able to get on satisfactorily with his 
 work, which would be impossible if he 
 paused to think how his head hurt, but 
 he will easily be able to go to sleep. He 
 could, and the ordinary man can, if he 
 tries, induce by practice both energy and 
 passivity. 
 
 But there are " foes of its own house- 
 hold " even here, as in Vegetarianism and 
 Teetotalism. And the hearth-abiding foe of 
 the power of the will is Christian Science. 
 This strange sect holds that all ailments 
 are imaginary, and that since there is no 
 
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION. 217 
 
 matter^ there is no such thing as a broken 
 leg, because there is no leg. This is futile, 
 and the answer incontestably is that there 
 must be legs because they can be broken. 
 But the subject is not worth discussion. 
 Again, to sum up : — 
 
 (i.) To mean to do a thing is productive 
 of better results than to let the 
 thing happen. 
 
 (ii.) Therefore, let your will intend rest, 
 and you will get rest more effectively 
 than by lying down. 
 
 (iii.) You do not tire the will by using it. 
 On the contrary, it is only by its use 
 that it can get strong. 
 
 (iv.) There are two things that weaken 
 the will : the first is not using it, 
 the second is not obeying it. 
 
2l8 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF TRAINING ON MIND AND 
 MORALS. 
 
 It is impossible to make the simplest 
 movement of any kind without the con- 
 scious or unconscious direction of the 
 mind, so inextricably are the two bound up 
 together ; and from the earliest times 
 physicians, both spiritual, mental and phy- 
 sical, have known that the soul can be 
 reached through the " subtle gateways of 
 the body." This aspect of training, the 
 importance, that is, of the cleanly health 
 of the body, and its prompt and unrebel- 
 lious obedience to the will, which is con- 
 
MIND AND MORALS. 219 
 
 cerned with this question, has been alluded 
 to before, and is dealt with more fully here. 
 In the chapter on exercises we insisted 
 that both for their direct use in athletics, 
 and for their far greater significance in life, 
 the speed and promptitude of the body's 
 obedience was an attainment of great value, 
 for thus the mind has at its caU a quick 
 ready servant to do its errands, instead of 
 a slow loiterer. We saw, also, that these 
 exercises, while they are in progress, neces- 
 sitate strict attention, which we may now 
 add should be consciously applied, as learnt 
 there, to other pursuits. Let, for instance, 
 the man who has accustomed himself by 
 this drill, for so we may call it, to attend 
 with concentrated attention to these simple 
 actions of the body, apply that attitude of 
 mind which is now familiar to him to other 
 tasks. Let us say he has before him a 
 tedious piece of work, which at the same 
 
220 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 time requires minute attention. Let him, 
 then, put himself into that frame of mind 
 (he remembers it quite well) with which 
 he performs his exercises. Many people 
 hardly know what real attention means : 
 there is no better way to teach it than to 
 make rapid and correct movements, which 
 cannot be made without it. In the same 
 way, also, these exercises give the habit of 
 control. A man who has brought mind and 
 body into the relation of master and willing 
 servant, even in so elementary a matter 
 as this, is going on the right road to teach 
 himself control in the largest choices and 
 difficulties. So, too, in other points of 
 training : a man who has made himself 
 able to drop smoking, or abstain from 
 stimulants, or from certain sorts of food 
 which he likes, but which his reason tells 
 him are bad for him, has not improved his 
 power of self-control in that point only. 
 
MIND AND MORALS. 221 
 
 but has begun, at any rate, to form a habit 
 of it ; and the exercise of self-control, in 
 one point only, will make his power of con- 
 trol stronger all round, in each and every 
 case where his reason suggests control to 
 him. It is here, as a tonic to the mind, 
 that training of some sort, apart from all 
 its other uses, is recommended to every- 
 body ; not training for some special event, 
 which, as soon as the event has come off 
 is dropped, but a daily and continual 
 observance of certain rules of health, a 
 daily practise of exertion of will and obedi- 
 ence of body.* 
 
 * " Many think with Herbert Spencer [who, however, holds that 
 ' imperfections of nature may be diminished by wise management '] 
 that education is useless or almost powerless ; that human evolution is 
 ruled by heredity. . . . This modern conception, which accords 
 to heredity a power at least equal to that ascribed by ancient poets to 
 Fate, is assuredly excessive. . . . Education may supervene 
 efficaciously ; it succeeds in giving birth to artificial instincts capable 
 of balancing the hereditary instincts, and even of suppressing them ; in 
 short, of substituting for innate ancestral habit an acquired individual 
 habit." — Professors Proust and Ballet. 
 
222 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 Again, the health of the body contributes 
 directly to the power and strength of the 
 mind. Work, which is irksome and com- 
 paratively badly done by a man who, for 
 any cause, digestive or otherwise, is in only 
 moderate health, will be done by the same 
 man with zest and far better results if he 
 is in good hegilth. Also, the mind is able 
 to accomplish not only better work but 
 more work, when the whole system is not 
 laid under a general tax to repair and make 
 well any enfeebled or clogged organ. A 
 single rusty joint, a badly fitting valve 
 in an engine, makes the whole run less 
 smoothly than it should, and also implies 
 a waste of energy. Body and mind together, 
 working in co-operation as they always 
 must, are a close parallel to this. The 
 one cannot possibly be at its best unless 
 the other is in health. Rightful activity 
 in the one stimulates activity in the other, 
 
MIND AND MORALS. 223 
 
 just as artificial stimulants, such as spirits 
 to the body, induce a mental activity in 
 all respects like the physical one, tem- 
 porary in character and followed by re- 
 action. But the habit of briskness, of 
 activity, of quick decision, is a thing fully 
 as much mental as it is bodily ; the two 
 are inseparable, and, therefore, in the train- 
 ing of the body, the qualities which we 
 should aim to acquire are those which are 
 mentally desirable. One man's mind may, 
 it is true, be naturally a much less fine 
 instrument on its own level than his body, 
 and much less easily trained, but the self- 
 control, the alertness, the habit of speed, 
 which such training as we have sketched 
 out gives, will directly and inevitably 
 affect his mind. It may still be slow and 
 laborious in its workings, but it would 
 otherwise have been slower. Also, what- 
 ever work it does it does better, because it 
 
224 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 is not clogged, hindered, and distracted by 
 an unhealthy body. 
 
 Now this interweaving of mind and body 
 is so complex, so closely knit, that it would 
 perhaps be beyond the sphere of safety to 
 say that the knitting together of the body 
 and that within us which is the spring of 
 moral, not intellectual qualities, the soul 
 in fact, is closer than that of the mind and 
 body. In any case, the interdependence of 
 body on soul, of soul on body, and of both 
 on the mind is practically complete, and 
 this human trinity makes up man. There 
 is no healthful habit of body which does 
 not directly exercise a healthful influence 
 on the soul, no harmful habit which does 
 not hurt it. The body sins, and in its 
 secret place the soul sickens. From the 
 other side, also, a high moral standard 
 infallibly leads the body to adopt healthy 
 habits, a low moral standard suffers it 
 
MIND AND MORALS. 225 
 
 to drift into physical crime and degra- 
 dation. 
 
 Now city life, especially to anyone who 
 has been accustomed to have a good deal of 
 exercise without a modification of the food 
 and stimulants he may take without hurt 
 in a more active country life, is apt to put 
 the body into a state which renders it 
 particularly liable to all kinds of moral 
 attack. The life is largely sedentary, and 
 in consequence a great deal of physical 
 vigour in young men, which would in the 
 country be naturally and healthily ex- 
 pended in games and exercise for the upper 
 classes, in manual labour for the lower, 
 remains unused, and, except to those of 
 strong moral principle, is a dangerous 
 thing. Again, without modification of diet 
 to suit the circumstances, most people eat 
 more stimulating food than they require, 
 and, as a natural sequence, drink more 
 
 15 
 
226 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 stimulating and intoxicating drinks than are 
 good for them. This, in itself, is another 
 exciting cause to the passions. To exercise 
 self-control under these circumstances is a 
 laudable and a difficult thing ; but a far 
 simpler remedy lies to hand — namely, in 
 not letting these circumstances exist, by 
 deliberately taking less stimulant and 
 deliberately stinting oneself in the matter 
 of food, or giving a fair trial to the simpler 
 foods spoken of before, which will be found 
 to be far less exciting, though quite as 
 nourishing. There are many men who are 
 capable, as far as will power goes, of limit- 
 ing themselves in this manner, who, if they 
 do not limit themselves, become nearly 
 helpless in the grip of their temperament. 
 For a hfe of sensual indulgence, to put it 
 on the lowest grounds, is bad for the body 
 and the mind ; sensual thought even be- 
 comes a habit as hard to get rid of as any 
 
MIND AND MORALS. 227 
 
 morphia habit, and for many to try to rid 
 themselves of it, while they continue to 
 keep their bodies in a permanent state of 
 excitability owing to overmuch food and 
 stimulant, would he like attempting to 
 cure the morphia habit, and yet continually 
 going about with a phial of it in the pocket. 
 And nothing, again putting the question 
 on low grounds, is so bad for the nerves as 
 to be incessantly desiring and dwelling in 
 thought upon a certain thing, and inces- 
 santly refusing to gratify the desire. We do 
 not, of course, mean that it would be better 
 to gratify it, ' but that it is better to take 
 hold of it by the root, not merely pinch 
 the stem, and, as far as possible, get rid of 
 the desire. For there are certain temp- 
 tations, and impurity is one, which are not 
 safe to fight consciously, since to approach 
 them even in thought means to be seized, 
 as it were, by the tentacles of some infernal 
 
 15* 
 
228 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 cuttlefish. Do not school yourself to fight 
 them ; school yourself to run away from 
 them. Interest yourself in other things, 
 tire yourself physically, and, above all, do 
 not indulge in stimulants of food and drink, 
 which, however innocent they may be in 
 themselves, predispose, by the very feeling 
 of vigour they give, to things which are not 
 innocent. 
 
 It is not only the suddenness and almost 
 overwhelming force of physical temptation 
 to some natures which constitutes their 
 only danger, it is the gradual, hardly obser- 
 vable nature of the effect of such indulgence. 
 For years, it is no use denying it, a man's 
 mental and bodily health may continue, 
 as far as one can see, absolutely unimpaired 
 by such excesses. The greatest harm is 
 done by preachers, schoolmasters, and 
 others who warn boys that such habits 
 will lead to. immediate decay of the mental 
 
MIND AND MORALS. 229 
 
 and physical powers, and early death. The 
 boy may be frightened for a time, but if 
 this is the only preventive that keeps him 
 back, his fright will wear off, and he will 
 find by experience that no such effect, as 
 was predicted, follows. He will, there- 
 fore, probably conclude that there is no ill- 
 effect. He will, also, assuredly meet men 
 who tell him that such practises are good 
 for the health. A greater fallacy was never 
 invented by the devil himself. There is 
 no truth whatever in it. But what his 
 teacher ought to have taught him was that 
 such practices are the cause of mental and 
 physical decay in thousands, though not 
 immediately, that to yield to such tempta- 
 tions is for everyone to become less able 
 to resist them, and that by perfectly simple 
 rules in the use of water, in the hmiting of 
 food especially, for instance, late in the 
 evening the force of such temptations be- 
 
230 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 comes infinitely less. Many people, no 
 doubt, will say that this is a low ground 
 on which to build up high motives. It is 
 for that very reason, since it will appeal 
 to those to whom high motives would not 
 appeal, that it is so extremely useful. 
 Thus it will appeal to many to know that 
 at the age, let us say, of fifty, a man who 
 has lived purely is, almost without excep- 
 tion, a stronger and more vigorous person, 
 more capable of work and also of enjoy- 
 ment than one who, in early manhood has, 
 though possibly for a few months or weeks 
 only, behaved like a mere 'brute beast.' 
 
 It is in this connection that we strongly 
 advocate the introduction into London and 
 other big towns of those evening clubs for 
 exercise, which have been tried with great 
 success in America. There are boys' and 
 men's clubs in enormous numbers in London, 
 and admirable things they are, but we know 
 
MIND AND MORALS. 231 
 
 of few where billiards is not, perhaps, the 
 most violent form of exercise provided. 
 What is wanted is a number of tall buildings 
 built with many floors, where, for a moderate 
 subscription, that class of young man who 
 now spends his evenings in the promenade 
 of the music halls, or in aimless (perhaps 
 it would be better if they were aimless) 
 strolls up and down Piccadilly with not 
 infrequent visits to the public hoiise, could 
 get an hour's violent exercise in boxing, 
 fencing, or gymnastics. We fully believe 
 that this class, as a whole, would enjoy 
 such an evening far more than the evenings 
 they are now accustomed to spend ; that it 
 would be infinitely better for them in body, 
 mind and soul alike, not even the, flabbiest 
 moralist would be disposed to deny. As it 
 is, a young man gets away from his work, 
 say at five or so, and what in heaven's name 
 is the poor vigorous thing to do with the 
 
232 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 hours that divide him from his natural 
 bedtime ? * It is out of the question to 
 expect that he should sit in his room and 
 read a book ; he has been at work all day ; 
 his body tingles for diversion. Out he goes, 
 if he is human at all. In the general way 
 there are two places open to him, the public- 
 house or the streets. There his vigour finds 
 further stimulus, or unhappily, its satis- 
 faction. That there are, as we have said, 
 
 * " In the earliest times of the human race .... to prompt 
 people to take exercise meant only to induce them to do their daily 
 work. In later times, however, and especially in the world of to-day 
 as we know it, the multiplication of industries has placed many classes 
 in such a position that exercise is something independent of, and has 
 to be added on to, their daily employment. . . . The clerk at his 
 desk and the merchant at his counter ; the tailor in his crooked posi- 
 tion and the milliner at her seam ; the printer setting up type from 
 morning till night ; the workers, or rather watchers, at manufactories 
 . have one and all forgotten that their lower extremities are 
 meant to carry them about. . . . Every departure (from the 
 physically active life) may be an intellectual advance, but a muscular 
 retrocession — a social gain, but a physical decline. Such being the 
 case, it is evident that a great change either in the physique, or in the 
 means of obtaining exercise so as to maintain that physique, must have 
 taken place ; and when we come to look at it we shall find that biit 
 few of the employments of the present day carry with the7H a sufficiency 
 of exercise." — Dr. James Cantlie, in "The Book of Health." 
 
MIND AND MORALS. 233 
 
 many clubs for such people is perfectly true, 
 but papers, draughts, chess (and we suppose 
 now pingpong), are not the sort of thing 
 that is needed to work off the potential 
 violence of the body. What is wanted is 
 violent exercise.* That such institutions 
 would be enormously popular with the class 
 of which we speak, those, in fact, for whom 
 more expensive clubs are utterly out of the 
 question, is, we think, beyond doubt, and 
 financially, we believe, that they could quite 
 easily be made to pay. It would, of course, 
 be out of place to discuss this here, but it is 
 worth noting that where such clubs have 
 been tried in Boston and elsewhere, they 
 have proved successful. 
 
 It is these evening hours which are the 
 dangerous time. Purposeless loafing in the 
 streets, though entertaining enough, is not 
 
 * In America the Y.M.C.A. Clubs are, we believe, almost invariably 
 athletic, if not primarily, at least essentially. 
 
234 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 sufficient for a vigorous young body, which 
 has been pent all day at work ; while loafing 
 with purpose, we may say, is not good for 
 anybody, yet it is to loafing with purpose 
 that purposeless loafing naturally leads. 
 Purposeless loafing is innocent enough, but, 
 to use the morphia simile again, it is as if 
 the sufferer from the morphia habit took a 
 bottle of morphia and continued to finger 
 it, a highly dangerous performance ; and 
 we do not believe that the class which loafs 
 in the streets, anyhow the best of them, 
 loaf because they prefer it to some suitable 
 employment for their body, but because no 
 suitable employment for their body, is ac- 
 cessible to them. The bulk of them would 
 vastly prefer something different, and the 
 eagerness with which they would embrace 
 bodily exercise may be gathered from the 
 crowds on the Serpentine and waters of the 
 park if skating is possible. The theatre 
 
MIND AND MORALS. 235 
 
 every night is^ of course^ as hopelessly out 
 of their means, as it would be to belong to 
 Prince's or Lord's, but with what patience 
 and in what numbers do the crowds wait 
 at the pit door. The middle classes of 
 England, we believe, are not naturally 
 sensual, but, as it is, during just those hours 
 in the day when they are at leisure, there 
 is nothing whatever for them to do, except 
 loaf, till loafing becomes a habit, and from 
 being an innocent one passes into the Devil's 
 care, who has made the London streets what 
 they are, down the most populous of which, 
 Piccadilly, the Strand, etc., no man would 
 willingly take his sister at night. 
 
 It is towards this removal of causes that 
 predispose towards ill-health in the moral 
 sphere, ill-health as shown by a lack of 
 energy, promptitude, power of work and 
 endurance in the mind, that the training 
 of the body, as we have attempted to outline 
 
236 D.AILY TRAINING. 
 
 it, is largely and unceasingly devoted. 
 Health, as we understand it, the condition, 
 that is to say, not of the ordinary man who 
 considers he is " well enough," but that 
 higher health which is the result of training 
 the body to quickness, energy, and so to 
 to strength, which implies an obedience 
 to the reason in matters of food and stimu- 
 lants, directly benefits a man's moral and 
 mental life. The body "is in subjection " ; 
 it obeys with less struggle the dictates of 
 the non-material part of man, and it obtains 
 in itself a greater resistive power to temp- 
 tations of laziness or lust, just as it obtains a 
 greater resistive power to its own purely 
 physical enemies of cold or fatigue. It is 
 in this respect, therefore, (a far higher con- 
 sideration than mere physical fitness), that 
 we put forward a system of training that 
 will be likely to ensure such results, and 
 that consequently we regard the obedience 
 
MIND AND MORALS. 237 
 
 to laws of bodily health, and means of phy- 
 sical fitness, as partaking of the nature of 
 duty. And this further : it is clearly 
 accepted as man's duty that he should 
 keep his mind and his morals in the highest 
 and best possible state, ; but seeing how 
 intimately both these are knit with his 
 body so that none can act without the 
 other, the soul sinning through the body, 
 the mind dictating every movement, is it 
 reasonable to suppose that a corresponding 
 duty is not laid on man with regard to the 
 health of his body ? Is it not, in fact, 
 directly his duty to keep his body, as well 
 as his soul and mind, in its highest and best 
 possible state ? No doubt compromises have 
 often to be made ; a man, in order to do his 
 work, may be obliged to disregard certain 
 rules which the health of his body requires 
 should be kept. But saving this, there 
 seems to us to be a clear duty with regard 
 
238 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 to physical health, quite apart from the 
 advantage which physical health will bring 
 to his mind and morals. This wonderful 
 machine is a servant, no doubt, of the mind, 
 but shall the master keep it, so to speak, in 
 an insanitary attic, and pay no regard to 
 its health ? The compromises also, which 
 we have just spoken of, will be rarer if the 
 body is well, since it will be more capable 
 of bearing fatigue and unreasonable hours 
 of work. 
 
 The simple, hut unswerving principles on 
 which morals are based, the highest develop- 
 ment of the mind, the utmost health of the 
 body : these things, and nothing short of 
 them, are the results of ideal training. 
 
239 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TRAINING FOR SPECIAL EVENTS. 
 
 The excuse for this chapter in a book 
 written (as set forth), not for the athlete 
 primarily, but for the average man, who is 
 hopelessly incapable of prominence or 
 great excellence in any one branch of 
 athletics, lies in the fact that such a vast 
 number of people nowadays play games, 
 and are so anxious on certain days to do 
 their best at them in some competition, 
 that quite a fair percentage of readers will, 
 it is hoped, pick up a hint or two which 
 may serve them in good stead at that 
 
240 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 trying moment when they are about to 
 drive a ball from the first tee on some 
 medal day ; about to step out on to the 
 glaring prominence of a lawn-tennis court ; 
 about to go in (fifth wicket down) when a 
 rot has apparently set in ; or, may be, to 
 plaj' a preliminary tie in the City and 
 Suburban Ping-pong Handicap. For it is at 
 these cold and shuddering moments, which 
 no one can hope to meet with more than 
 stolidity, that one needs to have all one's 
 wits about one, to be able to keep one's 
 nerve, and to have one's strong points at 
 one's fingers' ends, and one's weak points 
 (we all have these, and the better one grows 
 at any particular sport, the more glaring 
 they seem proportionately to become) any- 
 how passably defended. At one minute, 
 or less, from now it may be that your weak 
 point wiU be attacked ; your drive may 
 land you a full iron shot from the green, a 
 
TRAINING FOR SPECIAL EVENTS. 241 
 
 stroke you particularly detest ; you may 
 
 have a scurry after a cross-court return ; 
 
 you may have a yorker on the leg stump. 
 
 In all such, the important thing is, not only 
 
 to be prepared for them now, but to have 
 
 been prepared for them so long before that 
 
 the preparation has become a habit. Such 
 
 strokes may still be your weak point, but 
 
 you will meet the emergencies calmly. 
 
 And to meet any emergency calmly is in 
 
 itself a favourable defence, for you will 
 
 then no longer be flurried. 
 
 Now in any game, when you have to 
 
 meet a definite attack of an opponent — 
 
 this necessity does iiot apply to a game like 
 
 golf, or croquet, or billiards, since in such 
 
 games you have to do the best you can 
 
 yourself, without fear of active opposition — 
 
 there is a golden rule, which has never 
 
 been enough insisted on, and it is the rule 
 
 that lies at the base of all we have said 
 
 16 
 
242 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 about training generally, as applied to 
 games. Practice is at the root of it, and the 
 object is to get so familiar with the stroke 
 dictated by the exigencies of the moment, 
 that it is practically automatic* That is to 
 say, as soon as the attack (your opponent's 
 return, or the bowler's ball) is coming, you 
 will, with the least possible expenditure of 
 energy, recognise it, get into the position to 
 meet it, and have the stroke ready. For 
 instance, if the game is lawn-tennis, you 
 will see that a drive into the left-hand 
 corner of the court is probable, and before 
 you have really formulated this to yourself 
 consciously, you should be half-way there, 
 not vaguely, but ready for the attack. 
 Your body should' have moved almost 
 
 * "There is method in walking, method in running, method in 
 raising a burthen with as little effort as possible. The [correct] prac- 
 tice of an exercise leads then to a diminution of muscular expenditure, 
 to an economy of work, whence results an apparent increase of the 
 strength of man who does the work." — Dr. Fernand Lagrange,- in 
 " The Physiology of Exercise." 
 
TEAINING FOE SPECIAL EVENTS. 243 
 
 automatically, and thus your attention and 
 will-power is reserved for noticing your 
 opponent. He may change his mind at 
 the last second (you can never tell about 
 opponents), and instead of driving into the 
 left-hand corner he may lob gently over 
 the net into the right-hand court. Thus 
 your attention, which would — had you not 
 cultivated a sort of correct automatonism — 
 have been used up in getting into the left- 
 hand corner, will be free to observe his 
 change of tactics, and the result is that you 
 will be far more ready for his new attack 
 than you would have been, if all your 
 attention had been taken up in getting into 
 position yourself. 
 
 This verbose illustration is necessary to 
 explain a thing that is often overlooked — 
 namely, the necessity of observing your 
 opponent ; and the more automatic your 
 
 own preparations are, and the more in- 
 
 16* 
 
244 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 stinctively the body works,* the more atten- 
 tion you have at your disposal. It follows, 
 as a corollary, that the less trouble you have 
 to take to meet the actual attack, the more 
 
 * "After a certain period of study difficult exercises have been 
 learned, and may then become automatic. Their effects will then be 
 very different. Is it not quite a different thing to amuse oneself with 
 dancing from occupying oneself with learning dancing ? Dancing, 
 riding, rowing, even running, when they have long been practised, 
 need no more [conscious] brain work than walking, which is above all 
 an automatic exercise. ... It actually needs an effort of will to 
 oppose an action which has become unconscious and to change an 
 acquired pace. . . . We see at the first glance the great hygienic 
 superiority [as increasing the oxygen in the system, removing waste 
 products, relieving the brain fatigued by intellectual work, &c.] of 
 exercises which can be performed automatically, with economy of 
 nervous energy, complete [?] repose of the brain, absolute [?] inaction 
 of the psychical faculties. The work of the human system is then 
 performed by the coarser parts of the machine, and fatigue is first felt 
 by the subordinate agents of movement. 
 
 "But for certain bodily exercises the period of apprenticeship is 
 indefinitely prolonged, and the movements need an increasing guid- 
 ance on the part of the nerve-centres and the conscious faculties, 
 because these movements cannot be constantly identical, and unfore- 
 seen emergencies occur. Fencing can never become an automatic 
 exercise, notwithstanding the tendency exhibited by certain parries and 
 thrusts to become habitual actions and to be performed instinctively ; 
 the movement cannot always be performed in the same manner and 
 follow always the same order, for they are subordinated to those of the 
 opponent." Dr. Fernand Lagrange, in "The Physiology of Bodily 
 Exercise." 
 
TRAINING FOR SPECIAL EVENTS. 245 
 
 you can concentrate your mind on your 
 opponent. The eye should send to the 
 brain the message — " Yorker on the leg 
 stump," or whatever it may be — and with 
 the least -possible expenditure of force, either 
 of muscle or nerve, the attack should be 
 met. The more the movements of the body 
 are automatic, the less you will exhaust 
 yourself. This, in a hard-fought game of 
 racquets, for instance, is an incalculable 
 advantage. 
 
 But in order to ensure this automatic 
 movement there is one thing absolutely 
 essential, and that is not practice merely, 
 but correct practice and swift practice. 
 And correct swift practice implies not only 
 much repetition, but concentration of mind. 
 If you perform a new movement a hundred 
 times, let us sd.y, without thought, it may 
 be done correctly, but it cannot be done, 
 if correctly, swiftly. Correctness is the first 
 
246 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 essential, as we said in the chapter on 
 exercise, and always essential ; the swift- 
 ness in execution comes mainly with prac- 
 tice ; so also does the automatic perform- 
 ance of the correct movement. But it is 
 a very easy thing to lose correctness as the 
 speed increases, and with a view to right 
 this we have recommended — after the move- 
 ment has been completely understood, and 
 learned in some cases part by part — prac- 
 tice before a glass. 
 
 This, then, is the first essential — namely, 
 to have practised one's weak points till, 
 though they are still perhaps weak, they are 
 performed with the minimum possible of 
 conscious thought, so that one's attention, 
 as far as may be, is free to observe the oppo- 
 nent. For a long time before the match 
 continually practise your weak points, till 
 they become, if not satisfactory, at any 
 rate fairly easy, and give to your strong 
 
TRAINING FOE SPECIAL EVENTS. 247 
 
 points only that amount of practice which 
 will serve to keep them in repair, so to speak. 
 At the time of the event, of course, you will 
 use them as much as you possibly can, 
 and at the same time give your opponent 
 as few chances as possible of attacking your 
 weaknesses. And the knowledge that you 
 have a passable defence for such weak- 
 nesses, and can use it with moderate ease, 
 will vastly increase your measure of , con- 
 fidence, whereas the knowledge that in some 
 one point or so you are nearly defenceless 
 would cramp and worry you throughout 
 the set. 
 
 Again, since in many cases correctness of 
 striking lies between two opposite faults, 
 it is often useful to practise deliberately 
 the fault which is opposite to your besetting 
 sin. If, for instance, you do not use your 
 wrist enough in a certain stroke, practise 
 using it far more than is in the least advis- 
 
248 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 able ; if, on the other hand, you use it too 
 much, not giving the forearm, for instance, 
 its share in the stroke, practise the stroke 
 with the forearm alone, keeping the wrist 
 rigid, and you will often find that you thus 
 attain correctness more quickly than if you 
 had practised correctness. The longest way 
 round, in fact, is here the shortest way 
 home. 
 
 It is a great fallacy, as we have said before, 
 to suppose that mere practice makes per- 
 fect. Instead of improving, you may be 
 merely ingraining an existing fault ; or, 
 again, practice without briskness and with- 
 out full attention given is only practice in 
 sluggishness, and confirms and strengthens 
 want of concentration. Thus it is always 
 better, if possible, to practise in short 
 spells, and never go on if you find your 
 attention irresistibly flags ; for not only ' is 
 such practice no good, but it encourages 
 
TEAINING FOR SPECIAL EVENTS. 249 
 
 slack performance. This inability to attend, 
 which besets almost everyone for a long or 
 short period during a course of training, 
 and is the arch-enemy to progress, is often 
 the result of "fatigue, genuine tiredness of 
 muscles or nerves ; the eye times a stroke 
 incorrectly, or the overworked muscles are 
 slow to respond. Now this condition 
 should have been avoided ; and most people 
 who have suffered from it are perfectly 
 aware that yesterday, or two days ago, 
 they went on with their practice when 
 something, eye, muscle, or nerve, distinctly 
 told them : " We have had enough." 
 However, here the condition is now, and 
 there is only one remedy — rest. It is a 
 bore, but it is your own fault. 
 
 This genuine tiredness must not be con- 
 founded with a symptom which certainly 
 it closely resembles in its effects, but which 
 appears to us to be really different, and 
 
2SO DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 may be treated with success by an opposite 
 method : the symptom known as staleness. 
 One is not conscious in any way of fatigue, 
 the practice may easily have not been at 
 all excessive, yet for the tinle all briskness 
 is lost. Now though rest is recommended 
 by many as a remedy for staleness, the 
 opposite treatment — namely, continuance, if 
 not increase of work — is worth a trial ; 
 and if one steadily and perseveringly plays 
 through an attack of staleness, one usually 
 emerges from it better than when one went 
 in. It is a point on which trainers disagree, 
 some recommending, as we have said, an 
 emollient treatment — namely, rest ; others 
 a tonic. But above all, if you decide, rightly 
 as we think, to play through your staleness, 
 play with all the concentration and brisk- 
 ness you are capable of, and do not lay the 
 foundations of a habit of slackness. Your 
 best efforts, it is true, will produce deplor- 
 
TRAINING FOR SPECIAL EVENTS. 251 
 
 able results ; but if you can harden your 
 resolution to care nothing about the results, 
 and hammer steadfastly along, an object of 
 pity to men and angels, you will probably 
 be the better for it. But if your resolution 
 breaks down, and you relax from the poor 
 best still possible to you, stop at once, for 
 always and always slack practice is worse 
 than none. 
 
 Another demon that, like the Promethean 
 vulture, tears at the vitals of the man prac- 
 tising for a special event, or for general 
 improvement, is the apparent slowness of 
 the improvement, and at times its apparent 
 complete cessation. Such a man, for in- 
 stance, with the best intentions in the world 
 will take out a handful of golf-balls to 
 practise, let us say, mashie shots on to a 
 green. The mashie is a weakness in his 
 game, and the resultant positions of the 
 first dozen shots cannot be covered with 
 
252 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 the traditional table-cloth. The next dozen 
 perhaps are even less satisfactory, and at 
 this point he will be wise to ask a candid 
 friend if he is doing anything wrong ; or, 
 if the candid friend is a good player, to 
 show him half a dozen shots. But it is 
 quite possible that there is no obvious fault 
 at all — only a general weakness. Then, 
 having eliminated that most dangerous pos- 
 sibility — namely, of practising a fault, let 
 this assiduous gentleman go on with his 
 practice as long as he is brisk and attentive, 
 and let him continue it every day for a week. 
 Then, and this is the work of the demon 
 alluded to, he may honestly think that he 
 has not improved at all, and be disposed 
 to label the principle of practice to a hot 
 destination. But we solemnly assure him, 
 if he has the least aptitude for the game, 
 he quite certainly either has improved, 
 though he is not conscious of it, or he has 
 
TRAINING FOR SPECIAL EVENTS. 253 
 
 at least by his practice made some necessary 
 steps towards improvement, and this im- 
 provement, when it comes, will probably be 
 more rapid than he has thought possible. 
 From being a poor performer with the 
 mashie he will one day suddenly find that 
 the club has arrived ; that it has shouldered 
 its way through the other mediocre per- 
 formers in his bag and now stands pre- 
 dominant. But two postulates are required : 
 (i) that he must be capable of improve- 
 ment, (2) that he practises correctly. 
 
 Now this sounds a cheerful gospel, and 
 will perhaps not be readily believed, especi- 
 ally by the person who is in the habit of 
 telling one after a foozled mashie-shot that 
 he always foozles with a mashie, and by 
 way of showing how persevering he is, does 
 not use the club again throughout the round, 
 but plays improperly with an iron. And here 
 it might be remarked, that though a match 
 
254 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 at golf certainly does give one practice 
 it is by no means an ideal form of practice, 
 any more than a set of tennis is an 
 ideal form of practice. Indeed, it is even 
 less ideal ; for at tennis there is the fact 
 that you are playing against an attacking 
 opponent, to observe whom is no small 
 part of the game, whereas one's real enemy 
 at golf is not one's opponent, but one's 
 own mistakes. Consequently, with the idea 
 of winning the match one studiously avoids 
 such strokes as may land one in such 
 a position as to require the use of a shot 
 which one knows to be weak, whereas in 
 practice one should, instead of avoiding 
 such a shot, do it a dozen times and yet 
 another dozen. That is practice, and it is 
 by such practice alone that the demon of 
 despair is exorcised. 
 
 Another rule which applies to practice of 
 all games is that the practiser should gradu- 
 
TRAINING FOR SPECIAL EVENTS. 255 
 
 ally increase the severity of his work, in 
 proportion as the stroke becomes easier 
 to him, till, long before his match comes off, 
 he has become accustomed (in games of 
 attack and defence) to meet a much fiercer 
 attack than he is hkely to be subjected to, 
 and himself to attack with a ferocity which 
 he will probably not need. This gives him 
 the comfortable feeling during the match 
 itself that he is playing within his limits. 
 So, also, in golf-practice, let him by degrees 
 increase the difficulties he must contend 
 against, and no longer place the ball he 
 wishes to play on to the green in as good a 
 lie as possible, but in a rather bad one ; and 
 if his Mte noir is a hanging ball, let him 
 place for himself — after his initial difficulties 
 are conquered — a dozen balls that hang not 
 badly, but atrociously badly. Such prac- 
 tice as this will diminish his dread of such 
 a hanging ball as he is probably liable to 
 
256 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 encounter, just because he has been in the 
 habit of playing infinitely more poisonous 
 ones. 
 
 Again, it is impossible to emphasize too 
 much the value of the habit of sparing 
 oneself as far as possible. You may be 
 pretty certain that when the event comes 
 off you will need all the nervous and mus- 
 cular force at your disposal, and it is well 
 to remember that the amount you have 
 is but limited, and that although you have 
 to play as effectively as possible through- 
 out, there are many strokes which can be 
 done with comparatively little effort in one 
 way, but which if done in another are ex- 
 ceedingly tiring. For instance, the correct 
 timing of a ball at tennis, and the bringing 
 forward the weight of the body, using the 
 large muscle areas to back up the arm, wiU 
 drive a force or a boast with greater velo- 
 city than could have been attained by the 
 
TRAINING FOR SPECIAL EVENTS. 257 
 
 arm alone, while the contribution towards 
 fatigue and exhaustion thus entailed is 
 infinitely less than if the forearm and wrist 
 were taxed to their utmost. 
 
 It is the business of every trainer, and 
 so of every one, for each man is his own 
 trainer to a far greater degree than anyoiie 
 else can be, to develop his individuality, 
 and though certain broad rules can be laid 
 down about the wrong way to do a thing, 
 and in a less degree the right way, much 
 should be left to natural aptness and facility. 
 For instance, if a man can easily execute a 
 stroke in a certain way with good results, it 
 is impossible to say that such is not the right 
 way for him to do it ; for the orthodox " right 
 way " may be very difficult to such a man, 
 and it is mere waste of time for him to ac- 
 quire it, if by another method he can accom- 
 phsh the same thing easily. Here every- 
 one can find out a great deal for himself, 
 
 17 
 
258 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 and since facility in movement is half the 
 secret of success, he should, if he finds a 
 real difficulty in executing some stroke in 
 the prescribed way, carefully look about to 
 see if he has not at his command some other 
 method. It is idle, for instance, for a 
 short, thick-set man to emulate a long loose 
 swing at golf ; he might as well practise 
 high jump in order to be able to deliver a 
 service at lawn-tennis from the height at 
 which a taller man can, or practise the 
 " split," in order to increase his reach. 
 On the other hand, he has assuredly some 
 advantage in his shortness that the long- 
 legged man has not ; it is this he must 
 grasp and develop. 
 
 Finally, it is probably good for every- 
 body to rest, if not completely, at any rate 
 very largely, for a day or two before the 
 event ; for if a man is not iit then, it is 
 highly improbable that a day or two more 
 
TRAINING FOR SPECIAL EVENTS. 259 
 
 of severe training and practice will make 
 him fit. On the other hand, rest — provided 
 he does not fret — will largely increase his 
 fund of nervous force, and his muscles 
 already in condition will lose not one atom 
 of their briskness by so short a repose. 
 Again, the danger of over-training is far 
 greater than that of under-training, and 
 the risk of staleness or tiredness on the day 
 of your match is far more likely, and, if it 
 occurs, far more prejudicial to your chances, 
 than the risk of not being quite at concert 
 pitch. But if a man frets, he loses half 
 the benefit that the rest would give him, 
 and if he finds he inevitably does so, it is 
 probably better that he should soothe his 
 jangled nerves by employment. Yet there 
 is a great, if commonly neglected, preven- 
 tive against fretting, and that is the reason- 
 able employment of the brain during the 
 
 period of training. Then, when the rest 
 
 17* 
 
26o DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 before the event comeSj it is easy to find 
 distraction from the very natural nervous- 
 ness, in mental pursuits, whereas if, a* often 
 happens, the period of training has been 
 one of inaction for the brain, except in so 
 far as the training itself was concerned, it is 
 extremely difficult, if not impossible, to 
 busy the mind with other and intellectual 
 occupations. In fact, if only for the sake 
 of the tranquil, not fretful, rest of the day 
 or two before the event, it is well worth 
 while, throughout the period of training, 
 to have some definite and interesting piece 
 of mental work every day. It should not, 
 of course, be very exciting or very fatigu- 
 ing, nor should the hours of work be so 
 long that together with the physical pre- 
 paration they produce fatigue ; but nothing 
 is a greater mistake than to drop brain- 
 work altogether, not only, as we have 
 said, for the sake of the rest before the 
 
TRAINING FOR SPECIAL EVENTS. 261 
 
 event, which is practicably impossible un- 
 less the mind is otherwise occupied, but for 
 the sake of the general flatness and utter 
 want of interest in things after the day is 
 passed. For the mind gets flabby and in 
 ill condition if not used, just as the body 
 does, while its reasonable use even during 
 the most severe physical training cannot, we 
 believe, have any ill effect at all on the 
 body, for it is not in the nature of things 
 that it should have ; while if it has been 
 unused for weeks, it is practically impossible 
 to rest, as is strongly recommended, for a 
 few days before the event, without fretting. 
 There is a sentence in the Latin grammar : 
 " Too much confidence is wont to be a 
 calamity." This is no doubt true, but it 
 must be remembered that too Uttle con- 
 fidence is certain to be one ; and though 
 to inculcate a frame of mind is perhaps a 
 useless task, yet there is, as it were, a cor- 
 
262 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 rect attitude for winning, just as a straight 
 bat is the correct attitude for a yorker, 
 and it seems in the main to be this. 
 
 Never despise your adversary, but who- 
 ever he is treat him with respect. Cultivate 
 a behef in your chances of winning, but 
 remember that though you are not beaten 
 till the last set has been finished, or the 
 eighteenth hole putted into, yet neither is 
 he. Husband your resources, unless things 
 are positively desperate. 
 
 And so good luck to you. But if you 
 have bad luck, remember you are a gentle- 
 man, or, if you are not, that you have an 
 excellent opportunity for making other 
 people think so. 
 
263 
 
 CHAPTER- X. 
 
 REMEDIAL. 
 
 We have already spoken of the constant 
 need of hght, in order that the body may 
 be healthy, and have suggested some simple 
 rules about the use of heat, either in Turk- 
 ish or ordinary baths. But these natural 
 aids to health may, as we have said, be used 
 as directly remedial agents in case of disease, 
 or to correct existing bodily defects. Much 
 scientific investigation has lately been made 
 into the heaUng properties of electric light, 
 whether used merely as light, or, as some 
 hold, to put external electricity into the 
 body ; and it has been found to cure, not 
 
264 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 only weakness of the system, acting as a 
 tonic, but even such tubercular diseases as 
 lupus. We should not, however, recom- 
 mend anyone to dabble with electricity, 
 still less to go through a course of treat- 
 ment except under skilled medical super- 
 vision, and this treatment by electricity 
 comes outside the scope of this book. 
 
 Massage and rubbing, however, which can 
 often be performed by a man on himself, 
 are, for certain complaints, among those simple 
 and excellent remedies which can safely 
 be practised by anyone.* In the case of 
 
 * Of the value of exercise as a cure, the French nerve-specialists, 
 Professors Proust and Ballet,^ speak most emphatically. What they 
 say about neurasthenics will apply in general to those who feel disin- 
 clined to move : — 
 
 "There is in truth no case in which muscular exercise should not 
 figure under one shape or another. . . . There is a whole group 
 of patients to whom it would seem at the first glance that all muscular 
 work should be forbidden. Complete muscular inaction, however, 
 would be as injurious to th m as exaggerated work, and for them more 
 than for all others the rule of progressive increase of work, of slow and 
 
 " " The Treatment of Neurasthenia. " (Published by Henry Kimpton.) 
 
REMEDIAL. 265 
 
 a strained muscle, for instance, in muscular 
 rheumatism or lumbago, or when owing 
 to some accident a man accustomed to 
 exercise cannot get it, massage and rubbing 
 are invaluable. In the latter case, the 
 massage ought to be over the whole body, 
 and so must be performed by someone 
 else ; but half the small local injuries 
 which cannot weU be avoided, can be greatly 
 alleviated by such means, while an attack 
 of lumbago or muscular rheumatism, which 
 without such treatment might incapacitate 
 
 methodical training, must be rigorously obeyed. They are perpetually 
 on the verge of fatigue ; their reserve of motor nerve-energy is, so to 
 speak, nil, and the slightest voluntary movement is enough to exhaust 
 them. Hence the only muscular work that can be prescribed to them, 
 at first at least, is that effected by passive movements and massage, by 
 which a whole series of muscular, tendinous, and cutaneous stimuli are 
 transmitted by the sensory nerves to the cells of the centres . . . 
 these stimuli gently arouse the motor centres, and even the mental 
 image of the movement aids in the same result, that is, in preserving 
 the functional activity of the centres without tiring the patient. 
 Besides, passive exercise and massage promote the peripheral 
 circulation." 
 
 Dr. Weir Mitchell includes these, with faradic electricity, all three 
 to be increased gradually, in his famous treatment for nervousness. 
 
266 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 a man for a week, can often be entirely got 
 rid of by the employment of this remedy. 
 The skin should be made soft and pliable 
 by hot water, and any decent oil or em- 
 brocation may be used ; not so much, 
 perhaps, because it is in itself beneficial, 
 but because the rubbing, which is bene- 
 ficial, thus becomes easier to the mani- 
 pulator, and spares the skin of the patient ; 
 for it is impossible to stand more than a 
 minute or two of dry rubbing, if the rub- 
 bing is vigorous, owing to the soreness 
 which it produces. In the same way, 
 though the cause of lumbago (usually, if 
 not always, connected with the liver) cannot 
 be removed by massage, yet massage enor- 
 mously alleviates the discomfort which often 
 amounts to really severe physical pain. 
 And half an hour's massage in the small 
 of the back, a dose of uric acid solvent 
 with every meal, and an abstention for a 
 
REMEDIAL. 267 
 
 day from meat and alcohol may be suffi- 
 cient to discharge most cases at any rate 
 half-cured. 
 
 Another remedy we suggest — it is likely 
 to be highly unpopular — as a cure for a 
 very large number of disorganisations of 
 the digestion or liver, is complete abstention 
 from food, even for one meal only. For it 
 is quite possible to be really biUous and yet 
 feel reasonably hungry; but it is in such 
 a case false to argue that hunger indicates 
 food. In the same way a sUght upset of 
 the liver often induces great drowsiness, 
 whereas to lie in bed sleeping inordinate 
 hours is quite the worst thing to do. Nor 
 is there any possibility of mistaking bilious- 
 hunger or liverish-drowsiness for the 
 healthy forms. It is even unnecessary to 
 go into the point at all, for everyone knows 
 quite well the difference between them. 
 So if you are biliously-hungry, fast ; if you 
 
268 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 are liverishly-sleepyj take exercise. It is 
 possible, of course, that you need medicine, 
 but try simpler remedies first. 
 
 Nervousness, that extraordinarily elusive 
 foe to happiness, may arise from two 
 causes, either from an overstrung condition 
 accompanied by excitability, or from exactly 
 the opposite cause — namely, weakness, and 
 the need for tonic. In the first case — the 
 two, again, are unmistakably different — it 
 may be useful to try a less stimulating and 
 irritating diet, and accompany it with 
 plenty of exercise, followed by rest and 
 muscular relaxation. In the second case, 
 the same alteration of diet, substituting 
 nourishing foods for the stimulating ones, 
 and plenty of rest, with perhaps less exer- 
 cise will be useful. In both cases, of 
 course, medicine may be needful, but it 
 seems to be almost a postulate in the ques- 
 tion of health, to prefer, if that is suffi- 
 
REMEDIAL. 269 
 
 cient, a perfectly wholesome regime without 
 medicine, to the continuance of one that 
 perhaps does not entirely suit you, with the 
 addition of medicine. Medicine, no doubt, 
 often is useful, and many of the nerve- 
 tonics which so plentifully bedeck the pages 
 of magazines that one would think that 
 the Empire had an attack of nervous pros- 
 tration, may be excellent medicines. But 
 why take medicine, if as good results can be 
 obtained without it ? It is possible that 
 you must — or at any rate think that you 
 should — do more work than you can pro- 
 perly stand. If the duty is clear, and if it 
 is also perfectly clear that you had better 
 cheerfully give up the chance of working as 
 well as you would like to work, unless you 
 take a tonic, then by all means take a tonic 
 which you know medicinally to be a sound 
 medicine ; but first see if there is not some 
 possible means, such as alteration of diet. 
 
270 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 orj very likely, less stimulant, or a little 
 regular exercise, of managing without that 
 medicine. Strychnine, for instance, cannot 
 be called an ideal food even in the smallest 
 quantities. 
 
 Two other very common symptoms of 
 some slight nervous derangement are rest- 
 lessness and staleness. By restlessness we 
 mean the disinclination often amounting to 
 inability to settle down to any one thing. 
 It is a particularly common symptom of 
 the present day, when many people seem 
 to be literally unable to have any fixed 
 object of life, or to remain in the same place 
 for more than a few days together. In 
 acute forms this becomes a nervous disease 
 of such seriousness that a regular rest-cure 
 has been often prescribed — and with great 
 success — for it : the patient goes to bed 
 and stops there for several weeks, and is 
 allowed neither to read, nor to talk, nor to 
 
REMEDIAL. 271 
 
 make the smallest exertion that is avoidable. 
 And in a less degree for ordinary restless- 
 ness the same treatment is applicable^ and 
 an increased allowance of sleep is desirable ; 
 or^ if not of sleep, of deliberate rest ;- for 
 the evil is due to over-excitation of the 
 nerves without sufficient nourishment. And 
 the nourishment of the nerves is repose. 
 
 Staleness, again, which we may define as 
 a failure of co-operation between muscles 
 and will, and which is most noticeable in 
 athletic pursuits (since in ordinary life slight 
 sluggishness in co-operation is not prac- 
 tically noticeable) arises also from fatigue of 
 the nerves, due to excessive work, want of 
 nourishment, or monotony of employment. 
 To take the smallest imaginable instance, 
 supposing two men, well trained in matters 
 of eye, attempt merely to hit a lawn-tennis 
 ball backwards and forwards over the net, 
 as easily and gently as possible, they cannot 
 
272 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 keep it up for a quarter of an hour. Each 
 stroke is simplicity itself, less than the 
 A B C of the game. Yet by the monotony 
 and tiresome iteration of it, their nerves 
 get bored ; there is no failure of muscular 
 power, but they are unable to hit with the 
 minimum of correctness after a very few 
 minutes. Here is temporary staleness in 
 its most elementary form, but it is some 
 similar nerve-failure which is at the root of 
 most staleness ; incapability of - correct 
 work occurs without such fatigue of the 
 muscle as would account for it ; and to 
 repeat the metaphor likening the muscle 
 to the receiving instrument in a telegraph 
 system, and the nerve to the wire through 
 which the message passes, it may be a failure 
 or a fault in the wire, though the instru- 
 ment be intact, and the message (from the 
 brain) be perfectly sent. That particular 
 wire, or set of wires, must, therefore, be 
 
REMEDIAL. 273 
 
 given rest, for it is mainly by rest that health 
 and power come to nerves. In other words, 
 change of exercise is required ; or, if the 
 whole system is a little out of gear, complete 
 though temporary rest ; or, again, a nerve- 
 tonic may be needed ; light, air, and cold 
 water may set things right. Or, since the 
 harmonious working together of all the parts 
 of the body is conducive to correct work 
 by any one nerve, it may be that the diges- 
 tion is primarily at fault. 
 
 It is in connection with staleness that 
 we may consider that daily and deadly 
 enemy of strong and vigorous hving — 
 namely, Fatigue. If fatigue were nothing 
 more than the natural and logical out- 
 come of sound and healthy exercise of mind 
 and body, the question would be simple 
 enough, and we could take it offhand as 
 one of nature's danger signals, enjoining 
 rest. For it is one of the primary postu- 
 
274 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 lates that exertion must be succeeded by 
 rest, and thus fatigue would be only the 
 instinctive demand of the tired organs. 
 But it will occur at once to most readers 
 that the feeling of fatigue, anyhow, is in no 
 way proportionate to the amount of exertion, 
 bodily or mental, that has been undergone ; 
 more than this, bodily exercise, and in many 
 cases mental exercise, instead of producing, 
 actually seems to remove the feeling of 
 fatigue. Clearly, then, the mere sensation 
 of fatigue does not necessarily indicate the 
 need of rest, or sleep, or food. A man, 
 especially if he has dined late and heavily, 
 may awake in the morning, even though he 
 has had a good spell of sleep in an ill-ven- 
 tilated room, feeling tired. Yet that feeling 
 of tiredness is removed, not by further 
 dozing, but by exercise, fresh air, or often 
 brain work. But the contradiction is only 
 apparent ; there are, it is true, several forms 
 
REMEDIAL. 275 
 
 of fatigue, but fatigue generally can be pro- 
 perly considered under one head. It will 
 be necessary, however, to go back to a few 
 simple physiological principles in order to 
 make this quite clear. 
 
 In several of the simplest phenomena 
 incident to life, we are utterly ignorant of 
 processes. We know, for instance, for 
 certain that we breathe in air rich in oxygen, 
 and breathe out air full of carbonic acid 
 gas. We know, again, that the proteid 
 which we eat and digest and assimilate in 
 our food becomes body-cells. We know that 
 when we use our muscles we use up these 
 body-cells, break them down and turn them 
 into waste products ; that when we use 
 our brains some similar exertion of nerve 
 is imphcated. How these changes take 
 place we do not know ; that they do take 
 place is , absolutely certain, and it is in con- 
 nection with these changes that fatigue 
 
 18* 
 
276 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 occurs. A deficiency in the supply of oxygen 
 given to the lungs is parallel to a deficiency 
 in the supply of proteid given to the diges- 
 tion ; in both the organs are starved. Thus, 
 to take the instance already given, the 
 gentleman who feels fatigued in the morn- 
 ing, had better go out of doors ; the longer 
 he lies in his stuffy bedroom the more tired 
 he will become. This is one of the causes 
 of the fatigue from which he is suffering — 
 namely, a starvation of his body in point 
 of oxygen. He would feel fatigued in the 
 same way, if he was starved in point of pro- 
 teid. His fatigue, though he has taken no 
 bodily or mental exercise for hours, and has 
 been resting, is genuine fatigue consequent 
 on an insufficient supply of oxygen. There- 
 fore, he had better get out of doors, and 
 take exercise so as to make up the deficit. 
 
 This unhappy gentleman whose case we 
 are considering may have other causes of 
 
REMEDIAL. 27; 
 
 fatigue as well, even though he never takes 
 any exercise bodily or mental, and habitu- 
 ally consumes large quantities of solid food. 
 In fact, it is the food itself, with which he 
 hopes to refresh exhausted nature, which 
 is very likely tiring to him. He may 
 habitually overtax his digestive organs, and 
 almost certainly he will have in his system, 
 owing to his sedentary and gluttonous life, 
 a great quantity of waste products (among 
 which is uric acid, the father and mother of 
 gout), which in themselves are causes of 
 fatigue. The system is clogged — the engine, 
 so to speak, is running laboriously,* with 
 
 * " The need for exercise is one of the numerous sensations which 
 lead human beings to perform actions necessary for the preservation of 
 hfe or health. The need for repose is called fatigue; the need for exercise 
 has not received a special name, but deserves one quite as much as 
 hunger, thirst, &c. Under the in6uence of deficient exercise, certain 
 materials which should be used up each day by work, accumulate in the 
 human machine, the wheels of which they encumber, and the working 
 of which they clog. . . . It is necessary, for the perfect balances 
 of nutrition, that the reserve materials should be used up as fast as 
 they are formed." Dr. Fernand Lagrange, in " The Physiology of 
 Bodily Exercise." 
 
278 DAILY. TRAINING. 
 
 all sorts of grit and refuse hindering the 
 smooth working of its wheels and bearings. 
 And this fatigue may be called chronic 
 fatigue ; as long as the excess of waste 
 products remain in the system there will 
 be disinclination for exertion, and fatigue 
 rapidly ensuing on it.* The cure is to get 
 rid of the waste products, as far as may 
 be, by means of exercise, and by encouraging 
 the system to throw them off by the action of 
 the skin, the kidneys, and the bowels, and 
 to remove the causes of the waste products 
 in the future by avoiding those foods which 
 are fruitful in them. 
 
 Now here, again, we find that what we 
 may call healthy fatigue is surprisingly allied 
 
 * " The fatigue which is due to dearth of albumens (proteid) in the 
 blood is always absent so long as sufficient food is taken and digested ; 
 in the condition of dyspepsia mentioned in the previous chapter it was 
 not digested. ... If a man who has had a sufficient supply of 
 albumens put in, and who has a good digestion, yet falls out in the 
 early stage of a contest, long before those albumens can be exhausted, 
 we must conclude that his fatigue is due to uric acid in the blood." 
 Dr. Alexander Haig. 
 
REMEDIAL. 279 
 
 to this gluttonous fatigue, though in most 
 cases, probably, the cure for one is the 
 opposite to the cure for the other. The 
 sedentary large-eater we should recom- 
 mend, broadly speaking, to take exercise 
 (extreme cases are liable to apoplexy, how- 
 ever), with a view to getting rid of his 
 waste products. But it is the presence of 
 waste products, also, which partly, at any 
 rate, cause the feeling of fatigue in the man 
 who has played a hard set at tennis, for 
 exercise, as we have said, breaks down the 
 body-cells which become waste products.* 
 New cells, it is true, are, in the case of all 
 healthy people tired with exercise, even 
 then in process of formation, but the local 
 fatigue of the muscles is largely due to the 
 presence of these waste products, which the 
 exercise has produced. Thus, strangely 
 
 * " Similarly excessive exercise increases the amount of uric acid in 
 the hoAy."— Text-book of Physiology {Shai&c), Vol. I., page 595. 
 
28o DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 enough, the ignoble alderman is suffering 
 from a cause closely allied to that which 
 makes the open champion of ' the world at 
 any game tired after his brilliant and 
 successful defence of his title. 
 
 It is impossible in the small limits of a 
 section to enter more fully into the phy- 
 siology of this fascinating phenomenon, 
 and we must refer the reader who wishes to 
 know more about it to Dr. Alexander Haig's 
 work on the subject,* and merely note that 
 in this way exhaustion and so fatigue are 
 brought about both by a want of food — 
 temporary starvation — and also by an excess 
 of food which causes excess of waste pro- 
 ducts. In the same way, too, though food 
 may be needed, yet to bolt a heavy meal 
 will not meet the case satisfactorily, since 
 much of the nourishing value of the foods will 
 be lost, as they will not be given to the 
 
 * Uric Acid (Dr. A. Ilaig). 
 
REMEDIAL. 281 
 
 stomach in a form in which it is possible for 
 it to assimilate them, and also the digestive 
 and excretive organs will be severely taxed, 
 and fatigue in them will be produced. 
 
 As we have said before, fatigue, even 
 when produced healthily, so to speak — 
 namely by the exercise of muscles in the 
 open air — may be quite disproportionate to 
 the work accomphshed. This question is 
 dealt with under the chapter on exercise, 
 and it will be sufficient here merely to men- 
 tion that the wrong use of muscles (e.g., slow 
 heavy movements for the wrists as in 
 many dumb-bell exercises), or the use 
 of the wrong muscles, as, for instance, 
 excessive employment of the muscles of 
 the arm when what is needed is the use of 
 the large body muscles, are common causes 
 of unnecessary fa,tigue in games and athletics. 
 There are, furthermore, many mental causes 
 of general bodily fatigue, for in the intimate 
 
282 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 interweaving of mind and body, as we have 
 seen, the one suffers with the other. Thus 
 worry of the mind, nervousness, depression, 
 make one feel physically tired, not because 
 the muscles have been used, but because the 
 nervous energy whereby they work has 
 been exhausted by mental trouble. Here, 
 if a man can bring himself, by an effort of 
 will, to take an interest in some bodily or 
 mental pursuit that will draw his mind off 
 himself and his worry, he will quite certainly 
 be the better for it, for the nerves that have 
 been wearing and exhausting themselves 
 over the trouble will have rest. And rest, 
 as we have said before, is to nerves what 
 food is to the stomach and oxygen to the 
 lungs. 
 
 A common result of faulty digestion is 
 a tendency to grow fat. Just as extreme 
 thinness results from failure to digest food 
 properly and so get the nourishment out 
 
REMEDIAL. 283 
 
 of it, so a certain kind of obesity is likewise 
 a wrong digestion of food; and though 
 the symptom of " laying on flesh " is often 
 ignorantly considered a sign of health, it 
 may be distinctly a sign of bad digestion, 
 if the flesh that is laid on is fatty. Certain 
 foods, such as sugar and oil, are in them- 
 selves fattening ; so, also, is starchy food, 
 even if not properly masticated. An 
 avoidance of excess of liquid is a good pre- 
 caution against obesity, if under that word 
 we class abnormal weight ; so also is the 
 habit of making the skin act properly by 
 baths and exercises; so, too, are exercises 
 for the abdomen, which facilitate the 
 processes of digestion (though these exercises 
 should not be employed when the digestion 
 is at work — i.e., just after meals). And every- 
 one should remember that it is far easier to 
 avoid getting fat, than to stop the process 
 of accumulation of fat when once it has 
 
284 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 set in. Prevention here is not only better , 
 but easier than cure. By a strange perversity 
 of nature, fat people have often a craving for 
 fattening foods. But this must obviously 
 not be taken as a healthy instinct ; it is an 
 instinct of a diseased condition. 
 
 Another common enemy of health is con- 
 stipation, and it is an enemy mainly be- 
 cause waste material, which should be 
 ejected, is retained" in the body, and during 
 its retention necessarily disperses a certain 
 amount of poisonous gases and substances 
 through the body. But it is a question 
 whether the drugs which many people are 
 accustomed to take almost daily with a 
 view to its prevention or cure are not as bad 
 in their effects. And the sad thing is that 
 an enormous amount of such constipation 
 could be cured by perfectly simple and 
 natural means. Diet is largely responsible 
 for it ; so, too, is the lack of exercises 
 
REMEDIAL. 285 
 
 which facilitate the movements of the 
 bowels. People who suffer from it should 
 be sparing in their use of stimulants^ especi- 
 ally of those which have a large percentage 
 of alcohol, and in their use of white flour, 
 and of flesh foods, the place of which should 
 be taken by other foods, such as brown 
 bread, tomatoes and fruit, fresh if possible, 
 or stewed. These are without doubt the 
 best preventives, and also the best remedies. 
 Above all things it is most injurious to get 
 in the habit of relieving constipation by 
 doses of salts, or of other medicines' even less 
 innocent. The sort of diet which both 
 prevents and alleviates it is a natural 
 remedy, as also are the bending and leg- 
 raising exercises which help the action of the 
 bowels. They are worth trying. 
 
 But perhaps of all enemies to healthy 
 laziness is the most powerful and the most 
 insidious. The health of any function 
 
286 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 depends, as Aristotle said long ago, on its 
 energy ; and to be employed is a better 
 drug against most ills that flesh is heir to, 
 than any that can be found in a chemist's 
 shop. Whether it is headache you suffer 
 from, or depression, or (if your malady is 
 very acute) atheism or gout, the probability 
 is that work, either bodily or mental, would 
 have prevented it, and that work, bodily 
 or mental, will cure it. For owing to this 
 reaction of body or mind on each other, 
 there is no doubt that boredom and discon- 
 tent will actually produce indigestion, just 
 as indigestion in the stomach will actually 
 produce depression of mind. Again, to take 
 a tiny instance, there are few people who 
 would care to eat their way through a long 
 dinner alone, but give them cheerful com- 
 panionship, they will digest with avidity 
 that which if they ate by themselves they 
 could barely swallow. So also in bigger 
 
REMEDIAL. 287 
 
 matters : occupy your mind always with 
 any subject that interests it, provided it is 
 not harmful, and as far as your well-being 
 is concerned it does not matter what this 
 subject is. If you ever feel bored, you may be 
 quite certain that your boredom is in 
 ninety-nine cases out of a hundred due, 
 not to the stupidity of others, but to the 
 stupidity of yourself. Stupidity of that 
 order is one of the least admirable things 
 in the world ; and for the sake of your 
 self respect try to be a little less of an idiot. 
 However poor you are, it is probable that 
 most things worth having, even Greek 
 gems and fine music, are accessible to you, 
 the one at the British Museum, the other 
 at the Queen's Hall. Surely there is some- 
 thing in the world which involuntarily finds 
 its way into your thoughts at vacant 
 moments ? Encourage that ; work at it ; 
 get to know some thing worth knowing 
 
288 DAILY TRAINING. 
 
 about it. Take a pride in your body if 
 you will, you might do worse ; get to play 
 something passably ; weight-lift even, if 
 you really enjoy it, or if it leads you to a 
 pride in your physique ; do anything to 
 be occupied. For this is the great remedy 
 of all — work. It is certainly not worth 
 while to sit and consider how noble you 
 are and what few opportunities you have, 
 nor is it worth while to sit and consider — 
 except very occasionally — how base you are 
 and how many opportunities you have. 
 Instead, go and take one of them. Do 
 something, whether you suffer from head- 
 ache or atheism, do something, make boots 
 — even very badly like Tolstoi — or make 
 history like Napoleon, or make geography 
 like Livingstone. Whatever your age is, 
 there should be something you like, which 
 is not harinful. Do it, with both hands, for 
 there is health — work ! 
 
 THE END.