Volume 1

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    482/896 (page 18)
    Jy for the highest possible condition of health. But when I say health, I may be using a word which perhaps may not be understood by every one in the same sense as I myself use it. I will therefore ask you to allow me to quote the definition of Hygiene as given by the late Professor Parkes in his manual | on that subject. It is, he says, the art of preserving health, 1 that is, of obtaining the most perfect action of body and mind i during as long a period as possible consistent with the laws of life. In other words, it aims at rendering growth more perfect, decay less rapid, life more vigorous, death more remote. Our task to-night then will be to see how physical exercises affect the various vital functions of our frame, and to ascertain if, and how far, they contribute to render our growth more perfect, and our life more vigorous/' and, as a part of the same process, our decay less rapid, and death more remote. Now, before we begin to consider the subject of physical exercise itself, it may not be amiss if we glance at a great prin- ciple or law which seems to pervade the whole universe of life, so far as we know it, whether of plants or animals. It is that for the proper maintenance of health, there must be a constant alternation of activity and rest, the one following after and pre- paring for the other. We see it in the seasons summer and winter, in the succession of night and day, light and darkness. A plant that gets its rest in the dark, and that is called into activity by the sunlight, would soon fade if kept constantly in the dark, or would show a sickly over-growth if it were supplied with artificial light, so as to make a never-ending day. Ward, as quoted by Hilton in his excellent work on Best and Pain, points out that Plants in hot countries have their period of rest in the dry season. In Egypt, the blue water-lily obtains rest in a curious way. This plant abounds in several of the canals at Alexandria, which at certain seasons become dryj and the beds of these canals, which quickly become burnt as hard as bricks by the action of the sun, are then used as carriage roads. When the water is again admitted, the plant resumes its growth with redoubled vigour. Thus in some climates the rest is given by