Cassell's physical educator / by Eustace Miles.

  • Miles Eustace, 1868-1948.
Date:
[1904]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Cassell's physical educator / by Eustace Miles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    17/802
    a well-nourished body—a body not stuffed with indiscriminate masses, but supplied with a well-balanced dietary. It is balance that we shall emphasise. Exactly what diets are best we do not know. But what we do know is that certain diets are not the best for most of us to-day. And among these are not only the poor ■diet and the alderman diet, but also the ■ordinary household diet. Let us explain briefly why. Science —that is to say, the analysis of a number of dietaries—tells us that average people need a certain amount of Proieid or albumen daily; it teUs us some of the sources of proteid. Pawlow and other experimenters show that the gastric juice (to digest proteid) is enticed by pleasant taste and other factors. Science mentions the elements re- quired besides proteid— salts, fats, starches, fibre, water, and—how pitifully we forget it !—oxygen. Anatomy and physiology point out favourable positions and movements for digestion. Physiology, chemistry, and psychology ought to in- form us of the effects of -pleasant sensations and emotions. Common - sense urges economy. Political economy and the possibility of war advise us to grow more foods or to keep more of the durable foods at home. Refinement tends to cleanness and humaneness. Considerations of purity, self - control, morality, command moderation. Last, but not least, we insist that in these days of stimulants and con- stipation the diet should be one to help the excretion, and reasonably jree from stimtdants, narcotics, and irritants. If the Editor can claim any original contribution to the truth (though Heaven knows that the idea is as old as experi- -ence), it is that no analysis of foods or exercises is scientific unless it works out in practice. Try the theory fairly for yourself; if it does not work out, it is not science for you. On the other hand, you must not say that a new diet or exercise, successful in many cases, will certainly not suit you, until you have given it this fair trial. In diet, therefore, as in exercise, we shall appeal to a new science, which will, we predict, be the science of the future: the science of individual judgment, according to all-round residts, after fair trial along lines that have proved successful in certain cases. We shall quote no theory without examples of success; no examples of success without provisos. We shall never dogmatise except on this point : that without some teaching about the {theoretical) A B C of diet (food values, idea of a balanced diet, digestion, etc.) Physical Education is utterly incomplete. Now, while exercise may remove some bad effects of wrong food and wrong thought, and while the food itself should do as little as possible to produce impure blood and unsatisfactory thought, actual cleansing is also needed, especially after the exercise, by water. So that. our Physical Education must include some teaching not only about air and clothing and light during the exercise, and about food not too soon before it, but also about the uses of water after exercise, water with friction, first to cleanse, then to invigorate. Here we shall insist on the useful- ness of a Turkish or Russian bath, vs^hich can be had at an establishment, or in the bedroom or bathroom at home. We take this opportunity of illus- trating the lines along which we have thought it best to deal with such subjects. The Editor does not wish to advertise any firm. He would much rather that each reader chose for himself, or— better still—made his own bath-cabinet or ingeniously invented his own device