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Life is Movement
THE PHYSICAL RECONSTRUCTION AND
REGENERATION OF THE PEOPLE
A DISEASELESS WORLD)

By EUGEN SANDOW
PROFESSOR OF NATURAL THERAPEUTICS.
INSTRUCTOR IN PHYSICAL CULTURE TO H.M. THE KING.
AND AUTHOR OF U CONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF THE HUMAN BODY.”

This hook describes the only natural, radical and permanent

method of curing, preventing and eliminating disease, and is

DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR TO THE MEDICAL

PROFESSION THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

The Family Encyclopaedia of Health.

PRICE TWO GUINEAS NETT.
23 ^(o%

i WtLLCOr INSTITUTE
LIBRARY

Coif. weSMOmec
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No.
*
 FAMOUS DOCTOR-NOVELIST’S VIEWS.
-o+o-

Dr. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the distinguished medical man and
creator of “ Sherlock Holmes” was kind enough to contribute this
Introduction to my book on “ The Construction and Reconstruction
of the Bodyfi an earlier volume in whicfh I first wrote of cellular
reconstruction and evolution, as now more fully dealt with in these
'pages. This volume is, indeed, a sequel to my previous book, and
appears at a most timely moment in the reconstruction of the nation
movement after over four years of war. In the preceding volume I
was able to give the results of my observations and studies on the
influence of scientific physical movement upon the wonderful
cellular life of the body. Since then I have devoted assiduous
study to the subject, and especially to the influence of physical
movement, scientifically applied and carried out, upon the conscious
evolution of neiv and better cells. The present volume is the outcome
of these studies, and its chief object is to show how such physical
movement can reconstruct tissue that is diseased, replacing it with
new and healthy tissue, and how, by applying it from childhood, we
may prevent and even eradicate disease altogether. Although the
following foreword appeared as a preface to my previous book, I
have taken the liberty of reproducing it again in this volume, which
is but a continuation, as it were, of that work on a broader and bigger
scale from the national point of view.

1.
 FOREWORD.

BY SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

In the course of a fairly busy literary life, in which I have

essayed most things within the scope of a writer, I have never once
had the experience of getting between an author and his audience
by saying a few words in advance. There is an obvious impertinence
in the intrusion. And yet here I find myself not only doing this
very thing, but even going out of my way to volunteer for it. I can
only excuse myself by my conviction of good work, the national work,
which Mr. Eugen Sandow has done in this country, which makes it a
duty to say a word, when one can, on its behalf.
If there were any antagonism between matter and spirit the
case would be very different. If it could be shown that the body
developed at the expense either of the mind or of the character, then
physical degeneration might be accepted as the price which the
human race must pay for its mental and spiritual advance. But
the facts are the very opposite. Vice and ignorance are the com¬
panions of ugliness. That which is physically beautiful stands in
the main for that which is mentally sane, and spiritually sound.
The classic ages of Greece, which showed the highest intellectual
average seen in this world in a single population, produced also
the finest physical types which the sculptor has ever committed to
marble. The man who can raise the standard of physique in any
country has done something to raise all other standards as well.
The strength of a nation is measured by the sum total of the
strength of all the units which form it. It is a truism that anything
which raises any portion of a man, his body, his character, his intelli¬
gence, increases to that extent the strength of the country to which he
belongs. Therefore, since the State is so interested in these matters,
it has every reason to examine into them and to regulate them. The
truth is an obvious one, but it is only within our lifetime that it has
been practically applied. “ Parents may do what they like with their
children. A man may do what he likes with himself.” So ran the
old heresy, which ignored the fact that the State must look after the
• • •

111.
health of its own component parts. Then came the Education Act
of 1870. It was a great new departure. What it said was : “ No,
your mind is not your own. It belongs to the State. Therefore we
must force you to keep yourself in better order.” That is as far as
we have got yet in State ownership of the individual. But it is
evident that the same principle may be applied to the body as well as
the mind.
Meanwhile Mr. Eugen Sandow and his schools are doing some¬
thing—as much as a great expert can do—to fill this national want.
He has first arrested the attention of our public, shown it the pris¬
tine perfection of the human body, and systematised the methods by
which it may be preserved. It is my appreciation of the national
quality of his services, and the really vital aim towards which they
have been directed, which must be my excuse if for a moment I have
intruded upon the patience of his readers. It is my firm conviction
that few men have done more for this country during our generation
than he, and that his schools have appreciably improved our
physique. Every word which he writes upon the subject deserves
the most careful consideration, not only of the general public, but also
of the medical faculty with whom he has always loyally worked.

Arthur Conan Doyle.

iv.
 IMPORTANT NOTICE TO THE READER.

FROM THE AUTHOR.

I have written this book with pleasure but not for pleasure.
It is, on the other hand, a serious attempt to grapple with one of the
greatest problems that has ever confronted the civilised world, to
meet a crisis beside which the terrible blood-bath from which the
world has just emerged is but a bagatelle. For it deals with the
serious menace of physical deterioration and the prevention and
eradication of disease, the most devastating enemy that humanity
has ever had to face. Where war has killed its millions, disease has
killed and is killing its tens of millions.

HUNTING DOWN DISEASE.

This book, I hope, will help to elucidate many mysteries not only
to the average man and woman but even to the medical profession
itself, mysteries that should not be mysterious, and which must no
longer remain mysteries. It is an attempt to unravel the tangling
and tangled threads of Health and Disease, to trace to its fount and
origin the one true cause of disease, to reveal the one and only method
of preventing or overcoming it radically and permanently, and to
point out the only and natural way to attain and maintain perfect
health in a disease-proof body.
It will be observed that I am, for obvious reasons, dealing with
the whole question of health from the national point of view, and
that, for this reason, I am advocating the methods I describe princi¬
pally as a preventive of disease, because I am naturally anxious that
the children should have the benefits of these methods from early
childhood to fortify them against that very large percentage of
disease which w^e now know is preventable and avoidable. “ If,”
said the late King Edward, “ disease is preventable, why not prevent
it.” Well, here is the way and the only way, alwavs provided the
children receive good nourishment, fresh air and other essentials of
healthy growth as well.
But—and I wish those who are actually in a state of disease at
v.
present to make special note of this—although my book is mainly
directed to the physical upbuilding of the children and the preven¬
tion of disease, the principle involved in preventing disease,
especially in the children, applies with equal force to adults and for
the cure of existing disease. My ultimate aim being the total eradi¬
cation of disease, as far as that is humanly possible, it stands to
reason that the methods I advocate must eliminate the mass of
existent disease as the very first step towards that goal.
What I suggest should be done in the case of children for the
future will be found by adults to be quite as effective in overcoming
and banishing already existant disease, so that I hope every adult
suffering from disease, as well as all who wish to take the best pro¬
tective measures against disease, will read and ponder over the advice
here given, and consider it as applying directly to themselves. This
applies to disease in all its myriad and protean forms, for I contend
that all disease has a common cause, and that if we can cure one
disease we can cure all disease—as I am about to prove in this book
we can—by the logical process of removing the common cause. So,
too, we can make a normal body so strongly resistant to disease as to
be intolerant of it, or, in other words, prevent all disease.
Circumstances have compelled medical men at last to realise
that the prevention of disease is a far more important matter even
than its cure. I have asserted that for more than a quarter of a
century. Years ago I recognised, as Sir George Newman, Chief
Medical Officer of the Board of Education, now admits, that “ the
first line of defence is a healthy, well-nourished and resistant body,”
but I also discovered what even yet the doctors do not seem to fully
realise, that physical movements, simple and natural in themselves
but scientifically applied, are the only methods we possess to build up
such a body, and that this method of conquering, preventing and
eliminating disease is one within the personal control of each indi
vidual to make or mar his or her body and life at will.

HEALTH FROM NATURE ONLY.

This is a solemn thought, and I make the statement with all

solemnity. There is, I affirm, only one preventive against disease,
viz., to make the body so strong in each of its cells, and to develop all
in such equal and harmonious strength, as to make disease impossible
either within the body itself or through microbic attacks from with¬
out. Just how this can be done I fully explain in these pages.
So far as T can see, the physicians are only groping blindly for
vi.
some puerile and inefficient substitute because they have not yet
wrested the real secret of Health from Nature. They have much,
apparently, yet to learn in this direction—and, indeed, I myself,
after thirty years’ study of the subject, am still but a pupil—and
more to unlearn before they can hope to prevent disease, while many
age-long traditions must be cast aside before they succeed.
Metchnikoff was right when he called disease a “ disharmony.”
Health, on the other hand, is harmonv. A body in which every system,
organ, function, and even every cell, are in harmonious balance in
every part, can only be secured and maintained as a pianist obtains
harmony from the kevs of the piano, by the skilful and scientific use
and harmonious combination of the voluntary muscles which were
given us by the Creator for the express purpose of that physical
movement which is the prime factor of life and health.

PATIENT AND HEALER IN PARTNERSHIP.

It is useless to condemn a people who have been kept so long in
ignorance of the most vital subject that affects their whole life and
well-being, viz., a knowledge of their own body and how to maintain
it in health, but when this elementarv lesson is learned and a better
system of health education follows, there will be much to be said in
favour of the partnership, which Dr. Sir George Newman advocates
for the future, between the physician, the Public Health Officer and
the people. Before the public can become an active partner in such
a trinity, however, it must be taught something of the business of the
body, or it can be nothing but a sleeping partner in a business of
which it is utterly ignorant.
But before even that, medical men themselves will have dis¬
covered, as I have done, that the greatest ignorance of all is ignor¬
ance of the first law of life, the law of movement and the neglect or
transgression of which means weakness or disease. The best health
knowledge is the knowledge that lead^ to health, its attainment and
maintenance, and which the people themselves must acquire to be
worthy of such a partnership, and that knowledge I have attempted
to supply in part, at least, in these pages in the simplest possible
language, unburdened by medical camouflage, or foreign terms and
phrases.
It has been mv object here to clarifv such health knowledge as is
necessary for the possession and maintenance of a healthy and
disease-free body, and to avoid the mystifying language of the
regular text-book which too often affrights the sufferer, aggravates
• •

Vll.
his condition by morbid fears, and sets up. in his mind an attitude
antagonistic to health instead of an outlook of hope.

NAMES MORE DANGEROUS THAN DISEASES.

Medical men too often employ a language descriptive of disease

with which they themselves are familiar, but which is alarming and
even dangerous to unsophisticated minds. The nomenclature of
disease should be simplified for the sake of suffering humanity, and
in this book I have studiously avoided, as far as possible, ominous
words and foreign or technical expressions for more homely English
words and simple illustrations, while my further object has been
to create hope rather than despair in the minds of those who have
wandered from the somewhat narrow and straight path of Health
and Happiness.
The individual examination of school children and of recruits
for our citizen army has emphasised the necessity for a system of
health culture and natural physical reconstruction by really scientific
methods, which, if carried out as I suggest, will check national
physical deterioration and make the cure of disease unnecessary by
leading to its prevention and complete eradication. If we can, in
conjunction with the natural law of life, the law of movement,
literally reconstruct a new body or any part of a body out of a feeble
and diseased one, as I contend we can, there is no reason whatever
why we should not be able to produce men and women with bodies so
perfectly balanced in health and strength as to be really immune
from disease in any form.
It is essential for the people to know and understand the under¬
lying facts of health before they can hope to conquer disease and
prevent it in the future. Without this knowledge it is useless for
them to seek health in any other direction, and I hope the medical
profession will also begin to recognise this and to apply this know¬
ledge in what is admittedly the noblest of all human professions.

A HEALTH BOOK FOR THE PEOPLE.

For these reasons I want everyone who is in search of health

to read these pages carefully and thoughtfully, as they contain
health information of priceless value, which, if it will not actually
be sufficient to free them from disease or prevent that condition, will
at last prove a most helpful signpost to every wanderer on the high¬
way that leads to Health. Those who are actually weak, ailing, or
diseased, will find much helpful information in the later chapters of
vm.
this book, especially that on “ Neurasthenia,” and the chapter on
“ How and Why Scientific Physical Movement Cures Disease.”
A great world-crusade against physical decadence and disease is
going to take place, and we have in our own hands the weapon to
destroy these enemies altogether. “ All for Health ” should be the
motto of us all from now forward, and I feel certain that after
reading this work many will be eager to render service in this great
movement for the uplifting of humanity. As I explain later, I have
decided, with the assistance of distinguished patrons and workers*
to form an “ All-for-Health League ”—what, I hope, will be a real
League of Nations against Disease—to spread the gospel of physical
movement as an agent—I might, indeed, call it “ the agent in
advance ”—of Health.
The objects of the All-for-Health League are more fully set out
at the close of this book, but its chief value will be that the men and
women who represent it will set up a new ideal and standard in the
minds of the people, and especially to the children who will be the
men and women of the future and whose health and fitness will be the
prime and determining factor in the nation’s future. Above all, we
must aim at inspiring in them a very different ideal from that which
has been so sedulously instilled in the past, the desire and tendency
to win a position rich in monetary rewards before the material
body is physically secured to support such strenuous mental efforts
and to guarantee it against disease. None of us can afford to despise
money as a lubricant of the wheels of life, but we must not so lose our
sense of proportion as to idolise it or let it become a Moloch to devour
our children. The sound body must be a precedent to the sane and
receptive mind, and the brain, which is a physical thing of tissue and
blood, like the rest of the body, cannot thrive and prosper unless its
physical demands are met and satisfied.
There is a great future before such a League if everyone will
contribute his mite of service, however small or humble, and with the
powerful support of the press which, I am glad to see, realises the
gravity of our present health position and the necessity for new and
more comprehensive strategy and tactics in the war against disease
and physical deterioration. I want this All-for-Health League to
be the equivalent of a great international brotherhood of Free¬
masonry of Health, with its “ lodges ” or clubs everywhere through¬
out the world, in which men and women will rise by degrees or
stages to their highest possible standard of phvsical and organic
fitness. Such an institution and organisation will give to the world
a higher and loftier ideal of humanity than ever it possessed before,.
IX.
and lead us away from the darkness of the past towards an ideal
world in which the sun of perfect health shall rise every day, a
translation, indeed, from a pain-fraught existence to something
closely approximating to an earthly Paradise, in which no foul thing
such as disease can longer exist.

x.
 CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE

I. Mr. Lloyd George on National Reconstruction 1

II. My Grave Warning 39

III. My World-Startling Claim—A Diseaseless World 81

IV. The State and the Child 93

V. The Physical Basis of all Reform 119

VI. Life is Movement 135

VII. The Movement that Resists and Defeats Disease 151

VIII. What is Scientific Physical Movement ? 173

IX. The Physiology of Bodily Reconstruction. 199

X. The Heart the Root of Remedial or Preventive Physical

Culture .. .. .. .. .. . 217

XI. The Machinery of National Physical Training 227

XII. A Well-Nourished Body the First Step in Education 251

XIII. The Marvels of the Muscular System 260

XIV. Mind, Muscle and Nerve 276

XV. Perfect Physical and Mental Balance 290

XVI. Man’s Most Deadly Foe 302

XVII. Medical Facts for Medical Men 317

xi.
 CONTENTS—continued.

chap. page

XVIII. The No-Medicine Medical Man of the Future 335

XIX. The Joy of a Healthy Life 353

XX. Temporary Aids and Auxiliaries 363

XXI. The True Position of Sports and Pastimes 379

XXII. A Word to Parents and Guardians 391

XXIII. Neurasthenia—A New Conception 405

XXIV. How and Why Scientific Physical Movement etc. 437

XXV. Hints for the Prevention of Disease, etc. 503

XXV. The All-For-Health League 521

Xll
Photo by Warwick Brookes, Manchester

The!Author as He is To-Day.
b
Plioto by Warwick Brookes, Manchester.

Power in Repose.

Photo of the Author, showing excellence of physique at 52

 1

Mr. Lloyd George on National Reconstruction

CHAPTER I.

Lessons the War have Taught Us.

In a speech at Manchester in September, 1918, that will become

historical, Mr. Lloyd George made it quite clear that a new world
would emerge from the womb of war, and that its birth or re-birth
would be the signal for the active commencement of that great work
of re-education and national physical reconstruction in which, as he
well said, “ all classes must be invited to assist, to co-operate, to
devise, and to work out problems," and in anticipation of which he
said, “ minds—expert minds—are already engaged in solving
problems
This book is an honest attempt to grapple with the first and
greatest of these problems, and is the product of life-long experience,
study a;nd research. It will, I trust, be accepted in the spirit in
which it is proffered, as my small contribution to this great national
endeavour movement. Realising, in the words of the Premier, that
the war demanded every ounce of the national energy at home as
well as at the Front, publication of this book was purposely post¬
poned until peace had been declared, although most of its contents
were written in the days of the nation's travail, and much of what
Mr. Lloyd George said at Manchester in 1918 had been anticipated
in its pages.
It is very gratifying, indeed, to know that with such a driving
power behind the State, the most vital and elementary work of re-
 2

construction—viz , the re-building of the physique and health of the

'people, is never again likely to be treated with placid and frigid
indifference by a Levite State, but that, more than ever in the history
of the nation, the State can be relied upon to play the part of the
Good Samaritan in the nation's hour of need. Never was the call
for healthy and vigorous men and women more insistent than it is
now. I show and prove in these pages that the State may secure
and maintain them, and at a price out of all proportion to the
immense benefits that will accrue in every department, sphere and
phase of the national life. The national house must not only be set
in order—it must be built upon a rock.
The following chapter deals with some of the most important
features of the Premier's famous speech, a lengthy extract from
which is given at the finish.

There have been speeches before that have made history.

Sheridan’s impeachment of Hastings, Bright’s speech on the
Crimean War, Pitt’s speech on the American War of
Independence at least moulded if they did not make history.
Recently, Mr. Lloyd George’s epoch-making speech on the
future of the British Empire, at Manchester, is probably
the most historic public utterance of modern times, and
its influence upon the health and physical condition of the
people in the future will be great, especially when we remember
that the speaker did not merely string together a beautiful series of
oratorical pearls, but submitted practical suggestions characteristic
of one who won both before and during the war a high reputation
for constructive statesmanship. The speech should be printed and
circulated in millions, and read by everybody, for in it are to be found
the germinal seeds of a new, greater, and better Britain.
The keystone of the Premier’s speech is to be found in the
following pregnant sentence : “ If Britain has to be thoroughly
equipped to meet any emergencies of either peace or war, the State
must take a more constant and a more intelligent interest in the
health and fitness of the people.” This confession was wrung from
the Premier when it was brought home to him that the physical
deterioration of the nation had robbed the State and the Army of
Physical types of the Lost Army of The Rejected mentioned by Mr. Lloyd
George in his great speech.

3
 4

quite 1,000,000 citizen soldiers through physical unfitness and

disease.
How this physical unfitness and disease handicapped us when
suddenly confronted by a crisis that made the threat of the Spanish
Armada seem trifling in comparison, came as a revelation to this
great leader of the State, and how it almost cost us the victory was
subsequently described in the Premier’s speech which, in conjunction
with Dr. Sir George Newman’s famous report to Parliament on
Medical Education (referred to more fully later), may be said to
constitute a veritable Magna Charta for the weak, the ailing, and
the diseased in our midst. The keen Celtic brain of Mr. Lloyd
George realised the gravity of the revelations, and the necessity for
reform and reconstruction at the earliest opportunity. Hence the
above utterance made with characteristic candour and in defiance
of all the traditions of statecraft.
“ We have had,” said the Premier, “ a Ministry of National
Service, and carefully compiled statistics as to the health of the
people between the ages of eighteen and forty-two. Now that is
the age of fitness, the age of strength. You have three grades, Al,
B2, and C3, and all I can tell you is this, that the results of these
examinations are startling, and I do not mind using the word
appalling. I hardly dare tell you the results of same.
“ The number of B2 and C3 men throughout the country is
prodigious. So much so, that we half suspected the doctors. But
there were re-examinations which did not make very much difference,
and I apologise to the doctors here for the first time. Now what
does it mean? Let us look at it. It means this, that we have
used our human material in this country prodigally, foolishly,
cruelly. I asked the Minister of National Service how many more
men could we have put into the fighting ranks if the health of the
country had been properly looked after. I was staggered at the
reply. It was a considered reply. It was, 4 at least one million/
If we had only had that million the war would have been ended
triumphantly before now.”
Then followed this solemn warning which should be emblazoned
for ever in letters of enduring gold :
“ I solemnly warn my fellow-countrymen that you cannot main-
tainan Al Empire with a 03 population. Unless this lesson is
learned the war is in vain.”
Types of superb physical manhood who have been developed to this high
degree of physical fitness and resistant power to disease by the very
methods I am advocating in this book, and have been advocating
consistently all over the world for the past quarter of a century. ’This is
the type of youthful manhood that we could and should have had if my
advice had been taken and followed, as recruits, instead of such weedy
specimens of humanity as shown in the previous picture.
5
 6

AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN WARNING.

The “ C3 ” men largely represented the human physical metal of

the nation that had deteriorated through lack of constructive states¬
manship in times of peace. It nearly rang the death-knell of the
British Empire. For the future we must, in the language of our
own unequalled bard, have “ metal more attractive.”
Over twenty years ago, I myself warned the nation of the danger
of physical deterioration, and pleaded the same cause most strenu¬
ously, not altogether in vain. So effective was my warning then,
and so powerful was my pleading, that a wave of public enthusiasm
swept over the country, and after years of continued working, many
prominent public men, and distinguished military and naval officers,
came to my support. As a result, a Committee was appointed to
investigate the facts and take evidence upon every aspect of the
serious physical deterioration of the nation. It deliberated long
and seriously the question, it called many witnesses, including
myself, from all parts of the country, and it issued the customary
Report with many excellent recommendations. Unfortunately,
with the exception of some slight alterations and improvements of a
casual character, the matter ended there so far, at least, as the State
was concerned.
Lethargy slowly but surely supplanted enthusiasm, for the
driving force of a Lloyd George was lacking. I only wish
that the man who uttered the words I have just quoted had
been at the helm of State then, for, if so, I firmly believe
that steps would at once have been taken by the Government
to put the national house in order, and with how much
happier results in the great war crisis through which we
have passed. I look forward with great hope, therefore, to
Mr. Lloyd George in this new awakening, and trust that he will
remain in office until his already splendid life-work has been
crowned with the great achievement of giving the people every oppor¬
tunity for health and physical fitness.
Not only did I warn the State and the people of this danger
over twenty years ago and of many things that have since come to
pass, but I pioneered the first great physical regeneration movement
in this country. It is not for the sake of idle boasting that I recall
these things, but as an object-lesson of great value at the present
time. I sounded the first alarm throughout the country as to the
national physical deterioration, the increasingly lowered physical
 Wky 1
■~«0H

Wm

. ■ ■

:7aM

'

. . J . , . 1t r. Photo, Standish and Preece.lCliristchurch, N.Z.

Another type of the physically unht
to serve their country in an hour of Ihis the type of man he could and would
crisis. Had my warning been have been, land the State might have had
listened to over twenty years ago, leason to be proud of such recruits,
and the methods I advocated sup¬
ported by the State—
7
8
Group of Australian policemen carrying out physical movements as described, being inspected by the Author during
his world-tour.
 0

standard of our men, women and children, and the gravity of such
things from a national and Imperial view-point.

NATION IN A PHYSICAL DECLINE.

I preached the gospel of health and physical culture as essential
even then for the salvation of the nation and the Empire, for I saw—
and I had unique opportunities for observation—all too plainly that
the country was in a serious physical decline, and that a great crisis
would at any time threaten it even with the fate of Rome, Greece,
and Carthage.
“ The glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome ”
began to decay from the very moment that those nations began to
neglect the physical culture of the body for which they were once so
famous. So long as Rome had its amphitheatres thronged with
gladiators or Greece its gymnasia full of young athletes, these
nations flourished not only in a physical sense but also in every art
and science. In time, however, physical neglect led to physical
deterioration, as with ourselves, and inevitably also to intellectual
weakness of many kinds. Thus the sun went down for ever on
Rome and Athens as on Alexandria and Byzantium.
The British Empire was even at the time of my warning
threatened with a similar fate, and at the time I pointed out the
danger of the national physical deterioration through similar
neglect of the body physical. As Sir Robert Hadfield had said,
“ life had been too easy for us.” Civilisation, a faulty education,
and luxurious living had set up a softening of the national marrow,
muscle and brain. The fabric was poor in quality. The steel of
the body—and muscle is to the body what steel is to an engine or a
machine, the material of materials—required hardening and tem¬
pering. Here, surely, was a splendid work for a Government with
a high ideal and the courage to lead the nation towards that ideal,
and it is a pity that the opportunity was not then embraced by those
in the high seats of authority.
Without any State encouragement or support, but with the
patronage of a handful of high-minded public men, I began mv own
humble crusade against physical deterioration in 1897. I ‘had
developed my own body to the highest degree of physical perfection
and was generallv regarded as “ the strongest man in the world,”
and to-day, even at 52, as the photos of myself will show, that fitness
still persists, while I feel as healthv and robust to-day as in the very
heyday of my youth. I gave displays of my own strength through-
 10

out the country, not for personal vanity or aggrandisement, but

because I knew such visible evidence of what could be done by
physical self-culture, must have a more inspiring effect on others
than hours of talk or volumes of printed matter, must, indeed,
make a great and inspiring appeal, especially to the youth of the
nation.

THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH AND STRENGTH.

I had not obtained my own health and strength by accident.

I was, indeed, on the other hand, a delicate child. But I had proved
in my own body that if the attainment and maintenance of health
was not an exact science, it was governed by natural, and therefore,
exact laws, and was, consequently, obtainable by all. In that, alone,
I think I may say with all modesty I have done the State some
service, for tens on tens of thousands immediately flocked to my
standard, proving that there was no slackness at least on the part of
the people themselves.
For the furtherance of the cause I organised contests through¬
out the country, offering prizes at great personal expense, while I
personally visited the fifty-two counties of England and Wales to
adjudicate and award the prizes. A veritable furore in favour of
physical culture followed, and the keenest enthusiasm was awakened
throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom. Many men,
women and children began, for the first time, to take pride in their
physical bodies, and to appreciate the value and happiness of
physical fitness and health. To still further encourage this splendid
spirit of self-culture I spent large sums in prize-money, and gave
special gold, silver and bronze medals to those who became the best
developed men and the healthiest in each county, among the many
thousands who competed.
After the adjudication in this great national contest, I later
received the 156 winners (three from each of the 52 counties) at the
Albert Hall, London, upon which occasion the best physically
developed and physically proportioned man was presented with a
gold statuette of myself, eighteen inches high, while the second and
third were awarded silver and bronze statuettes. There was an
immense gathering—the largest ever seen in that capacious building
—to witness the final competition among these 156 splendid physical
specimens of the nation for the statuettes, and the takings were
handed over to a fund for the widows and orphans who fell in the
South African War. The outcome of this was that physical culture
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13
London Territorials, physically trained by the Author free in response to Lord Esher’s appeal, receiving prizes
for their physical improvement. The prizes were £1,000 in cash, given by the Author to encourage the move-
and were distributed by Lord Northcliffe, with Maj.-Gen. Sir Alfred Turner assisting.
 It
W. ShaaTCYj Aqed 21 (Brfsiol},

J. W. Tall (Warwick! -
Stiver Medal. ,

WSSS9B

Mmvu:>:s (Edln^tsr^b >.:

Gold Medal.

A. W. REID (Glasgow).

E. K tn<:; (Svllhighatp .

Twelve of the 156 Competitors in the Final Competition at the Royal Alberti Hall
for the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Statuettes, given by the Author for the best
proportioned and developed men in the United Kingdom whose hire physique was
obtained by these methods. These prizes were given by the Author to encourage
physical education and culture in this country, and the photos show what might
have been achieved with State support.
14
 15

clubs were inaugurated in hundreds of cities, towns and villages in

the United Kingdom to the great benefit of the national physique.
Unfortunately, enthusiasm was subsequently allowed to wane
through lack of that State support, which the Premier tells us truly
is most essential to-day.

BUILDING A BETTER BRITAIN.

Since then, my own efforts—and it is only with reluctance that

T refer to them here not for the purpose of advertisement but because
they “ point a moral ” and, in some degree, help to adorn the
Premier’s tale of woe—are fairly well known. I travelled per¬
sonally through nearly all over our Overseas Dominions, through
India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the
Straits Settlements, giving lectures, demonstrations and free train¬
ing to soldiers, police and fire-fighting forces. Many of those who
heard, saw, and were advised by me then, were amongst the best
soldiers Great Britain ever put in the field. When Lord Esher
made his famous appeal for 11,000 recruits to bring up the London
County Regiments of the Territorials to full strength, I volunteered
to make mys'elf" personally responsible for the physical training
necessary to enable them to fulfil the physical requirements. I pre¬
sented £1,000 in cash prizes as an added inducement to those who
accepted my offer and made the greatest development during train¬
ing, and the result was an improvement of many of the men’s
physique, averaging three inches upon the chest measurement of
every man, and of all other parts in proportion.
In addition to all this, I offered free individual physical train¬
ing to the lads belonging to the Church Brigade, of which many took
advantage, and I have no doubt that many of those were since able
to pass the military tests when called up, and so did not help to
swell the missing million whom Mr. Lloyd George mourned in his
Manchester speech.
Hundreds of young men were so improved physically under my
tuition as to be able to qualify for commissions, so far, at least, as
the physical tests were concerned, and thousands of soldiers of all
ranks in the Army have expressed their gratitude to me for the
improvement wrought both in their physical condition and their
health. When I look back on all this, in the light of recent events,
I can quite appreciate the humour of a public man’s remark when
c
 16

he complimented me on being the greatest “ recruiting sergeant ”

the Army has ever had.
I think I am, indeed, entitled to say without egotism that but
for this great physical culture crusade and revival, and the work
subsequently carried on by me as described, the number of rejec¬
tions for physical unfitness, to which the Premier refers, would
have been greater still, and the physical standard of our new Army
lower even than it proved to be.

WHAT A PHYSICAL CENSUS WOULD HAVE REVEALED.

If my own modest efforts could achieve such results as these,
what might we not expect if the State were to inculcate and foster
the desire for physical fitness in the mind of every individual in
every village, town, city and county of the British Isles, and, indeed,
of the British Empire from childhood, if, indeed, the training of
the body were made, as it should be, an essential part of education,
and if such a national and scientific system of physical reconstruc¬
tion as I advocate in these pages were endowed and supported by the
State. Indeed, had such State encouragement been offered to the
people twenty-one years ago, when I myself fought for such a
physical awakening, most of the 1,000,000 men, if not all, whom,
according to the Premier, we had most reluctantly to reject as unfit
for military service, would no doubt have been available as desirable
recruits when so badly needed.
But I would remind the Premier that the danger of our culpable
State neglect in the past of “ a more constant and a more intelligent
interest in the health and fitness of the people ” does not end there,
for it is not too much to say that yet another 1,000,000 passed into
the Army who were not nearly so fit as they should be, while an
enormous number of men had to be discharged because physically
unfitted to bear the heavy strains of military service. If the male
remnant of the nation, ineligible for military service or exempted
for skilled service in war work, had also been medically examined,
the results would have been still more staggering, while a similar
medical examination of all the people, including men, women and
children, would have been truly appalling.
It behoves the State, therefore, to awaken itself in the present
grave crisis. Such a state of things must not—need not—occur
again if we intelligently grapple with the problem, and if the State
does its part in encouraging health and fitness among the people.
17
—and the splendid physical types shown here are illustrative of same of
the results that followed my lecture tour.
18
 19

TAKING THE FLOOD TIDE.

Already, even at the time of writing (1917-18), I am pleased to
note that there are evidences in many directions that, with Celtic
vim and vision, the Premier has set many wheels whirring to dis¬
cover and provide the necessary “ munitions/1 the best machinery,
and the most perfect organisation to ensure the best results in this
most vital campaign against our greatest enemy, physical weakness
and disease. Perhaps, indeed, it may not be too much to say that
the great work of national reconstruction has already begun,
although the really critical operations are just about to begin.

THE SKELETON AT THE FEAST.

As the Premier has neatly phrased it, “ you must have recon¬
struction while we have the lessons of the war fresh in our minds.
You must reconstruct when the national limbs are supple with
endeavour, and before they become stiff with repose and slumber, and
you must reconstruct when you see you have behind you that great
spirit of patriotism and self-sacrifice which has been raised from
the depths of human nature in every house and every breast in this
land. You must reconstruct when you have got behind you the
momentum of victory to carry you through to an even greater
triumph.”
It is at just such a moment that this book will make its appear¬
ance. I desire to catch the tide of public enthusiasm at its highest,
in order that the State may not be allowed to drift with an ebbing
tide of public opinion into the shallows or become becalmed in the
doldrums of peace and comfort once more. Even at the feast of
victory it may not be inadvisable to drag the skeleton of our
physical past among the guests and revellers if only as a warning
for future conduct.
For if we do not enlist and permanently secure the whole¬
hearted support of the State in this great enterprise, if the State
should be negligent, indifferent or parsimonious, if it should leave to
private or public enterprise what I say is its first and paramount
duty, it is of little use celebrating a victory that will merely post¬
pone a greater defeat.
How can we make each individual a healthy, happy, contented,
efficient and intelligent citizen either for peace or war? That is
the question to which all other questions of State must be made sub¬
sidiary, if we are to have an A1 population and A1 Empire. The
health and fitness of the people constitute the corner-stone of a
 20

nation, and its foundation is the physique and constitution of the

individual. How are we to re-build the Empire on such a deep and
sure foundation ?

FIT CHILDREN AND FIT ADULTS.

Well-meaning people are already at work. They are going to
do it by building us better and more hygienic homes, by banishing
slums, by more mental education, by better wages, by sending the
people back to the land, and in a host of other ways. Good and
desirable as are all these, these methods will never succeed if we do
not attend first and foremost to the physical demands and necessities
of the individual. Healthy, robust men and women, however few
the number, will set an ideal to the whole nation.
“ You cannot,” as a writer in the Evening News at the time well
said, “ make a man or a woman A1 by Act of Parliament. What¬
ever the State, the municipality, the enlightened employer may do,
in the end it all comes back to the individual. The State and the
town council and the doctor and the teacher can provide the railroad,
so to speak, but you have to get up your own steam.” The question
is how. The individual must first be shown how to get up steam,
must possess the knowledge necessary, and must be fitted for the work
in every way. Otherwise he could never get up steam at all, produce
it in insufficient quantity, or perhaps, attempt to generate it
beyond the factor of safety.
It is best, therefore, as in all forms of education, to begin with
the child, and to teach and train it from its earliest school days to
know, understand and direct the wonderful human engine given to
its charge. This may seem a somewhat startling idea to the con¬
servative mind. But, remember, that a few hundred years ago if
it had been suggested that every child should be taught to read and
write the proposition would have been greeted with ridicule. Not
so many years ago, indeed, it was the exception to be able to read and
write; to-day there are few, very few, who cannot read and write.
So, I contend, that what seems as startling a proposal to-day as was
the first Education Bill will be just as effective in freeing the world
from disease as the Education Bill was in banishing illiteracy.

NATIONAL PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND RECONSTRUCTION.

The average individual may be said to live three lives : (1) At
school; (2) in the home; (3) in the great world of business. At
school, at home, and in the workshop, fair conditions of hygiene
 21

must be secured and maintained. In this part of the work the

medical profession can, and undoubtedly will, play a prominent and
distinguished part. Mr. Lloyd George recognises this, but I think,
like many others, be is still inclined to overlook the fact that it is the
individual rather than his or her environment that first needs con¬
sideration and attention. The body, after all, is only the home of
the soul, and if the physical home of the soul is first prepared to be
a suitable and hygienic dwelling-place for the spiritual tenant of it,
that tenant will see to it that the home of the body also fulfils all the
requirements and necessities of both for their physical, mental and
spiritual well-being.
The child is the kernel of the Empire, and the crux of the whole
problem. As the Premier said truly, “ it is bad business not to look
after the man, the woman, but above all, the child.1’ There are still
savage countries where the children are taught from infancy to steal,
and to regard theft as the goal to which they have to strive. Need¬
less to say, to be the most successful thief is the aim and ambition
of the children. “ As the twig is bent the tree grows,” and so
national physical education must begin by instilling the higher ideal
of perfect physical fitness and health in the mind of the child.

ARCHITECTS OF THE NATION.

The teacher and the doctor should he the architects of the new
physical structure of the nation, and a building is not begun with the
laying of the first brick or even the digging of the foundation, but in
the mind of the architect. Education should teach each and every t/

child individually to know and respect itself, to seek to develop its

body and mind to the highest possible standard, and if we are to do
this with success there should be rewards and honours for health and
for freedom from weakness or disease, as well as for the mere
accumulation of wealth, which is too often achieved at a cost which
no nation can support—viz., that of physical degeneration. The
child, too, must be given a new ideal and a new ambition, as I fully
deal with in my chapter on the State and the Child.
In this country, mental education has been and is imposed too
often on bodies that are unfit physically to support the mental strain,
which is undoubtedly one of the causes of our physical decadence as
so lamentably revealed in the early days of the war. This is the
real reason whv our educational methods have proved inferior to
Germany’s, as Mr. Lloyd George admits. But, while military train¬
ing and conscription such as are employed in Germany may ensure,
 22

to some extent, a trained, developed and strong body, in those already

sound organically, to support the mental super-structures, such a
system would be most injurious to children and the weak, and could
never provide that perfect balance which makes the body disease-
proof'.
Perfect mental and physical balance is, of course, the ideal, and
that, I believe, can only be assured to each child under constant
medical supervision and direction, by the intelligent use of the dis¬
coveries I have made, and by methods which are based on Nature’s
law, as I show and prove in this book. It is essential, at the very
outset, that the child should be taught the beauty, the grandeur and
the wonder of the human body which it possesses, and given a high
physical ideal and goal. The spirit of imitation, of rivalry, and of
emulation latent in every child should be diverted in a right direc¬
tion.
When I showed, in my own body, the possibilities of physical
culture in securing and maintaining health and strength, the cult and
culture of the physical body became almost a craze even with adults
and the middle-aged. How much more effectively can we stimulate
the thoughts and desires of the child towards health-culture by be¬
stowing honours and rewards on the healthiest and fittest of the
children in our schools. The head of the school in every form or
class should be the healthiest and most physically perfect boy or girl.
The boy or girl with the finest physique and constitution would then
become the idol and envy of the school, and so the youthful mind
would thus early be bent in the proper direction.

DEPRECIATION OF NATIONAL STOCK.

All those, however, of any age who woo health for health’s sake,
and whose bodies are made and kept in the best physical condition,
will find in its ultimate possession a reward far greater than any
honours, titles, or distinctions others may bestow on them. They
will possess with it a happiness, a sense of joyousness, a capacity for
work and play, an exhilaration that the unfit and the unhealthy
can never find in all the artificial allurements of a decadent civilisa¬
tion. They will drink daily from the cup of life a perennial
draught more refreshing and more stimulating than the nectar of the
gods.
For the State itself, the subject is one of extreme urgency and
of the utmost importance, for a depreciated national physique is far
more serious and of greater import than the depreciation of the
This is the type of a healthy and vigorous boy who might well be such a model in any school,
as 1 suggest here, and whose line physique and development was the result of careful
schooling and practise in these methods of health education and physical reconstruction.
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 25

national coinage. The health of the people is the wealth of a State,

and yet, as Mr. Lloyd George truly said, “ we had used our human
material in this country profligately, foolishly, cruelly.” To prevent
further wastage and to make good the cost of war in human life, we
will, indeed, require “ a more intelligent organisation of the forces
which have charge of the health of the nation, national, municipal
and medical.”
“We have,” as the Premier said, “ enormous losses to make up
-the fallen, the crippled, the mutilated; their case must be particu¬
larly thought out—but we must also think of the children who are to
fill up the gaps in the generations that are to come, and the State
must see that they are built up into a fine, healthy, strong and
vigorous people. There is no surer way of strengthening this
country than that!
There is, indeed, no other way, and this, as I show and prove in
this book, can only be done by building the bodies of these people so
strong and in such perfect balance from childhood that they cannot
succumb to disease. The State must prostrate itself before the
child. It must stoop if it is to conquer and go on conquering, and
a little child must lead it. As Dr. Sir George Newman puts it,
“ a State cannot effectually insure itself against disease unless it
begins with its children.”

NEW IDEALS OF CHILDHOOD.

The struggle for the child must now take on a new aspect. At
present the educationalists, the religionists, the reactionists and the
employers are rivalling each other over the bodies and brains of the
children. The State must assert its authority, and snatch the
children from those who seek to traffic in them. Old educational
codes and systems must he destroved. all the old educational
compasses and steering gear replenished by new, and new charts
prepared.
The physically and often mentally deficient adult of to-day is
the product of his teaching and environment. We have worshipped
false gods and they have nearly destroyed us. The children must
no longer he sacrificed to Mammon, but must be taught to respect a
healthy body and robust constitution far more than a fat purse and
a big banking account. The child, remember, does not create its
own gods. They are created for it. Let us, then, substitute better
gods for those that have so basely betrayed us, and give the children
a new ideal, a new inspiration, and a new ambition.
 Photographers : Standish & Preece, Christchurch, N.Z.

And some of the physical fruit that was the result of my visit.
These are men that the recruiting sergeant would have been
only too glad to welcome in the Empires hour of danger.
26
 If it should seem to the reader that the personal note has
obtruded itself somewhat persistently in this chapter, I claim their
consideration because of the fact that I have devoted the best part
of my life to this subject exclusively, and it is only by proving what
is possible and what can be done that I can he of the utmost service
in assisting those in authority to accomplish the great work to which
the State has put its hand, and which can only be achieved by placing
at its disposal every fact, argument and witness that may possibly be
of service in the great national crusade against weakness, physical
deterioration and disease. If, too, it may seem to the reader that
there is an almost irksome reiteration of salient and even vital facts,
I must plead the seriousness of my subject and the absolute necessity
of driving all the facts well home. Besides, I am dealing with an
entirely new aspect of a subject that has never yet previously been
fully understood, and which in these pages I am anxious to make
clear even to the person with no knowledge of anatomy, physiology
or psychology. For these reasons only I introduce only those casual
personal references which, I feel, may add weight to my evidence.

Extract Reported Verbatim from Mr. Lloyd George’s Great

Speech at Manchester, Sept. 12th, 1918.

“ THE NEW WORLD.”

“WE MUST TAKE HEED IN TIME.”

Speaking with deep feeling and great force, the Premier said :
When peace was secured we could then proceed with a clear conscience and a
steady nerve to build up the new world in which those who have sacrificed so much
might dwell in peace, security and contentment.
Now, in order to establish the new world, we must take heed in time, lest we fall
back into the welter of the old. We must be ready as soon as the unseen hand throws
the rainbow of peace on the slide, and be ready—as summarised in one council—to
profit by the lesson of the war.
“ It has been a most costly schoolmaster in its way. He was not sure it had not
been the best in many ways, and the first lesson it had taught us was this—the importance
of maintaining the solidity of the British Empire. It had rendered a service to humanity,
and the magnitude would appear greater and greater as this generation receded in the
past. It had helped to stop the barbarism that was sweeping through Europe.
To allow such an organisation to fall to pieces after the war would be a crime
against civilisation. The British Empire would count more next time than it did in the
past, for they knew now what they had to deal with.
 -=i3
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 29

Health and Fitness.

What is the next great lesson of the war ? The next great lesson of the war
is this—that if the State is to be fairly equipped to face another emergency either of
peace or war, the State must take a more constant and more intelligent interest in the
health and fitness of the people. If the Empire was to be equal to its task, the men and
women who made up the Empire must be equal to theirs.
“ How did we stand in the light of that task ? We had done great things in the
war ; we could have accomplished greater if this country had been in condition. War,
like sickness, laid bare the weakness of the constitution. What had been ours ? Let
us talk quite frankly. We had had a Ministry of National Service set up in this country,
and since then we had had the most careful compiled statistics of the people—certainly
between the ages of 18 and 42.

The Age of Fitness.

That was the age of fitness, that was the age of strength. What did it reveal ?
The results of this examination were sufficiently startling, and he did not mind using the
word appalling. He hardly dared tell them the results in some parts of Manchester.
What did this mean ? It means this—that we had used our human material
in this country profligately, foolishly, cruelly. He asked the Ministry of National Service
how many we could have put into the fighting ranks if the health of the country had
been properly looked after. He was staggered by the reply. It was a considered reply.
They said at least one million men—at least one million men.

If we had only had them, this War would have ended

triumphantly ere this.
“ There were questions as to whether you ought to put miners back or keep them
in the Army—a few tens of thousands—whether you ought to put a few thousand men
in munition works—and yet they had a million men who, if the State had taken proper
care of the fitness of the people, would have been available for the war.
“ The results in agriculture had been almost as disappointing as in almost any
other industry. A virile, healthy occupation of that kind ! Everywhere a virile race
had been neglected by waste and want of thought—a danger to the State and the Empire.
“ I solemnly warn my fellow-countrymen, you cannot maintain an A1 Empire
in a C3 population, and unless this lesson is learned the war will have been in vain. Our
schooling has cost us dear, but if we make the best use of it I believe it will be worth all
in the end, even in the saving of human life.

Health at Home.
“ Care for the health of the people was the secret of national efficiency. St was
the secret of the national recuperation.
“ If the steel is defective through badly ventilated or ill-constructed furnaces or
insufficient fuel, if the machinery is inadequately oiled or looked after, or over-worked, if
repairs are not done in time or faulty, the machinery is no use. And man is the most
delicately constructed of all machines.
“ It is bad business not to look after the men, women, and, if I may say so, above
all, the children.
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 31

“ Now the most important workshop in this line is the home. There is a lady
over there in the audience accepts my proposition readily. The quality of the steel in
the fabric depends upon the home.

Our Cities’ Slums.

If it is unhealthy, ill-equipped, ill-supplied, ill-managed, the quality becomes
defective, and it cannot bear the strain. Now, what are the influences which make for
the health of the people ? The first is the houses in which the people dwell. The
problem of housing in this country is the most urgent that awaits treatment.
We have talked about it, played with it for forty or fifty years, but it has never
been really taken in hand. It has only been taken in hand in the way an untidy or
slovenly housewife takes up cleaning work. It is that part of the house where the visitor
comes and sees which she cleans.
“ There has been too much of this thing in our cities—slums, bad houses ; they’re
out of sight. That is not the way to deal with a problem which affects the strength of
the nation. It is hopelessly in arrears. No Government, no party has had the courage
to grapple in the way a good business man would grapple with some sort of rottenness
which he discovered in his business and wasting his capital.

Libraries of Regulations.
It is equally true of the whole of the public health. We have had Acts of Par¬
liament running into hundreds and hundreds. We have had regulations which would
have filled a library. We have had most attractive pictures of model dwellings and
endless authorities. But you cannot plough the waste land with writing. You cannot
sweep away the slums in Manchester or bind the gaping wounds of the people with red
tape.
Wages and Workshops.
“ What more have we to do to improve life ? We see wages during the war have
been raised, and we must see in the future that labour is requited with wages which
will sustain life.
“ It would be a mistake—in fact, it would be impossible—to attempt a statement
of detailed plans in this hour, crowded with other and more important concerns. That
is quite true at any moment of the war, but there are minds considering all these points—
expert minds—so that when the war is over the nation shall not lose time in setting its
house in order. It is idle to pretend that the best method of dealing with all these intri¬
cate, delicate, complex problems, far reaching and immense, is in the power of any Govern¬
ment who are necessarily absorbed in the prosecution of this war to a victorious end ;
but the moment that struggle is over the work of reconstruction must begin.
“ You must reconstruct when you have got behind you the momentum of victory
to carry you through to an even greater triumph. That is why the whole field of national
enterprise, of national endeavour, and national resource, and of material well-being is
being examined carefully and prospected with a view to immediate action, before that
great spirit grows cold in the frigid atmosphere of self-interest. Let us have it when
the nation is riding the chariot of a high purpose, ere it comes down to the dusty road.
That is the time to reconstruct, that is the time to build.

The Menace from Within.

“ When there is the spirit of fraternity throughout the land, when there is no
longer rich and poor, men of one party or other, but one people, one spirit, one purpose,
D
Another photograph showing the Author with his living model, lecturing before a New Zealand audience on physical
reconstruction, during his great world tour.
 33

one soul to lift our native land not merely above the menace of a foreign foe, but above
the wretchedness, the squalor, the horror, the misery which so many of the men, women
and children who live on the hearthstones of this old land have been enduring. I have
been amongst the people, and I know it, and I want to see this thing righted.
“ The next thing is we must face these problems with courage. When you come
to the war, millions of people are full of courage. But when faced with the problems
of peace somehow or other it vanishes. You will never successfully tackle a job of which
you are afraid. The next thing is, the effort must be equal to the task.”
 i‘. Quartjer.majxe (Derby
r. Rohv (Cork'.
Silva' Medal Gold Medal.
A. HiCKUNG (Nottingham)
Silver Medal.

Thomas White (Monmouth i,

Alfred E. Francis (Antrim)
Gold Medal Clements. < 1 .ciccster
Silver Medal
Gold Medal

J. Macdonald (Inverness' 1 >. 1 oolf.k (Warwick

Gold Medal. { add Medal Lionel Otnw (Gloucester).
Gold Medal.

W. J. Morgan (Monmouth.) j. Warrlk (Durham):

H. S. Hoyle (Yorkshire),
Silver Medal. Gold Mai,,!.
Silver Medal.

Winners of Gold, Silver and Bronze Medals in various parts of the United Kingdom, who
were trained and developed by these methods, and who were among the competitors in
the great final contest at the Royal Albert Hall, described in the previous chapter. This
gives a slight idea of what could be accomplished if State physical education, as recom¬
mended and described here, were made compulsory in all schools from childhood. These
were the types so urgently needed, and so often missing, when Britain went to war.
34
H. Mau.in'son (AshlGn-ttnticr-LvM

j. p. v,oqp {Bradford).

More types of the Gold, Silver and Bronze Medallists who competed at the
Royal Albert Hall.
 j. browning (Kimherky, S.A.i

Frank E. Dorchester.(Brtsiol)

E. A. A luck (Cheshire)..
Gold Medal.

H. H. Lewis (London)

Further specimens of the same.

36
/

G. J. Benson (Bedford).
D. Gowin (Surrey) Bronze Medal.
Silver Medal.

\Y. J, I’mi.ui's. (Hants), W. Sadler (

Bronze Medal. Silver Medal.

A. C. Bridges (Surrey). CM Medal,

Bronze Medal.

Worth (Gloucester).
E. J. Horne (Derby). Silver Medal.
iHayf.s (Worcester).
Silver Medal.
s7/;vr Medal.

Another Group of Prize Winners.

37
 C, H. fLCTCHEri, AGED 10 ; Cnat'Gnmsby).

|jg|jjjpiu 2. HUGH MCALLUM.

izm OKKme

- _ ..

■ c
S. PENTECOST. - ,
HUGH MCALLUM. 'One if lit# and three mik Champion of Ne& Zealand,
who trains mi the Sandou; System.)

BENTLEY
(St- George'f ?'<>/&/ CM,. Cat* Town, South AJnmC
JOHN \\ PETERS.

Some of the results of these methods of physical reconstruction which will build the weakest up
m strength and resistant power to disease.
38
 39

CHAPTER II.

My Grave Warning to the Nation

Great and grave as has been the crisis through which we have just
passed, a still greater and graver yet confronts us. We were un¬
prepared for war. Let us, at least, be prepared for peace, which
will make demands upon each individual little less severe than those
of war.
War, “ which like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a
precious jewel in its head/’ has at least the uses as it has the dis¬
comforts of adversity. It has taught us much, and will, I hope,
teach us still more. It has X-rayed deep into every fibre of the
modern social system, and has located many blemishes. It has
revealed, not a single skeleton, but a veritable army of skeletons, in
the cupboard of civilisation. It has pulled down many jerrv-built
social structures, and torn up still more ramshackle schemes of social
construction and reconstruction. It has safely exploded many float¬
ing social mines, and cleared the social sea of much drifting and
dangerous flotsam and jetsam. It has opened the eyes of the wise
and closed the mouths of fools.

THE UNIT OF NATIONAL POWER.

It has shown the world that the real unit of power is man—even
the humblest human being—and that everything in a country’s life
depends finally and conclusively upon its man-power—upon the
health, happiness, character and efficiency of each and every indi¬
vidual human being, no matter what his social or financial status.
We must take mankind more seriously for the future; for, to-day
more than ever, we appreciate the deep-biting truth of Goldsmith’s
words :—
“ Ill fares the land to hastening hills a prey.
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.”

“ War,” as the Premier said in his great awakening and illumi¬

nating speech at Manchester, to which I have already referred,
 40

“ had been the most costly schoolmaster any nation had ever had. It
had rendered a service to humanity, and the magnitude would
appear greater and greater as this generation receded in the past.
We have used our human material in this country prodigally,
foolishly, cruelly.”
Even in the acute crisis of war, indeed, an almost criminally
flippant attitude was too often adopted in high places towards the
question of individual health and efficiency—an attitude that will
be fatal towards a sane outlook for peace times. Here, for instance,
is an extract from a report of a London Military Tribunal presided
over by a Mr. Brinsley Harper during the war. It is indicative of
the mental attitude to which I refer :—

HUMOUR 5N THE WRONG PLACE.

“ I never thought I was so bad until I saw the doctor's certifi¬

cate, ” said an appellant to a Mr. Brinsley Harper, the chairman.
“ Ah, there are lots,” replied that individual, “ who get a terrible
shock when medically examined.” Such was the happy-go-lucky
way of regarding so serious a matter as our individual man-power,,
debased as it was shown to be to a most dangerous degree, even in
such a crisis as that through which the British Empire, and, indeed,
the civilised world, has just passed. Yet those very medical exami¬
nations revealed facts that were positively of an alarming nature,
and were not matters to be regarded lightly.
They led, as a result of the medical examination of many young
and middle-aged men for the first time since they had reached adult¬
hood, to surprising and painful revelations as to the physique and
health of the nation as a whole. Many, again, who were medically
examined by the military doctors, and who had not been medically
examined for some years previously in civil life, were surprised to
find that they had become unexpectedly unfit physically or were even
the victims of some unsuspected form of disease.
Thousands more, having passed the medical tests safely, proved
quite unfit, after a very brief military service, for the severe military
duties at home or war operations abroad. The taint of tubercu¬
losis, heart trouble, venereal and other microbic diseases, was pain¬
fully evident everywhere. What a revelation; but what a harvest
of previous information if only it be garnered and stored and pro¬
fitably used in the future.
A striking contrast, showing at a glance the remarkable physical transformation from a condition
of physical unfitness to an almost perfectly balanced physique, the result of a very short
course of physical development and reconstruction by the methods I am now advocating.
Had such methods been in vogue before the war, the “ terrible shock ” so many had on
medical examination would have been avoided.
41
 42

UNFIT AT TWENTY.

Professor Keith, the distinguished physiologist, writing in The

Observer, has given some startling evidence as to the physical condi¬
tion and health of the male population as revealed by these military
examinations.
“ What,” he asks, “ are we to regard as an ideal standard of
fitness among the young men of a nation ? From theoretical reason¬
ing, as well as from practical experience, we expect that if 1,000
young men are collected at random from a population of good health
and physique and graded according to their physical fitness the
result will be approximately as follows :—
Grade I., 700. Grade III., 75.
Grade II., 200. Grade IV., 25.

“ What may be called the index grades are I. and IV. Grade
I. are men fit for general service—men in the enjoyment of at least
average health and strength. Grade IY. men are physically unfit,
unequal to any of the duties of a soldier—for any form of physical
employment in civil life. We are dealing with a robust and healthy
population when we find its youthful manhood yielding us 70 per
cent. Grade I. and only 2.5 per cent. Grade IV. The critical line
in the scale of fitness lies between Grades II. and III.; the 900 men
in Grades I. and II. are more or less fit, but the 100 forming Grades
III. and IV. are more or less unfit. Even in an ideal healthy popu¬
lation we expect 10 per cent, of unfit men. In pre-war times
Germany is said to have had 16 per cent, of young men who were
unfit for active military service; every country has its problem of
the unfit.
“ I have given what I regard as a satisfactory result of grading
young men from a healthy population. To contrast with it I will
give a result typical of grading 1.000 men drawn at the present time
from one of our large industrial towns :—
Grade I., 190 Grade III., 410
Grade II., 270 Grade IY., 130

“ Let us look at the index Grades I. and IY. In Grade I. there

are only 190 men in place of 700; in Grade IV. there are 130 in place
of 25. When we look for the missing men of Grade I. we find them
mostly in the partially unfit group, Grade III. In place of having
900 men more or less fit, we have only 460; and in place of 100 men
more or less unfit, 540. The objection might rightly be raised that
Man as he should be, and as he was in the days when he lived a natural and healthy
physically active life. A fine specimen of New Zealander, W. Jarratt, who has
done much to spread the gospel of physical and mental efficiency by these methods,
to which he owes his own fine development.
43
 Photo by Stannish & Preece, New Zealand,

Two splendid physical examples, showing back and front development, whose physique is
entirely attributable to scientific methods of natural physical movement as described in these pages.

44
 45

the present population of our towns and cities is merely a residue

left after the fit and young men had gone on active service in the
earlier vears of the war.
Cj

“ Only the older and less fit younger men are left, and age has a
definite influence on a man’s grade. After the age of thirty, men
tend to become degraded—to pass from Grades I. and II. to Grades
III. and IV. This tendency proceeds uniformly until about the
age of forty-six, and then there is a slump towards the lower grades.
Now these objections are perfectly valid; we obtain from such
examples a totally erroneous impression as to the relative numbers
of the unfit—but they leave us under no illusion as to the total
number of our citizens who are physically unfit. Mr. Lloyd George
is right; their number is appalling.”

A BLOW TO A NATION’S PRIDE.

Nor were these revelations after medical examination confined

to England. Equally, and in same cases even more alarming,
returns were made among the peoples of all the countries affected by
the war. The diarist of the Evening Standard said that in America
no less than 66 out of every 100 men who volunteered for the
American Army had to be rejected as physically unfit. This means
roughly that something like 5,000,000 young Americans between the
ages of 21 and 31 failed to come up to the A1 standard. Perhaps,
after all, this is not to be wondered at, however, in that land of
hustle, where health is too often forgotten in the mad race for wealth.
In England, with an out-of-doors and a sport-loving people, the
results of the medical examinations shocked us too terribly, and hurt
our pride.
Thousands of patriotic men anxious to serve their King
and Country were rightly horrified and ashamed at this revel¬
ation of their unconscious physical degeneracv. They had
believed themselves, as so many mistakenly do, sound and
fit until medical tests opened their eyes. Did they expect
to have bodies really healthy, fit and strong without that
knowledge of their own bodies, and how to keep them in
health, which everyone should acquire from childhood, or without
that daily and all-round physical movement and consequent develop¬
ment, which the body was meant to have for its own well-being and
preservation against disease, and which it naturally received in
man’s earlier stages of existence?
Eor years the majority of them had been content to go on
 46

earning money with their brains while their bodies wasted and
weakened through lack of balanced and natural physical movement.
Stripped to a state of nature and medically tested, they suddenly
found that, like Macaulay’s despised Bengalee, they had^ grown
“ weak even to effeminacy.” They could not stand forth “ naked
and unashamed.” Yet how many more of non-military age are
in a similar or worse physical plight to-day, to say nothing of the
still more neglected women and children in our midst.

THE RISING VALUE OF MAN.

The fact is that man-power and physical efficiency have too

long been despised or neglected in our search after mechanical power
and mechanical efficiency or brain-power alone for the wealth it
brings, and we were forgetting that, after all, the only wealth is
health. Millions have been spent on the invention and perfecting
of machinery, while the most wonderful machine in the world—
the human body—has been allowed to deteriorate and rust. Hyper-
developed brains and under-developed bodies have wrought infinite
harm.
To-day, man is coming into his own again, and we may with
hope look forward to a saner exploitation of human flesh and blood
and brain in the future than the gruesome spectacle the world has
just witnessed. Let our men of money never forget that money
invested in man is as well and as profitably invested as money sunk
in land or mines, in inventions or machinery, in horses or dogs or
motor-cars, and that it is the deepest interest and duty of the State
to cultivate the human soil, to sow it with good seed, to dig it and
till it and care for it in every way, to bring it into healthy touch
with the air, the sun, the moisture, and all it demands and needs
to sustain it and make the human plant grow, just as the agricul¬
turist improves the productive quality of the land by continuous
and ordered movement.
The war revealed a people degenerate, diseased, and weak
physically, owing to conditions of modern life, in which the
physically ^fittest, by a grim irony, too often survived in the
struggle for wealth and position, to leave still weaker and more
physically unfit children after them. It has made the physical
education and culture of the people imperative, and it is my object
in this book to show that this can only be successfully accomplished
if the whole subject is taken up seriously and carried out by really
d he first photo shows the physical condition of the youth of the nation as revealed by the war. The
second shows what can be achieved by scientific methods of physical education and culture, and how
imperative such methods are to safeguard us against physical deterioration and disease in the future.

47
E
Had all the youth of the nation been physically developed in this way by really
scientific education and body culture this warning would have been unnecessary.
Why should not every child be cared for and its health safeguarded in this way ?
48
 49

scientific methods, and with the support of an efficient and intelli¬

gent State organisation, the medical profession, and a qualified and
capable executive in every department.
But behind the State we must, as a leader writer in the Evening
Standard has well pointed out, have also “ the driving power of a
resistless public opinion,” and what the Daily Mail has pointed
out as even more important still, “ team work between the doctor
and the statesmen ”

MAKING C3 ADULTS.

Our lack of a scientific system of physical education and health

culture in the past has brought us a harvest of physical weakness
and ill-health, for, to quote Dr. Addison, “ we cannot expect to get
an A1 population out of C3 homes, habits, work-places or conditions
of life,” while, unfortunately, he added, the army of C3 men
referred to is but “ the expression only in adult life of other C3
armies now coming onwards from their cradles.” Only such
methods as indicated in this book will prevent even A1 babies being
perverted into C3 adults.
These changes need not, however, mean efficiency at the price
of individual rational enjoyment, but such early education and
training will give us a real “ merrie England ” once more, for while,
to again quote the Evening Standard, “ every child should also be
taught that it is a duty to the State to keep himself or herself fit;
every child should also be encouraged to enjoy its own life.” In
this way we can succeed where militarism and materialism have
failed in other countries. For no military training can ever be as
effective as this civilian education and training from childhood.
When some people suggested physical training for children on
the lines followed in our new civilian army there was an immediate
outcry, not, however, so much against this military method of
physical training as against the danger that this was the thin
end of the wedge of militarism. The real danger was the possible
introduction into our schools of methods of physical training that
would have been totally unsuited for and possibly even injurious
to children.
Military physical training is only adapted for those already
physically strong and sound in constitution, who have only to be
trained specially for particular feats of endurance which are
necessary in military life. Such methods would never be suc¬
cessful in the case of children, or even of adults, where the real
 50

aim is physical and constitutional reconstruction and the upbuild¬

ing of a body strong enough in every part to resist disease. They
do not, in short, constitute what I call scientific physical
education.

DANCER OF MILITARY METHODS.

In the first place, those who were selected for military service
at the beginning of the war represented the very creme de la
creme of the nation in the physical sense at least. They were only
selected after a most searching medical examination, and passed
by the doctor as free from all physical defects and disease. Yet
tens of thousands of these young and fit men broke down under
the severity and strenuousness of military training, and have
been done incalculable injury for life, many collapsing in fits,
faints and exhaustion after long marches and heavy military
drills.
While of those who endured the training many benefited
in physique and health, it is evident that such extemporised and
unscientific methods of training were utterly unsuited even for
many of those who were passed by the military doctors as Al, but
who, in my standardising, would be lower in physical condition
than the lowest of all military categories or grades.
Now, what of the others who were rejected altogether, or who
were graded in lower categories ? In the nation’s most critical
hour the majority of these were of no military value, and could
not even by military drilling or military methods of training be
transformed into valuable fighting assets. If we had had such
a system of scientific physical education and training as I am now
describing, I contend that the majority of these men would never
have had to be rejected at all.
If such a svstem had even been adopted at the beginning of
the war, most of these rejects through physical defects and disease
could have been gradually made fit to qualify physically as Al
men, and so not lost entirely to the nation in so critical a time.
Some could have been made fit to pass the severest military
examination in a year or less, some might have taken two years,
but instead of that all had to be cast into the “ scrap-heap ” and
practically lost to the nation.
To show the value of such methods as these when adapted
by militarv commanders in an emergency, as Y am glad to say
they were in quite a number of cases, and carried out even in a
This is what physical education and bodily reconstruction would do for the youth of the nation as it
has done for these youths.
51
 52

somewhat hurried and improvised way to meet the exigencies of

the moment, some wonderful results were achieved, and officers
in high command were amazed at the physical improvement
wrought in the men in a very short time. Here is only one
instance out of many similar. A Colonel who took especial
interest in his men, and who had personally proved the efficacy
of these methods, was so delighted with the result that he decided
to bring it to the knowledge of those under his command. What
was the result? Well, here is an exact copy of a letter I received
later on from the Captain and Adjutant of his regiment:—

From Capt. and Adjt. M.Y.O. Liberty Hall,

2/8th Bn. Kingsthorpe,
Worcestershire Regiment. Northampton.
14/1/1915.
To The Director,
Sandow’s Curative Institute,
32a St. James’ Street, London.
Dear Sir,
The Commanding Officer has asked me to write to you and tell you that the
physique of the men of this Bn. has been enormously improved since they have
been carrying out Mr. Sandow’s exercises, not only in their chest measurements,
but in their general health and fitness. I may also add that the C.O. has been
complimented three or four times by different Generals on the apparent hardiness
and fitness of his men.
(Signed) P. N. Vigors,
Capt. and Adjt., M.V.O.,
2/8th Bn.,
Worcestershire Regiment.

This was accomplished in the case of adults, and under

circumstances that considerably modified the value of the methods
I am advocating for the upbuilding of the present and coming
generations, but it is easy to see what magnificent results we
might naturally expect if such methods were made part of the
education and upbuilding of every adult from childhood. They
would certainly make such revelations as the military tests for
recruits have made public impossible in the future, and would
have greatly re-enforced our national physical capacity for the
stern trial of a war for our very existence as a nation.

SCIENTIFIC v. UNSCIENTIFIC METHODS.

When we realise that, at the beginning of the war, only the

youngest, healthiest and strongest of the nation came up for
Fine Back and Front Study of Development attained by the scientific physical
culture of the body as described in this book.

53
 54

medical examination, it will be understood how truly “ appalling,”

to use Mr. Lloyd George’s word, were these statistics. Indeed,
it revealed us almost, as one expressed it to me, as a nation of
cripples and invalids. Of those over military age, and the women
and children who were left, it is not difficult to imagine how still
more appalling would have been the statistics had they also been
subjected to a severe medical examination.
One also can imagine the danger of placing these people
under a system of physical training of a military type, which
wrought so much harm even among the youngest and strongest
of the nation and has left many of them infirm and invalid for
life. The military system in every country is quite unscientific,
and is only fitted for those of the soundest physique and consti¬
tution. What the nation requires is a really scientific system of
physical education and reconstruction, preferably from the moment
a child enters school, so that every one would be taught and
trained to health and strength just as to-day they are taught and
trained to read and write.
Such a system would build up the body from youth step by
step and stage by stage until it was so strong in everv part,
so perfect in balance and strength everywhere, and with such
resistant power in every cell that disease would always attack
it in vain. Such a system would deal with each individual on
specific and personal lines, according to his or her family history,
constitution, temperament, etc., for no two individuals are exactly
alike. With such a system it would never again be possible for
the. nation to be faced with such truly startling figures as the
military medical examinations of the nation’s manhood have just
revealed.
Though the discoveries that followed military medical tests
in Great Britain must have alarmed all concerned, they had the
one great virtue that they at least put the British Government in
possession of a vast store of knowledge and reliable statistics
which must prove of the utmost value to any future Ministry of
Health, to the medical profession, and to everyone who looks with
wise and anxious foresight to the future welfare of the people.
Will the State (and, indeed, the States of the world) learn the
lesson, and do its or their duty to make such a condition of things
impossible in the future ? I sincerely hope so, for much can be
done to breed better men and women, not only in this, but in every
civilised country, if, like the Roman mother, the State regards
its children as its jewels. To encourage child-birth, to save and
Torso of a beautiful figure, beautifully developed, and as strong as it is beautiful,
produced by the methods of body culture herein described. This is the type
of woman that the State can have for the mothers of its children if it supports
and encourages these methods of body-building from childhood.
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56
preserve child-life, to reduce preventable disease and mortality,
and to make healthy and happy those who survive, should be the
first duty of the State.

WORK FOR A HEALTH MINISTRY.

In an editorial on this subject at the time of the revelations,

the Daily Mail very rightly pointed out that “ the amount of
physical unfitness brought to light by the medical examinations
has surprised even the doctors. They know that people living
in insanitary houses, boys put to hard work before their bones
are solid or their muscles strong, men and women working in
badly ventilated factories, shop-women and shop-men who stand
on their feet for ten hours at a stretch, must almost necessarily
suffer from weak lungs, weak hearts, flat foot, curved spine, and
other defects, but the amount of ill-health in the country was
scarcely suspected.
“ Now that the state of matters is made clear,” continued the
writer, “ by statistical records, there should he no delay in taking
measures for removing the causes. We have successfully fought
the epidemic diseases, small-pox, cholera, and the like, which were
destructive so long as their causes remained unknown and
unremoved. It will be quite as practicable to remove most of the
sources of physical incompetence which not only lessen the pleasure
in life of the sufferers, but reduce their value, and often make
them a burden to the community. It is said that Dr. Addison
plans a revolution in the upbringing of children. What we want
is a vigorous Ministry of Health to take care of the health of people
of all ages, but particularly the young.”
This is what I have so long advocated, and I am glad that
this distinguished journal, along with the leading periodicals of
the dav, and medical press, now suoport me, late in the day as it
is. The future of any nation is in the cradles of its children. The
physique and health of the child and all children demand attention
and care, irrespective of birth or social station, and all should
have equal opportunities of health.
All social reform, in fact, must begin in the physical body of
the child rather than in its environment. That can be attended
to later. But such a revolution in any country’s life is not to be
lightly begun. It must he begun and carried out on scientific lines.
 58

It must be perfectly organised, and conducted from first to last

under strict medical direction and supervision, under the aegis of
the State. It must teach men and women and children to
understand and care for their own bodies, and to know and obey
the laws of health, as does, say, a conscientious and well-schooled
athlete. To so educate a child is to put down a good health
foundation for life.

PHYSICAL NEGLECT OF THE CHILDREN.

The report of Dr. Sir George Newman, K.C.B., F.R.C.P.,

Chief Medical Officer and Assistant Secretary of the Board of
Education, on the physical condition of school children revealed
an even more alarming state of things than the military
medical examinations, and naturally was widely noted and
commented upon by the Press at the time, The Times
declaring that “ it is now at last realised by the public
that something like 1,000,000 children of school age are
physically unfit for their school work; more than 2,000,000
children between the ages of 12 and 18 are doing work that is
useless as a training for adult life; only a minute proportion of all
adolescents in the country are securing an outfit for life in health
and in mental and spiritual training.
“ The very bad condition of child-life in this country have to
some extent been kept stationary during the war by the better food
that better wages have secured, but the conclusion of peace,
unless the case is specially provided against, will prove a serious
set-back, and social deterioration will be accelerated at the very
time when it is essential, in view of the losses of the war, to build
up a strong and indomitable generation.1' Steps to prevent
degeneration and disease in any and every form, such as I am
here advocating, can alone save us from disaster.
In nothing can a State prove more criminal than its neglect
of any and every means to ensure and preserve the health of the
people. With the passionate appeal of Lord Rhondda still fresh
in the memorv, it seems utterly incredible that there should be
any procrastination in organising the machinerv of national
health. As his daughter, Viscountess Rhondda, has truly said
in a very outspoken article in the Sunday Times, “ if the bulk
of the disease from which we suffer can be prevented, for Heaven’s
sake let us prevent it.”
5!)
physical foundation on strictly scientific lines.
60
The Author giving a Demonstrative Lecture to the Mounted Police at Adelaide
 61

EFFORT ON A NATIONAL SCALE.

“ It seems, when one stops to consider it, almost unbelievable

that in all these years we have never really, as a nation, thought
this problem out; never made any serious attempt, on a national
scale, to provide ourselves with health. Yet we know that it can
be done, for experts tell us that the vast majority of the unfit owe
their condition to preventable causes.
“We have fought for liberty, we have insisted upon education,
but the one thing that would enable us to enjoy these blessings,
to make full use of them, we have left to ignorance, to chance, at
best to voluntary effort.”
When I first sounded my alarm against the danger of physical
deterioration many years ago, I did my very utmost to stimulate
such a national movement as Lady Rhondda describes, and it
seems a pity that now, after all those years, my warning must
be reiterated with greater emphasis than ever.

PREVENTING PHYSICAL WEAKNESS AND DISEASE.

Medical officers in every part of the country to-day confirm

this, and endorse Sir George Newman’s observations, while the
appalling revelations resulting from the medical examination and
treatment of children even on a limited scale—Mr. Hayes Fisher,
M.P., Minister of Education, himself admitted in the House of
Commons that only 39 authorities out of 318 had availed them¬
selves of the power to demand and have medical treatment in
public elementarv schools—have changed the whole attitude of
the medical profession, and compelled them to admit that the
work of the medical men in the future must be preventive rather
than curative if we are to avert a grave national danger.
Everything, of course, will depend on the nature of the
preventive measures adopted whether they achieve success or
fail. My contention is that so long as humanity is allowed to
physically deteriorate through insufficient movement of the body
physical, as it inevitably must through the advance of civilisation
and mistaken educational methods, disease can never be prevented,
and that, on the contrary, more and more disease and in many new
forms will reveal itself "as the people grow increasingly weaker. To
take the physical body, especially in youth, and to develop it to its
 62

highest possible resistant power is the only real preventive of

disease, as I show and prove later in this"“book.
Even in times of peace, life itself is a battle from the cradle
to the grave, a battle against foes within and without the body,
and, in a physiological sense, at least, it is perfectly ^true that
“ peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.” Indeed,
as a distinguished writer recently said, “ it should be the business
of those who have the youth of the nation under their care to see
that they are educated in accordance with the old ideal of the
sane mind in the sound body. Fitness is as necessary for civilian
as for military service.”
xJ

EMPIRES BUILT ON HUMAN FOUNDATION.

Here is a great country—an Empire, indeed, almost too great

for human conception—that was only awakened by the stern
reveille of war to the fact that its very fibre and being, the human
atoms of which it was composed, was in danger. We discovered,
in the words of Lord Rosebery, that “ an Empire is but little use
without an Imperial race.” By an effort almost superhuman
it rallied. Then and then only it was dimly realised that the
Empire had been built and was being built upon an insecure
foundation. The human material of which it was built and being
built had deteriorated to a most alarming degree.
The whole of our far-flung Empire was affected, though less,
perhaps, in the Colonies than at home because, I am pleased to
say, my own efforts to preach the gospel of physical culture in
Canada Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa had been well
received, and the physical deterioration already checked to some
degree. In India, however, a very high percentage of the people
have become so physically weak as to be quite unable to withstand
the unhealthy climate and pestilential conditions so often
associated, and here scientific physical education is even more
necessary to combat, prevent and conquer disease than at home.
For similar circumstances in India as at home are producing and
increasing disease especially just now when there is a great move¬
ment afoot to foster education and for the advancement of another
stage of civilisation with all its defects and drawbacks as well as
its admitted advantages.
The debilitating effect of civilised life and an imperfect or
one-sided educational system are the chief causes of this
F
The Author giving personal instruction in these methods of health culture to a squad of Australian firemen, at Adelaide, in
his great tour round the world to encourage the people to study and promote physical fitness and health.
India s reply. Notwithstanding its unhealthy climate, thousands of young Indians, like the
above, are now enthusiasts in these methods of developing the body by the methods
described here, as a result of the Author’s visit to that country.
61
 65

deterioration everywhere. We have forgotten the first principle

of education, the stern fact that you cannot develop in a weak,
stunted, unhealthy or diseased body a strong, stable and enduring
mind. For centuries mind has been cultivated and developed at
the expense of body, simply because mental work sfeemed to be
easier and more profitable than manual.

ARE WE AWAKE YET ?

It is questionable if even yet British statesmen and educa¬

tionalists realise the gravity of the situation. For even at the
time of writing, there has been introduced an Educational Bill
which is causing much cogitation of grey matter, and which, if
carried out as at present conceived, can only end in still greater
disaster, so that our last condition shall be really and truly worse
than the first. The same mistaken idea seems to exist and
persist that you can somehow develop in a weak and feeble body
a strong and supple mind, or that some scanty attention to the
physical requirements of the body will atone for the deficiency in
a child’s own physical reservoir of energy and vitality.
When it could not be hidden from the people themselves and
those in authority that the physical condition of the people had
been, to a great extent, sacrificed to a system of illogically
enforced mental education, and it was evident that some reform
was needed, one would naturally think that it was the physical
rather than the mental condition that claimed precedence in any
such scheme of reform, under all the circumstances.
What was my amazement, therefore, on reading even in the
light of all these inow admitted facts that what was called, or
mis-called, an Education Bill had been introduced into Parliament
which so completely overlooked the probability and danger of still
further physical deterioration as to seek to enforce mental pressure
on the children, while still treating their physical education and
training as of merely secondary consideration. This, too, at the
most critical moment in the whole history of the British Empire
when it so badly required and still requires physical re-construction.

TRUST THE SCHOOL DOCTOR.

The mere fact that the Bill was introduced as an almost

exclusively mental Educational Act shows conclusively that the
physical education of the children—who are to be the nation
 66

of the future—is not even yet treated as seriously as it ought

to be by those in authority. This whole question, indeed, is a
medical rather than an educational one, and, unless those in high
places realise that real"dan^er arises from any scheme of education
that does not"make~this question first and primarily a medical one,
and hand it over to medical rather than educational authorities,
it must and will end~in ^ignaOailure. To quote again from Sir
George Newman, “ it seems futile to attempt to reform education
apart from the physical condition of the child. Physical defect
was one of the chief causes of backwardness in schools; there was
an accumulation of defective children of the higher ages in the
lower standards.”
A doctor sees the child when it first crosses the threshold
of life. Only a doctor knows the dangers with which its little
life is encompassed even from the very moment of its concep¬
tion. If it survives all pre-natal and post-natal dangers until
it enters school, still further dangers threaten it. Only those
who know, cUi UCI stand and realise these dangers, as medical
men do, can protect the child from them. Any child, that,
without proper medical protection, is left at the mercy of
educational authorities, who themselves are insufficiently
educated in this direction at least, can never be expected to
bring forth the best that is in it.
The physical education and training of the children is a
matter of the utmost importance apart altogether from the
educational aspect. Indeed, to a great degree it is a thing
entirely apart from education as the word is used to-day. It
is not a matter to be dealt with in an Educational Bill at all,
where it receives but the scantiest notice and attention, but
which ought to have been itself the object of a special Act
of Parliament. In fact, such a vital matter both to the
individual and the State should come not so much within the
purview of a Minister of Education as of a Minister of
Health, and. if for this very reason alone the nation ought to
have the Ministry of Health, which, at the moment of writing
is. being advocated and which, by the time this book appears,
will, I hope, be firmly established.
The whole question ought to be seriously and separately
treated by a Ministry or Department of Health, with its own
u.y ©quipped medical service, and a really national and
scientific system of physical education and bodily upbuilding
Another fine Indian type. Indian who has been physically educated according to the Author s m:thods, showing back
and front and the splendid physical power that can be obtained even m that tropical country by such training.
 Photographer, E. E. H. Wiele, Bangalore.

Another fine study from India, James Macfarlane, of Bangalore, who is an ardent
disciple of these methods.
08
 69

should be organised and established for every school and

institute of learning, on lines such as I suggest in a later
chapter of this book.

HEALTH BEFORE EDUCATION.

Never has the vitality of the people reached a lower ebb than
to-day, and it will be still lower for years following the war.
Yet at such time it is seriously proposed to add a more severe
mental strain than ever upon children who must, of necessity,
be poorer in physique and vitality than even the children of
our pre-war period. Little wonder that doctors are crying out
for more clinics, hospitals, and similar institutions. It is not
these we want, but less and less necessity for them.
I am in thorough accord with the views enunciated by
Major-General Sir Bertrand Dawson, G.C.Y.O., who is no
dreamer of dreams but a physician with a sane and clearly
defined vision and perception, when he says that “ health is a
more fundamental need than education, and without doubt the
two together form the foundation stone of a State. The
changes that have long been germinating and which are soon
to see the light (he is referring in a Cavendish lecture to the
proposed Ministry of Health) are, as I conceive, the result of
the following causes : A growing appreciation of the fact by
the profession that much disease is preventable; a growing
sense that health is of supreme interest alike to the State and
the individual, and that the best means for preserving health
and curing disease should be available for (I do not say given
to) every citizen, irrespective of his position, and by right and
not by favourA
That is, I think, the right medical view, but Sir Bertrand
might be a little more explicit and state what he considers to
be “the best means” of so going. Personally, I contend that
this best method, and indeed, the only one, is by physical
education, bodily culture and development, along the lines I
have laid down, which would give every child a good physical
foundation for the increasing strenuousness of adult life.
The Hon. P. Russell says in his work on “ Strength and
Diet ” : “ Let the child by all means be taught its letters, its
numbers and its maps, but on no account let it leave school and
grow up to manhood or womanhood without an adequate and
concise course of instruction on the means by which its own
 70

strength, and value, and the life and value of its children, rnay
best be maintained. The efficiency of the physical constitution,
the rearing of the children hardy, robust, unaffected, humane^
really means the better ability to attain every, sort of learning.”
But to force mental education on a weak or diseased body is like
offering a juicy beefsteak to a man without teeth or giving strong
wine to a delicate child. Teachers themselves know that physical
incapacity is almost invariably the real cause of mental inefficiency,
and that children improve mentally in proportion as they improve
physically.

THE RECRUIT OF THE NATION.

The child is the recruit of the nation. It is the unit of the

whole national army, whether of defence or offence, the army of
workers as well as the army that fights. Why not, then, treat
the child from the very beginning at least as well as we do the
adult recruit for military purposes. No man is permitted to
join or remain in the army unless he is medically fit. Why should
a child not first be certified fit before it enters the greatest army
of all—the army of the people that determines the fate of a nation.
A nation must finally and unalterably stand by the physique of
its individual constituents, and the higher the individual physical
type the higher will be the mental and moral standard.
Low as was the physical standard of the people at the
beginning of the world’s greatest struggle, lower as it is to-day
than then, it must be still lower in the future when we remember
the awful strain through which everyone, civilian and soldier
alike, will have passed. The medical opinions which I have quoted
here, it must be remembered, are based mainly on pre-war condi¬
tions and statistics, or on figures gathered during the earlier stages
of the war. If such an Education Bill as that under consideration
was destined to put so crushing a burden on those physically unfit
children born before and during the war, how are we to expect it
to be shouldered by the still more physically unfit children who will
come after the war, and born of parents who themselves cannot
possibly have escaped physically unscathed or unscarred through
such a destructive and testing world struggle.
these children will need infinitely more vigilance and care
physically than even their predecessors, and educational authorities
who do not realise this will be guilty of criminal negligence and
culpable want of foresight. The public voice must penetrate to
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71
 72

the inmost chambers of State, and compel recognition, of the vital

fact that these children must be given and ensure'dla sound physical
foundation before having their little brains crammed with a mass
of indigestible and unassimilable knowledge.

THE AFTERMATH OF WAR.

Scarcely a home in England will remain that has not felt the
sting of war just as keenly as if those at home had been actually
in the trenches. Thousands and thousands of soldiers can never
forget the horrors they have endured or the wounds from which
they have suffered. During the war, neurasthenia and nervous
disorders have raged to a degree that have never been equalled
before. Fathers, mothers, sisters, and daughters have lost their
nearest and dearest, and are themselves prostrated with grief and
nervous shock. Many have lost friends, businesses, homes, and
even the means of subsistence.
Thousands, perhaps millions, who have been patriotically
engaged on war work, and who have been, as it were, supported
for the time being by a “ scaffolding ” of their own loyal enthusiasm,
will find, when this patriotic “ scaffolding 55 has been removed, that
they are the victims of a thousand and one ailments that were
overlooked whilst busily engaged. There will be a certain reaction
in the case of many who have been overworked during the war
pressure, and neurasthenia and other nervous disorders will
undoubtedly be more prevalent than ever for a considerable period
yet. *
THE PEOPLE OF THE FUTURE.
Yet these are the people to whom we must look for the children
of the future. What can we expect of the little ones if they are
not more than ever cared for instead of adding further burdens to
them by a still severer mental strain ?
We have no figures to go by as to the exact influence of such
a terrible war upon health, but we know that neurasthenia was
raging in our midst even before the war, due to modern civilisation,
education, and lack of organic or mental and physical balance.
We may estimate, therefore, somewhat approximately what will
be the nervous condition of the children of the next generation.
They can scarcely be otherwise than nervous weaklings, whose
bodies will require the most patient nurture and care if their
little minds are not to be tortured and strained even to the verge
of mental breakdown, and their bodies enfeebled for the ready
73
 74

reception of disease. Higher types cannot be evolved from such

material unless we go into the whole subject of physical degenera¬
tion and regeneration seriously and in the most thorough and the
most scientific manner.
&aeh child is to the nation just what the cell is to the body,
the unit of its life AVe must evolve better children before we can
evolve better men and women, and that can only be done by restoring
physical and constitutional health in the really scientific way I
describe in this book, which will literally give them better, healthier,
stronger and more disease-resistant bodies. Into such a body it
will be easy to project all the mental additions and adornments
that are necessary to complete what is called its education, and it
will be equally difficult for such a body to become receptive to
disease.

SOUND MINDS IN SOUND BODIES.

In face of this crisis, the question then arises, How is it

possible for us to reconstruct a nation of better and fitter men and
women from the children who have come or will come to us in
post-war days, handicapped, as they must be, from birth by their
war-affected parentage ? How are we to have a mental plan and
system of education that will not only enable even a child born
physically weak or sickly to bring forth its best and choicest mental
fruit, but will help it to grow up to adolescence and adulthood of
robust constitution and free from disease?
For this should be the purpose and end of all education—the
attainment of the ancient and classical ideal of a mind and body
in perfect health and harmony. Only by placing the supreme
power of deciding the child’s physical capacity to absorb and
assimilate learning in the hands of a medical profession responsible
directly and only to the State, generously paid for its services, and
having with it the intelligent and willing support of the public,
can we have such a system.
All brain work, as medical men know, is a great consumer of
vitalitv, and no child should be allowed bv the school medical
officer to take up mental work beyond its physical capacity, and
without medical permission. Indeed, I would go even further,
and would attach the same condition to every student seeking to
pursue studies of a very exacting nature, and especially to students
wishing to enter the learned professions. The medical officer of
any University, college or school, too, should also have the power
The boy. What will he become ? Such a fine specimen of physical manhood
This boy has begun early to tram as this, instead of a physical degenerate
his body in the way it should grow, of no value, and possibly a burden to the
and already bids fair to become— country. The photo is of Mr. A. Dants,
of London.
t ;>
 76

not only to order a scholar to abstain from continuation mental

training as proposed by this immature Education Bill, and to have
continuous physical training instead up till 18 years of age if and
when desirable.
Personally, I believe that even the mental training already
given will have to be most carefully and strictly regulated, at
least for the next generation, in our present post-war and seriously
depleted state of health and physique, and, if the addition of extra
mental training be added, it can, I am afraid, only help to fill
hospitals, asylums and infirmaries to overflowing in the near future
through mental as well as physical breakdown.

CHILD’S FIRST DUTY TO CROW STRONG.

Any system of mis-called education which provides overfed

minds and starved and stunted bodies must finally end in both
physical and mental decay. The first duty of the child is to grow
and grow stronger, and its natural processes of physical growth
anal development must be encouraged and promoted in every way.
After that a mental super-structure can easily be erected. In
other words, we must secure for each and every child a sound
physical basis by really scientific physical education and training.
By that I mean in a nutshell:—
(1) Each child must be considered according to its age, sex,
and individual needs before any mental strain is placed
upon it. Its physical education and condition must
determine its mental education.
(2) The child must, from, its first introduction to school, be
kept under the observation and direction of the school
medical officer, so that no child shall be coerced into
mental efforts that are prejudicial to its basic physical
establishment of health, and it must be medically re¬
examined periodically.

MORE CHILDREN AND BETTER.

Before, however, we can either physically or mentally educate

the children, we must have the children to educate. As things
are, much must be done to encourage child-birth and foster child-
life, or we shall soon be without the children to educate. Out of
every 1,000,000 babies registered, declares The Observer, 100,000
 78

are stillborn, another 100,000 die before they are a year old,
and yet another 100,000 before they are fifteen. One-third of the
fewer babies being born die before fifteen. Is comment or criticism
necessary in the light of these figures ?
Further, as the leader writer of that prominent organ of public
opinion points out, “ of the rest many grow up stunted, defective
and unfit.” If we can only save and improve the lives of these
survivals by careful and scientific physical education and training,
as I know from experience we can, that would be in itself a great
work and worthy of our mightiest endeavour. But we need both
a higher birth-rate and a higher survival rate.
A medical census of the children of this country would horrify
the nation. In America, where the children are even more care¬
fully watched over from birth than in England, such a census
revealed the most alarming facts. There are about 20,000,000
pupils in the schools of the United States to-day. It is estimated
that 250,000 of these have organic heart disease, a million at least
are tubercular, another million have defective hearing, five million
suffer from bad sight, six million from tonsils, adenoids, or enlarged
glands, while ten million need a visit to the dentist.
If this be so in the United States, we may safely assume that
the children in the schools of England to-day are in no better
condition. Indeed, from medical reports which I myself have seen
from time to time the condition of the school children in England
are much worse. These children have existed and survived, but
their chances of life and health have been jeopardised and almost
destroyed by neglect in infancy.
To quote from the “ Daily Mirror,” “ those who are born should
have the best chance of strength and health. But what is the
use of trying to eliminate the mentioned mass, ever-increasing,
of physical unfitness if we continue adding to it? Wlnrt is the
good of asking the martyred mother of a huge family in a slum to
remedy the sickliness of that family by making it a bigger familv
still? The question has only to be asked for the absurdity of
this cruel mania to be revealed to all humane people. We have
our ‘ surplus ’ population already—all unfit. Let us remedy its
unfitness.” If we do this and prevent disease in the future, as we
undoubtedly can, we will have a people robust and free from disease,
and I claim and contend that it is to-day within the power of man
now to reach the great ideal of a diseaseless world and a disease-
immune people only by the methods of physical reconstruction
hereafter described.
A youthful, and well-formed Fijian, whcso body has been developed in grace*
strength and suppleness by these methods.
79
/
 81

CHAPTER III.

“ My World-Startling Claim ”—A Diseaseless

World !

If a man stood on the steps of St. Paul’s and proclaimed it

possible to prevent disease—even to eradicate it altogether, and
give us a diseaseless world—his reception, I know, would be
undoubtedly chilling. If he said further that it was possible to
replace in a living body a weak or diseased limb with a new and
real flesh and blood article, or, what is more remarkable, replace
a new and better stomach in place of an old and diseased one, or
even to completely rebuild a new and better body out of a feeble
and diseased one, most people would smile at him in pity and
contempt. In days gone by, he would probably have been crucified,
burned at the stake or stoned to death. For, such talk smacks
of magic or witchcraft.
Yet all this I say is possible, and possible by easy and
accessible methods in consonance with natural physical activities
and the ever-changing processes going on unceasingly within the
bodv itself, as I will show and, I think, prove conclusively to the
reader’s satisfaction.

MAKING A DISEASE-PROOF BODY.

At all times, the man who challenges tradition is liable to be

suspected of a personal object in attacking heavily entrenched
interests, and has, consequently, received more buffets than rewards.
The history of every great invention or discovery has been a history
of one long-continued and persistent fight against popular opinion
or professional jealousy, usuallv with tardy and belated honour to
the inventor or discoverer, that too often, alas, only came after
death. Men like Harvey, Jenner, and Pasteur—Pasteur himself
who revolutionised medical science was not even a member of the
medical profession—were persons not particularly acceptable for
a time to the majority of the medical profession, upon whose
 82

traditional corns they trod, until their theories and discoveries were
demonstrated and proved in actual practice beyond the shadow
of doubt.
So when I boldly put forth the claim that health can be assured
to all, and disease eliminated from the human race, I do not, for
a single instant, expect so startling a claim to go forth unchallenged,
nor do I expect to escape censure, criticism, and even ridicule.
There are many searchers after truth, and it is too much to expect
that they should be in agreement, especially on a subject which in
the past has been so largely Empiric as the prevention or cure of
disease and the attainment and maintenance of perfect health.
I hope, however, before the conclusion of this book, to prove
beyond the shadow of a doubt that movement is the law of life,
that physical movement carried out in a perfectly balanced and
scientific way, is essential for the healthy life and working capacity
of every cell of the body, that physical movement alone and on
scientific lines will make and keep each and every cell of the body
so strongly resistant as to be immune from disease or the weakness
that makes it liable to disease, that health is proportionate to and
determined by the nature and effect of such physical movements,
selected, applied and administered as I describe, that, in short,
what I call scientific physical movement means health, and that it
is because of imperfect or unscientifically ordered movement and,
consequently, lack of general bodily balance within, that disease
reveals itself in man.

IMPORTANCE OF HEALTH KNOWLEDGE.

I hope to prove conclusively that natural physical movements,

so selected and administered, are Dr. Nature's sovereign remedy
and preventive for all disease, and I hope to show with mathematical
exactitude why this must be so, and also to fully establish the truth
of my tremendous claim, viz., that such physical movement, adapted
to suit our present-day circumstances and environment, can not only
prevent and cure disease, but entirely eliminate it in time from
the species and give us a world without disease.
To achieve this radically, we must, as I have said, begin with the
child—the scientific physical education and physical reconstruc¬
tion, under medical direction and supervision, of the young.
How much, may I ask, does the average man of to-day—even
the man of more than average education—know of his own body,
its structure and constitution, and the nature of those wonderful
 83

operations that constitute what I may call the mechanics of life

and living. He puts food in his mouth and knows little or nothing
of how it is transmuted into flesh, blood, bone, nail, hair, sinews
and nerve because never taught. How can such a man preserve his
body in health against the many enemies ever ready to attack it ?

NECESSITY OF PHYSICAL M OVE M E NT.

Even the most ancient writers on philosophy and medicine
recognised and admitted the value—the necessity, indeed—of
physical movement of some kind, in securing bodily, mental, moral
and spiritual well-being, although they could not explain or
demonstrate the exact and true causes of its power and influence
over weakness and disease, and even indeed, over what Shakespeare
clearly regarded as incurable, “ a mind diseased.” Centuries on
centuries ago, Pliny wrote :—“ It is wonderful how much the mind
is enlivened by the motion of the body;” and Democritus declared
that “ the force of the understanding increased with the health of
the body, yet when the body labours under disease, the mind is
incapacitated for thinking.” “ It is exercise alone,” said Cicero,
“ that supports the spirits and keeps the mind in vigour.”
Since then, all schools of medical, scientific and educational
thought have more and more recognised the necessity and value of
rational and natural physical movement in a general way, though
they could not explain the how and the why of it. This is just
what I propose to do in this book and to do for the first time.
Dr. Maudslev, in a lecture before the British Medical Associa¬
tion in 1906 truly said : “ In the work of fortifying the body to
resist the encroachments of disease, the most simple means are the
best, and, it is in the use of simple means that great physicians
especially differ from others. Pure air, clean and proper food,
regular and adapted exercise, these sum up the measures prescribed
as proper to give it inward strength. and to keev it in a sound and
supple activity,” and also, I mav add, to p;ive it mental and moral
stability and strength. Dr. M’Gregor Robertson put the case even
stronger when he declared that “ all agree that physical exercise
has a potent influence for good, is indeed, as necessary as food, and
air for the body, both in health and diseased

SCIENCE OF PHYSICAL MOVEMENT.

While this is now almost universally admitted as true, these
remarks only apply in a general and indefinite way to any kind of
 84

exercise no matter how carelessly or indifferently carried out. It

is my object, however, to show there is an actual and exact science
of physical movement and this scientific method of applying physical
movement is absolutely essential in modern conditions of life to the
securing and keeping of health, and for the conquest, prevention
and eradication of disease, especially as civilisation and education
increasingly diminish the necessity for physical movement in every¬
day life.
The experience that I have had personally in seeing the
miracles that can be and have been achieved by the really scientific
selection and application of natural physical movements to a weak,
ailing, deformed or diseased body, has convinced me of the influence
of natural and simple physical movements, when scientifically
employed and carried out, upon function, and even in changing the
constitution and character of an organ. The results of this
experience and observation I am embodying in this book, because
I firmly believe that they will lead to a revolution in the prevention,,
treatment and cure of disease.
Only because I honestly believe my own experience in this
subject to be unique and of the utmost value of suffering humanity,
do I venture to intrude the following personal reference as first¬
hand, definite and credible evidence to help in the establishment
of the case I am presenting in this book, and which I am anxious
to support by every legitimate evidence and proof at my command.

NO HEALTH WITHOUT STRENGTH.

Practically my whole life-time, as most people know, has been

devoted to the study of this subject, from that moment when, as a
boy of delicate constitution, with narrow cramped chest and a
inborn consumptive tendency, I determined to work out my own
physical salvation by building up a body so perfect in every part
that, like those of the splendid and ancient heroes whose forms
in the early ages were as God intended the human body should be,
and who became, therefore, the models of the world’s greatest
sculptors, it would be so thoroughly and symmetrically developed
and balanced in every part and so innately strong as to absolutely
defy, resist and conquer disease. For, I contend that only
through such physical or, rather constitutional strength can come
both physical health and moral courage, because a body can never
be made physically strona if it is organically or functionally
disordered or ill-regulated, while courage, self-control and other
A fine photographic study of the disease-resisting body built up by the absolutely
scientific methods recommended by the Author.
85
Another enthusiastic follower of these methods.
8»
 87

moral attributes are mostly but the expression and evidence of this
conscious physical health and strength of constitution.
A weakly man may have a momentary and frenzied strength
as in delirium, a coward may conjure up a false and fleeting
courage in a situation that endangers himself, but the courage
that endures is the true courage, the courage that springs only
from the consciousness of a heart organically sound, nerves of steel,
firm muscles, a deep, broad chest, and a healthy functioned body
in every part.
It was the passion of my own boyhood to become healthy,
strong and well developed, and the world knows to-day how well
I succeeded in that laudable endeavour. Laudable I say advisedly,
for I believe that physical education and bodily culture must teach
everyone to respect the body as a Divine gift, to guard it with the
most zealous care through life, and to make it the foundation and
support of a sound mental and moral structure.

WORLD CAMPAIGN AGAINST DISEASE.

Since then my chief, almost my sole enthusiasm, has been to

achieve similar or approximate results in others who were delicate,
diseased, or weak, to give to many thousands the knowledge and
experience I had personally acquired, and in this I am glad to say
that I have been and continue to be equally successful, often, indeed,
to the surprise and amazement of the many medical men who have
failed so far to discover or learn how to make and keep the human
body so perfectly balanced in strength that it will be able to
successfully defy and overcome disease.
I am now convinced, as the result of my long and varied
experience, a life-time of study and much experimentation, that
disease can be totally eliminated from the human race, when once
the States cf the civilised world, the doctors, the educationalists,
the sociologists, the clergymen, the teachers, and the parents,
jointly responsible for the upbringing of the youth of the nation,
learn the wonderful therapeutic value of natural and balanced
physical movements when harnessed by Science in the manner I am
advocating in this book.
The claim that I now advance, despite our enormous and
largely avoidable sacrifice of child and parent life, the increasing
death roll annually through what I contend is avoidable and
preventable disease, may seem a startling claim for any man to
make. When the principles I have laid down, however, in the
previous chapter are recognised in the education and upbringing
of the young, and children are educated as thoroughly and as
scientifically in a physical sense as they are mentally to-day, under
competent and qualified medical supervision, we can and will
attain to the ideal of a diseaseless world, so far at least as gross
and deadly disease is concerned. To hasten this it is, as I have
said, a prime essential of all elementary education to have every
child taught from an early age to know and understand its own
body, with all its myriad and marvellous activities, as well as they
are at present taught, say, to know and employ the letters of the
alphabet or the first principles of arithmetic, for self-knowledge
is the beginning of all educational wisdom.

PROCESS OF CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION.

This, then, is the first step in the great work of reconstruction

that lies before those responsible for the future of the nation, and,
indeed, of the people of the civilised world, for disease knows no
frontiers. It is a system of Higher Eugenics that will lead us
inevitably to a healthier, more vigorous and more beautiful
humanity, help us to breed better men and women without the
necessity of statutory measures that insult human intelligence and
infringe the liberty of the individual, for it will gradually eliminate
the weak, the unfit and the diseased by methods more scientific
and beneficent than putting them to death, making them, on the
other hand, even in the present generation, and still more in the
next, men and women perfect and sound in every physical sense.
It is, too, the Higher Ethics, for I am convinced that health and
strength foster and ensure morality and virtue, as health and
strength cannot long live and flourish in the same human body as
immorality and vice.
It is, I believe, too, the real and true gospel of efficiency, for
phvsical fitness is the essential prelude to mental efficiency. It
will help us to breed a Spartan race without the cruelties of the
Spartan system, or without reversion to the savage principle of
killing off the weak, for there will be no weak or diseased left to
be killed off until the hour of their natural physical dissolution.
Health and physical strength are the heritage and birth-right
of all. That birth-right, of which civilisation has bereft us, we
can and must reclaim bv a rational return to the great law of life,
which is the Law of Movement, a law as exact, as true and as
immutable as the Law of Gravitation itself.
 The Author at 52.
A convincing photographic study of the Author as he appears to-day, showing how by
these methods men can, as he has done, retain their fitness until late in life, provided
the physical foundation has been well and truly laid, and the muscular system—which is
the corner-stone of the body—has been developed everywhere in harmony and balance.
Beautiful Child-Study of one of the living Jewels which the State is asked to Treasure an
Value as its Most Precious Asset, and upon the Health, Fitness and Happiness of w ic
the Future of the whole World Depends.
 91

WHAT IS DISEASE ?

Here, surely is a prospect that must especially appeal to every

medical man, for in the medical profession, with very little
specialised study and training, we have the means to hand instantly
to begin this great work of physical reconstruction, a work that
must commence at once and continue long after the embers of strife
have ceased to smoulder. In the years to come it will be the duty
and pleasure of medical men not so much to cure disease as to
prevent it altogether—to act upon the principle of obsta principiis,
or “the resistance of the beginnings,” so that we shall at least
approximate to the ideal world without disease, in which, indeed,
our medical men will be rewarded for its absence, and held to some
degree responsible for its presence, just as we are told that the wise
men of the East to-day only pay the doctor’s fee so long as they,
remain untainted by disease.
This is a truly amazing conception—with almost illimitable
possibilities—and is one opening out wide fields for research and
study on the part of the medical profession. The medical pro¬
fession to-day recognises, with very few exceptions, that disease
is due to weakness and lack of balance somewhere in the body
itself, and a consequent disturbance of organic, or rather cellular,
equilibrium, chiefly through the environment of modern civilised
life. Where there is destruction of tissue, this disturbance of
balance is responsible for what we call organic disease, and where
there is no actual injury to or destruction of the tissue-fabric of
the body, it leads to functional disease and derangement.
If, then, as I am here attempting to prove, not merely by
argument and medical evidence, but by actual proof and demon¬
stration in the living human body itself, both in my own case and in
the case of thousands of others, that harmony and perfect balance
can again be restored, and restored only bv what I call scientific
physical movement, surely doctors can now learn how not only to
combat and prevent disease and all suffering, but practically to
eliminate it altogether, if only, as a beginning, in its grosser and
more deadly forms.
To summarise brieflv, the substance of mv world-startling
claim is that we can attain the ideal of a diseaseless world by the
methods I advocate, and that where and when necessary it is possible
to reconstruct the body physical in all or any of its parts as the
necessities of the case demand by scientific and balanced physical
movement from childhood, and the lack of which movement, through
the progress of civilisation and its resultant evils inborn through
generations, has hitherto doomed the world to physical degeneration
and disease. To achieve all this successfully, however, the support
of the State is essential, and the children must be regarded as the
greatest asset of a people.
 93

CHAPTER IV.

The State and the Chilld.

“ Of all events here on this earth,” declares Arthur Brisbane,

foremost of American publicists, “ the greatest is the birth of a
baby.”
That little bundle of plump pink flesh holds the world in its
hands. It epitomises history, for all history began with the birth
of a child. It contains within its little self the secret of life. It
is the unsolved riddle of the world, the problem of yesterday, to-day
and the unknown and unknowable future. Who guides the
children steers the nation. Will the State take the helm?
Never in the history of the world was it so necessary for the
State to answer in the affirmative as at present, if it is to profit
by the lessons of the war, and avoid the pitfalls of weakness and
disease that have so nearly ensnared us in the recent past.

REDEEMERS OF HUMANITY.

A Child born in a manger came into the world to redeem

humanity. His birth we celebrate even to-day after the lapse of
nearly 2,000 years, and will celebrate thousands of years hence.
His sacrifice and death the nations still mourn, and will continue
to mourn until the last dav.
Humbler children are born every day and die daily. Except
for a dry record of their births and deaths, and a brief period of
parental rejoicing and mourning, their coming and their going
are passed unnoticed by the State and the nation. Yet each child
born to-day is a priceless jewel to the nation, an asset to the State,
to some extent, indeed, a redeemer of lost humanity. Every year
the State and nation should rejoice over its harvest of children and
mourn for the dead, should have its national service of thanks¬
giving for the one and of lamentation and mourning for the other.
The State has no wealth like its children. Without them,
its riches are but the barren gold of Midas. Yet millions of little
 94

ones die annually, and die, too, often avoidable and preventable
deaths. The State must look to these living jewels that are its
real wealth and glory.
The fiery furnace of a grim and awful war, through which
we have passed, has consumed the very flower of the nation's
manhood. It is scarcely too much to say that little but the embers
remain. For the gallant dead we have held memorial services in
our churches and cathedrals at which the whole nation has mourned.
Thanksgiving services have been held for victory, and for the
victors who still remain with us. Would it not be well if the State
and the Churches held similar services of mourning and thanks¬
giving annually for the children who are added to the nation and
for those who are taken away, if only as a perpetual reminder of
our duty to the little ones left with us or as yet unborn, and to
whom the State must look for its future prosperity and safety.

HOLDING HUIV1AN LIFE TOO CHEAP.

To-day, human life is the most precious thing in the world.

In the past, we have held it too cheaply. For that we have paid
a tragic and heavy price. Our mistake was, perhaps, excusable,
because, as the author of “ The Sowers 55 has neatly put it, “ in
crowded cities an excess of human life seems to vouch for the
continuity of the race, where, in a teeming population, one life
more or less seems of little value.”
War, however, which has increased the price of everything, has
also given human life a new and added value. The Empire and
the State must look to the cradles of the people. For the cradle,
to paraphrase Gray’s lines, may well hold some mute, inglorious
Milton, some village Hampden, or some dauntless Cromwell, to
whom the State and the nation may yet look with pride and
gratitude. Each child should, indeed, be to the State even more
precious than an only child in the eyes of its mother, and watched
over with the same zealous care as the child of a king. The child
of peasant or artizan is not less to be mourned if lost to its country
than the child of Royal birth, and the acceptance of that truth by
the State will save millions of incalculably valuable lives annually,
and nip revolution in the bud.
A new era is about to begin. Old shibboleths, old creeds, old
ideas will have to be ruthlessly destroyed; new methods and new
machinery of life must take their place. The fetish of personal
 t ..JyjgaS
%
llg i

Typical children of to-day, whose poor physique, inborn from a poor parent stock, displays lack of
that body-culture which has left them with the weakness and deficiency in vital resisting power
to disease which, if not corrected and overcome by scientific methods of physical education
such as are described in this book, must assuredly handicap them in later life, and leave them
ever open to serious disease.
95
K
 96

liberty to the verge of license must be destroyed if we are to set our

compass true and steer the Ship of State safely through the rocks
and shallows of seas that even as yet are comparatively uncharted
and unknown. Each of us must recognise, or be made to recognise,
the stern fact that “ no man liveth unto himself,” and that, at least,
if he be not his brother’s keeper, he must not cause, menace or even
endanger another’s life. The State and the nation must hitch its
wagon to a star, if the people are to be saved even from themselves.
In the vital matter of public health, as the Daily Mail has
well said, “ the State must now step in, and this will mean
interference with our vaunted liberty. We cannot have public
services without public inquisitions. Our old personal liberty was
the grand recruiting sergeant of our C3 civilian army. Our new
creed must be that everyone, from birth, is a health soldier of the
State.”

PHYSICAL EDUCATION COMPULSORY,

Even to-day, with all our freedom, we do not allow a sufferer

from small-pox to enjoy the same liberty as a normal person free
from contagious or infectious disease. The State intervenes. It
must intervene more and more in a thousand ways in the life of the
individual, if the nation is to be saved from other and yet graver
dangers. The Government must not permit any person to neglect
or abuse his or her own body, either through ignorance or other
cause, to become physically unfit or diseased, and so more liable to
spread disease, or, to become reduced in efficiency and economic
value through weakness or illness, where educational and preventive
measures can prevail. To do so, is to exhibit a tolerance that is
criminal towards the whole body public. The State must, indeed,
display a new and an intelligent interest in its children especially,
if we are to prevent all these things.
Just as mental education, once opposed as an infringement of
the liberty of the subject, has been made legal and necessary in the
interests of the commonweal, so the State must make physical and
hygienic education compulsory, whatever personal or powerful
interests may be opposed to it, both for the well-being of the
individual and of the people generally. It must, at least, watch
over the upbringing of its children as zealously as the wise farmer
tends to the birth and rearing of his calves or the breeding of his
horses.
It is, surelv, one of the greatest paradoxes of civilisation to
Contrast these photographs, showing back and side view of a boy who has been physically
educated as described in this book. Here we have a boy with his body so fully and
perfectly developed in balanced strength that it may be said to be impregnable to disease
either now or in later life.
97
 98

find laws, acts, regulations and restrictions innumerable for the

breeding and health preservation of horses and cattle and domestic
animals generally, for their protection from ill-treatment and even
from unhealthy conditions of existence, and for the propagation
and preservation of their species, whilst the breeding and
bringing-up of the children upon whom the whole future of a
country depends, too often receives but little State attention, and
such attention certainly not of a scientific or comprehensive
character.

THE BORDERLAND OF DISEASE.

True, much has already been done to improve upon the evil
conditions existent only half a century ago, but we must hasten
our forward progress both from a material and from a moral point
of view. Morality, efficiency and even religion are too closely
inter-related with physical fitness and bodily health, for the latter
to be made secondary to any other educational development. I
do not say that a healthy and scientifically developed body will
necessarily make every man virtuous, efficient, or religious, but I
do contend that it is easier and more natural for such a man to
be or become so than it is for the physically weak, the degenerate,
and those who stand always on the borderland of Disease, even if
they have not actually crossed its frontiers.
The immoral, the vicious, the criminal and the inefficient are
rarely to be found among the physical culturists, athletes, or any
of those who take a pride in the physical body, who treat it with
the respect to which it is entitled, and who have made it healthy
and strong by careful and conscientious effort, because health will
refuse to exist and remain long in a body debased by lack of that
all-round natural physical movement which the Creator made a
condition of healthy life.
It is now established and admitted that physical degeneracy
and disease are prolific causes of pauperism and crime. These
facts are noted and admitted chiefly because pauperism and crime
are costly to any country. Why not, then, strike at these two
costly burdens by removing the causes! That this can be done is
easy to establish.
The children of the rich and the comfortable middle classes
are, or have been, we know, individually and child for child, better
A girl similarly developed by these methods, showing that strength to combat disease
need not antagonise physical beauty or interfere with symmetry and grace of contour.
99
 100

off in health and strength than the poorer working classes and the
very poor, and are more rarely found swelling the criminal classes.
Why? Is it not because the former are better physically equipped
and safeguarded against disease from birth and even before?
Their parents are, as a rule, better educated, better fed, better
housed, and usually come themselves of a stock that was similarly
circumstanced. Their homes are situated in the healthier
localities; they are more sanitary and hygienic in every way; usually
they have their finely equipped bath-rooms and play-rooms for the
little ones; and the family doctor, acquainted with the medical
history of the children and their parents, is periodically in
attendance and keeps them under pretty constant observation.

REAL SOCIAL REFORM.

As they grow up, they go to schools where physical education

of some sort is provided for them daily. Most of such schools
and colleges, too, have their sports, games, and pastimes under
the most vigilant supervision. The children of the rich, too, have
their ponies or their bicycles to ride, their tennis-courts, and every¬
thing conducive to healthy physical growth. Is it to be wondered
at, then, that, as at present constituted, it is only the crust of
Society that can bear minute inspection and examination, while
it covers much that is unappetising and revolting as we reach the
bottom of the dish?
Fortunately, we are already making progress, and it was with
the utmost pleasure I read Lord Leverhulme’s statement that in the
North of England at least “ though the children of comparatively
well-to-do parents had advantages in health over middle-class
children, children of poor parents living in suburban areas were
now healthier than either.” Such a pronouncement in any local
district augurs what is possible if we take national and scientific
measures to save the children of the nation.
If such a system of scientific physical education and training,
as I advocate, were once in existence, there would be equal health
opportunities for all, and the provocative line of demarcation which
has so long existed between the health and happiness of the classes
and ill-health and unhappiness of the masses would cease for ever
to exist. Is not this a social reformation devoutly to be wished,
especially since the war has shown us how deep-seated is the
physical degeneracy and disease that consume the very vitals of a
nation.
A Family of Sandow’s Pupils.
♦
A bevy of beautiful womanhood, who have been physically educated and developed on the lines described by the author
in this book, with their instructor, one of the Author’s pupils and representatives “down under.”
 103

There is only one possible way to prevent disease and all its
ugly spawn, viz., by making the human body too strong in each and
every part to fall before them. To do that, the State must begin
with the child, or, perhaps even before its birth until a better era
dawns, for, as The Medical Officer, a paper representative of the
Public Health Service, says, “ welfare work must begin at the very
commencement of life, even before birth, if its full value is to be
realised."

THE POWER IN THE CRADLE.

As Society is at present constituted, the first duty of the State

will often be to save the child from its parents, or from the
ignorance of its parents, due to the defects in past and present
education, and to carefully consider the mother both before and
after the birth of her child. After all, as Dr. Marie C. Stopes,
author of “ Married Love," has well put in a trenchant article in
the Sunday Chronicle, “ the baby doesn’t come into existence the
veyv day it is born. It has already lived for some months
previously, dependent on its mother’s life and health, and to care
for the pregnant mother is also to care for the child:’ After
birth, children born of drunken, ignorant, vicious or criminal
parents, dragged up amid dirt and filth, underfed because money
is lacking or goes to the dramship, instead of to the butcher and
the baker, must be saved from such an environment. For, every
child, to adapt Napoleon’s famous saying, “ carries a baton in its
cradle." In any cradle may rest a potential dignitary of State,
of the Army, the Navy, of Commerce or Industry, or one of the
learned Professions. Let us rob no child, however lowly its origin,
however handicapped by its environment, at least of its birthright.
Even with the limited opportunities that are offered to-day,
we have many instances of what is possible when we see men who
have, by their sheer vigour of constitution and strength of
character, triumphed over circumstances of birth and environ¬
ment. A bov born in a London workhouse became a Privy
Councillor of State. Men from the bench, the mine, the workshop
and the humblest homes adorn our legislative chamber, and
command the respect of the nation. If such things are possible
under our present imperfect educational system what miracles are
not possible under such a State system of really scientific physical
and mental education and training as I have advocated now for
many years, and continue to advocate in these pages.
 104

INCREASING HAPPINESS AND EFFICIENCY.

To-day, only the exceptionally dowered in health and strength

from birth can hope to win through, because our present
educational methods and the unhygienic conditions of existence
among the poor tend to crush and destroy all self-respect and all
ambition even from childhood. The State must, in future, give
each and every child an equal opportunity of health and fitness for
the race of life, and believe me, the socialisation of health is a far
wiser and more attainable ideal than the socialisation of wealth.
The former would naturally, in time, bring the latter nearer, as
the handicaps of physical unfitness, weakness, degeneracy and
disease would then be removed, and from a health point of view
each and all would be better human products and a credit to the
State.
Further, with this better health and immunity from disease,
efficiency would increase, and with it the earning power of the
individual, so that the State itself as well as the individual would
benefit, for individual health and efficiency would naturally mean
national wealth.
If the State, in an hour of national danger can conscript the
individual adults of a nation to fight for national existence and
safety, why should it not, if need be, even conscript the individual
child, to take it and make it a more valuable citizen in times of
peaceful industry. Is a healthy and disease-free individual less
valuable to a nation in times of peace than in times of war ?
Millions have been spent on war, millions more have been
subscribed voluntarily to help to defeat the enemy. Is it too much
to ask the State and the nation to contribute as generously to defeat
a far greater enemy—Disease—and, in some degree, at least, to
make good the cruel losses brought about by the war ? So much
could be done in this way that the vision is a staggering one.
This, indeed, is a debt that every State owes to its children,
a debt that would be repaid with interest by the upbuilding of the
national human stock, healthy, happy, strong, and literally free
from disease or the degeneracy that precedes, is associated with,.
or follows disease. There can be no diseaseless world until we
prevent disease first in the children, and the State must lend its
powerful aid to the work.
The splendid type of youth the State might well look forward to possess when the children
are as scientifically educated from their schooldays as they are mentally to-day by methods
such as have given this youth his finely developed and healthy body.
105
Another fine specimen of the youth the nation could easily possess if these methods of scientific
physical culture were adopted and supported by the State as suggested here.
106
 107

The State must not grapple with the question in a sporadic,

unsystematic, or unorganised way. Its methods must be scientific,
systematic and organised. As the Chief Medical Officer of the
Board of Education said in his Annual Report for 1917
“ Measures for the promotion of healthy physical development
must be preventive as well as remedial. The purposes of the
School Medical Service are not the detection of defects, the
discovery of child patients, and the treatment of such sick children,
but the advancement of the health and physical development of the
whole child population of school age. What is required is not the
devotion of exclusive attention to the diseased child, much less the
sporadic and intermittent handling of sick children, but a broad,
carefully considered, and unified system of physical care and
development of all children of school age.’5
After giving statistics showing the various causes and forms
of physical defect and disease reported in London alone, he adds
the not surprising fact that the physical condition was also
reflected in a lowered mentality. “ These defective children were
often/’ says a medical correspondent of The Times, “two or more
years behind their normal school standard, showing how ph}Mcai
weakness reacts upon mental deficiency.”
Unfortunately, after carefully studying Sir George Newman’s
Report, in conjunction with the text of the 1918 Education Act,
I still fail to see that those in authority even yet understand the
true meaning of physical training carried out, as I mean it, by
natural methods on truly scientific lines. In fact, they seem to
think that by devoting a few minutes daily to Swedish exercises,
gymnastics, games, and dancing they will be able to build up a
child’s body strong enough to resist disease. If that were so, the
Premier would not have had to confess to 1,000,000 undesirables,
in the physical sense, in an hour of danger to the Empire, and we
would not have millions of unfit and diseased men, women and
children in our midst to-day. For these and similar methods have
now been on trial for a long time without success, and even with
injury to many children, and it must not be supposed that some
slight additions or alterations to them will suffice to meet the present
needs. Only by the introduction of absolutely new and scientific
methods such as are described in these pages can the body be built
up in such balanced strength as to make it impregnable to disease,
and, as Sir George admits, the way to prevent disease is “ by growing
strong and resistant bodies.”
 108

WANTED, A NEW IDEAL.

Parents, teachers, and doctors would all have a responsible and
authoritative position to fill in this upward movement towards a
people healthy, strong and practically disease immune, and until
a child had arrived at an age of responsibility itself, they should
be held jointly to account for the health of the young.
What the nation to-day stands most in need of is a new ideal.
The fetish of wealth and the idol of material prosperity have too
long been blindly worshipped. Children have been given false
ideals. The mind of the child must be given a new orientation,
and here the State can most certainly do much to encourage the
I IM—I I !■ — ■II—II1IB III !!!■■■ ■I1BII I II I ■ ■ ■ 11 T~l~ ■OMTIir IWMIlMm—a 'flUJ' mi I laa -^ODBrnu K WOKBOl

healthy ambition implanted in every child to have a body healthy,

beautiful and strong, such as Nature certainly meant it to possess
and maintain throughout life, but which modern ideas and habits
of life have, unfortunately, made so difficult of achievement. This
natural instinct has become perverted by civilisation, with its too
sordid worship of wealth, position and success.
The time has come when a nobler ideal must be instilled into
the youthful mind, and what better ideal could we have than that
of perfect manliness and womanliness in the highest and best sense.
To imbue youth with such an ideal, the State must spare no expense,
no labour, no sacrifice, and there are many ways in which the State
can encourage the cult of the sound mind in the sound body, that
glorious ideal upon which was built the greatest Empires of the
past, and upon which we can to-day erect an Empire greater even
than these.
Let us give the children rather the ideal of God-like men and
women, peerless in health and strength of body, and sane and sound
in mind. Our children have no such ideal implanted early in their
minds to-day, and national physical deterioration is the inevitable
result. I have written already of the influence exerted even in
the case of adults by the display of my own physical power, but
how much greater results would be achieved with the children, whose
minds naturally are more pliable and more receptive, if they learnt
by experience and example that men diligent in something more
vital to the State than even business were, indeed, thought worthy
to “ stand before kings.”

CREATING A HEALTH APPETITE.

Every school should be stimulated to play its part in the great
 Four splendid types of boy¬ If the State inculcated in the

hood schooled and developed as children the ideal of perfect

manliness as suggested here,

the Author would like to see
these are the types of boy who
all ! the children of the nation
would be the backbone of the
educated in a physical sense. country later.

109
 110

national work of physical reconstruction in this way. To begin

with, healthy rivalry should be encouraged among the scholars, and
prizes awarded to the children who took the best care of their
bodies and became the healthiest and best developed of their own
age. Inter-county and inter-city rivalries should also be
encouraged, to still further create enthusiasm among the children,
4 and once every year or so a great national fete or festival could be
held in London, under Loyal patronage, at which the children of
the British Isles from all parts of the country would compete, with
their relatives and friends to admire and encourage them.
A healthy hunger for physical well-being would thus be
fostered, and the mind of the whole nation diverted into a channel
that would lead to the new and better world which we all, like the
Premier, so ardently desire, and which must come if the nation is
not to sink into a fatal lethargy and apathy with regard to its
most vital problem.
The days when it was the ambition of every Briton to wield
bow and arrow must find a parallel in a nation to-day steering
unitedly to this goal of physical fitness and perfect health. This
is the real method of building up a nation that will ever be able to
defend itself against its most deadly enemies. This is the way to
give us a people healthy and disease-free, a nation of men and
women in which every man will be a god and every woman a queen.
We spend thousands upon thousands in the erection of beautiful
buildings and in the adornment of our cities with beautiful statues.
Surely it would be a work with a far greater reward for the State
to give us a race of men and women with beautifully developed
and healthy bodies, who would themselves be “ living statues ”
moulded on lines which the greatest artists and sculptors would
be proud to copy

THE REAL NOBILITY OF HEALTH.

An entirely new Order with dignities and titles was formed to

do honours to those whose services, outside the fighting line, helped
our brave soldiers and sailors to win the war. If a somewhat
similar Order were established, with titles and dignities of its own,
in times of peace for those who made and kept themselves in the
most perfect physical condition, think how far-reaching would be
its influence in helping in the great work of national reconstruction.
It would give the children the very ideal the nation so badly needs
now, and every child would look up with admiration to those who
The real “living statues” which sculptors might well use as models, moulded in human flesh
and blood by scientific physical movement. Such men and women may well constitute a real
nobility of health, and be the real “ blue blood ” of the nation.
ill I
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 113

won such honours. The heroes of the youth of the nation would
no longer be the famous cricketers, goalkeepers or jockeys, or the
men and women who had amassed fortunes or fame in various lines
of life, but the men and women whose superb physique and health
had won for them such State recognition and honour.
Ibis new nobility would constitute the real nobility of the
nation, for in these men and women would course the “ blue blood ”
of a nobility and aristocracy untainted by physical blemish or
disease. The future of the race would then be in good hands, and
men and women would no longer be bought or sold in marriage as
they too often are to-day, but health and physical fitness for
marriage and the propagation of healthy children would be the
only1 “ Open Sesame ” to the portals of Hymen.
As I have already pointed out, however, we cannot, of course,
consider the child without also taking into consideration at least
until the new generation and type of educated mothers have
arrived, the mothers to whom we must look, in the first place for
the birth, maintenance and protection of the children. The
mother who gives the nation healthy and sturdy children is as
valuable to a country as the general who wins great battles with
the aid of their muscles and sinews. There is, after all, even
greater honour in saving life than in taking it, so why should not
the fertile and fruitful mother be honoured for piloting her many
young through the dangers and trials of infancy? A home, again,
may be a place of safety or a danger zone according to the manner
in which it is looked after and its hygiene studied. Why not
rewards for the cleanest and, healthiest homes in every town and
village throughout the land, with standards for the rich, the middle
class and the poor.
To encourage hygiene, competitions should be held, open to
all, and the rewards to be largely determined by surprise visits to
the homes of the competitors, from the judges. Why not honours
also for the healthiest and physically best workers, for healthy
parents and for healthy school children. Why should a county
not be honoured for the lowness of its death-rate and the highness
of its birth-rate as well as for the bravery of its soldiers ?
If we did all this and more, as I suggest, we would build up a
new aristocracy, “ not,” as Ibsen has said, “ of birth or of the purse
or even of intellect, an aristocracy of character, will and mind,
and, I might add, an aristocracy of physique and freedom from
disease.
 114

HEALTHY BODIES IN HEALTHY HOMES.

In the children the State to-day has its greatest treasure,

after the awful devastation of war. No human life is too precious
to be lightly regarded or to be jeopardised where a wise foresight
can prevent it. Such methods as I suggest and describe in this
book would give every child a fair and equal start in life, would
hold out to it alluring prospects of rewards, would prevent disease
and the weakness that surely leads to disease, and would give the
children a new ambition and a new ideal to look upward and
forward to that would illuminate its whole journey through life,
while the State and the Empire would gleam with the reflected
glory of millions of such children.
This is the real work of Reconstruction to which the State
must at once put its hand, for all wealth and prosperity is con¬
tingent upon it. Machines without men and buildings without
people are useless, however wonderful the machine or hygienical!y
perfect the building. On the other hand, the State that makes
human life and health its first and capital investment makes the
finest investment in the world. It builds for eternal honour and
fame. The State should see to it that each child should be taught
to know and appreciate the value in after life of health and physical
education, and to love health as it loves life. As Leonardo da Vinci
has well and truly said, “ knowledge of a thing engenders love of
it.”
When knowledge and love of its own body had once been
implanted, the idea of compulsion or effort would die a natural
death in the mind of the child, and the rest be comparatively easy.
This very teaching, too, will promote that hygiene and knowledge
of hygienic laws fin adult life, to the lack of which is largely
attributable our national physical deterioration, the sacrifice of
much child life and the propagation of disease. Such a health
education and physical upbuilding as I now advocate would make
the children when they become adults as anxious to possess healthy
homes as healthy bodies, and such education is, I contend, the first
step towards the prevention "of~disease" ”

FOUNDATION OF ALL REFORM.

It is not difficult to realise how great a transformation such a

policy as I venture to outline here would work in the nation, not
either in the far distant future but in a generation or two, and.
A boy of 15 who has obtained this wonderful development, with its great resistant power
to disease, by the Author’s methods.
115
 116

indeed, in the generation at present in its cradle. The State would

reap an immediate reward in the reduction of its hospital bill.
Illness and disease would not only soon become unknown in our
midst, but much of the pauperism, crime and insanity too often
associated with it would also vanish. On the other hand, the
State would boast a people superbly strong, a reserve fund of
human power from which it could always draw freely in an hour
of crisis, and the best insurance against national bankruptcy or
the collapse of Empire. To attain to this ideal three things are
vitally necessary ; (1) the whole-hearted support of the State, (2)
the unanimous endorsement of the medical profession, and, (3)
the intelligent co-operation and partnership of the people them¬
selves in every walk and sphere of life. Without this mighty
triplicate effort no plans or schemes of social reconstruction or
reform can be crowned with success, for all reform must have a
physical basis as I show in my next chapter. To secure health
and fitness is, indeed, the very beginning of all reform.
117
Squad of boys going through their physical movements in the open air under the personal supervision of the Author.
 ] 19

CHAPTER V

The Physical Basis of Reform.

Many educational schemes and plans of reconstruction and social

reform are already in the air and some actually in being, hut the
majority of these educationalists seem to forget that it is only upon
the sound physical basis of the individuals comprising the nation
that all educational and social reform can he built wisely and
securely. The child is, then, to a nation the figure 1 in every
calculation which we have to make, and it is to the physical -body
of the individual child that we must ultimately look m our search
for all educational and social reform, and in our unending war
against what is unhvgienic and disease tending in civilisation.

BUILDING THE HOFtfE OF THE SOUL.

The prudent architect or builder when designing and erecting

a building, takes into consideration every possible and probable
contingency that may threaten to encompass its destruction. Its
foundations are dug deep, it is safe-guarded against atmospheric
changes and variations as far as is humanly possible, and it is
built so as to ensure the comfort in everv way of those who occupy
it. Ample provision is made for light, heat, ventilation and
sanitation.
So with the human bodily dwelling—“ a house not made with
hands designed and created by the great Architect and Engineer
of the Universe. It was planned and erected to withstand every
reasonable strain, to give the utmost comfort to the spirit arid mui!
that must dwell within it, and with vigilance, skill.nl attention and
respectful care it will only crumble away alter many }ous and
vicissitudes through sheer'old age and “the corroding cares of
T* i ?

ime.
"When reformers of all kinds realise the dominating Put that
physical re-formation is the essential prelude to e/eri/ otha kind of
 120

reformation, they will have found a better jumping-off platform

than the majority of them seem to have at present.
The utmost we can hope to do in improving the conditions
attaching to modern civilisation or in modifying them will be
useless, if we continue to neglect the physical body, and especially
those of the children. I have no desire to decry the well-intended
efforts of those who are devoting so much attention to domestic
hygiene, sanitation, housing, and all other sociological, medical and
humanising processes, but I would again insist on the fact that
they are subsidiary to, and can only be auxiliary to, the physical
education and culture of the human body itself.

GOOD HOUSES AND GOOD TENANTS.

Modern environment may, of course, be so modified as to reduce

enormously the amount of disease and its vicious incidentals, and
in this way many of the proposed innovations will help to diminish
disease, crime and vice, as is being proved daily by the results
already obtained from beneficent housing schemes, “welfare work
in large industrial concerns, advances in medical science and
bacteriology, and the complete excision of many of the unhygienic
surroundings of human life in large cities and towns to-da}y but
nothing that does not first make the human body itself a tower of
strength, physically and mentally, will lead to the permanent reform
and reconstruction of a nation.
The vital fact is too often forgotten, viz., that the logical first
stef is to devote attention to the bodily building itself (including
the brain, for as Montaigne says, “ it is not a mind, not a body we
have to educate, it is a man of whom we are not to make two
beings”), which must be made strong enough to combat an
unhygienic environment at least for a time. Our present educa¬
tional methods seem to waste a lot of time and money on the steeple
and roof and walls of the bodily building that might with much
better results be devoted to the floors and the physical foundation.
Such methods in early and impressionable childhood, when
mind and body are both alike unshaped and impressionable, can
only succeed in preparing physical houses that are not likely to
long, retain very desirable tenants. For, one cannot expect the
spirit to live and thrive in an unclean, unhealthy or diseased
b°dy* And this the body must sooner or later become unless the
spiritual being who inhabits it pays at least as much attention to
The human body in all its pristine glory, as it was intended to be, andl was until
man fell from his high estate by neglecting the law of life—the law of movement.
121
Back view of the same man, Mr. Jas. Browning, of Beaconsfield, who
attributes this line physique to the methods of body culture described
in this book.
122
 123

it as he does to his house of bricks and mortar. A house with

broken windows, bad drainage, dangerously damp and dirty would
not invite nor long retain desirable tenants, but a handsome, strong
sanitary and comfortable dwelling-house will be found occupied
by tenants who will zealously watch over it because they take a
sincere and honest pride in it.

HOW WE GET OUR UNFIT.

We have now had for many years a system of education for

children that has begun and still begins at the wrong end. Indeed,
education, as we know it to-day, has for centuries been steadily
sapping and undermining the body's physical foundation, by
imposing mental strains for which the physical foundation of the
bodily building had not been previously prepared. Civilisation
has been ably seconded by Education in the spread of Disease. All
mental work, it must never be forgotten, imposes a great strain on
the physical body, and in hard study as much as from 50 to 75 per
cent, of the student’s vital energy may be consumed.
To replenish this, as I show in a later chapter, greater and
better balanced physical movement is absolutely essential, especially
in the younger children, to improve nutrition, quicken circulation
and increase the oxygenation of the blood, excrete waste products,
re-build better tissue, and to increase and develop the cell-population
of both the body and brain. Indeed, the first steps of all education
should he physiological and physical rather than merely mental.

IGNORANCE AND DISEASE.

Mismanagement, especially educational mismanagement, was

largely responsible for our physical decadence in the past. Oiir
methods, or, perhaps, I should say, our lack of method, hred
physical unfitness and disease. Speaking of the appalling
recruiting statistics already referred to, Mr. Lloyd George, in
another rousing speech before the General Election, said : “ On
examining these statistics I was appalled to find—examining them
purely for military purposes and not for anv ulterior motive—that
there was a much higher percentage of phvsical unfits in this
country than in France, Germany, or any other great belligerent
country. That is a disgrace to a proud and prosperous country!
It is not through poverty. We were the richest country under the
sun. Not through poverty, but through mismanagement! ” And
largely, I say, through educational mismanagement.
 124

The country that seeks to avoid producing a race of degenerates

in the future, poorer even in physique and health than the present,
and devoid of the physical, mental and moral stamina, which will
be necessary in every people who do not wish to sink into an
obsolence like that of ancient Rome or proud and once peerless
Greece, must “ scrap 55 these mistaken and injurious educational
methods, and inaugurate a new era.
Under the patronage of the State, as I have just pointed out
m my previous chapter, the medical profession should have a first
charge on the children of a nation, and they will then, for the first
time, have a real opportunity of erecting an impregnable barrier
against disease. When we have such a system of education in
being, it will be worth while devoting more and more attention to
educating the people in all the requirements of (1) a healthy body,
and (2) a sound and sane mind. Such education will lead to
social changes that are regarded to-day as mere Utopian dreams.
We have come, as the representative of Truth, the well-known
and highly critical weekly paper, said some years ago, “ to associate
puniness of physical development, sloping shoulders, bowed backs,
be-spectacled eyes, with the votaries of science and education,”
whereas our aim should be to avoid this disharmonious combination,
and to teach the child to strive after the old Greek idea. In this
way, every child should leave school with, at least, everything
possible in its favour of growing up to be a healthy, fit and useful
citizen, and with a mind so attuned to health and sanity as to be
incapable of tolerating or even harbouring unclean, vicious or evil
thoughts.
Perhaps the greatest and most weighty argument I can bring
in favour of a compulsory elementary education in human anatomy,
physiology, and hygiene, and the compulsory physical culture of
the body, is to be adduced from the fact that lack of this very
knowledge is, as I have already noted in the preceding chapter, one
of the most fertile causes of physical deterioration and disease, and,
I may add, is also responsible for much of the indifference, the
neglect, the abuse, and the ill-treatment of the body, the unhygienic
dwellings of the people, the insanitary and ill-ventilated workshops,
etc., which still further reduce the already diminished power of
bodily resistance in the people in their present physical condition,
and make the body more accessible to disease, and its undesirable
allies, and which are often the cause of serious illnesses that
may not make their appearance until comparatively late in life.
 Photographer, Dorasawmy, Bangalore

This is the type of men that

the nation according to Mr.

Lloyd George, must

the future, and can possess by
the methods which these men
have followed.

125
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 127

REDUCING THE NATIONAL HEALTH DEBT.

Every student of social reform knows how huge a part of the
pauperism, insanity, vice and crime of every country can be proved
by statistics to be due directly or indirectly to the sickness or disease
that is so prevalent to-day. To what extent also this avoidable,
and, in any really educated people, culpable, ignorance is responsible
for those thousand-and-one familiar ailments which a French
writer has called “ the frontiers of disease,” ailments arising from
defective or retarded nutrition, ailments due to the generation of
toxins within the body, and numerous ailments of an everyday kind
arising mostly from imperfect metabolism, which, although but
slight deviations from the normal, constitute no small item in the
annual “ hospital bill ” of every nation to-day, and are the great
despoilers of every nation’s individual and national efficiency, only
medical men are in a position to know.
The physical renaissance that I am now suggesting would erase
most of them altogether from society, and the vice, immorality and
crime that spring from them, because the knowledge of the bodv
and its functions would prevent many of those “ crimes of
ignorance ” which give birth to, invite, tolerate, foster and encourage
so much disease, with its undesirable accompaniments. Such
early education, too, would destroy much of the falsehood,
hypocrisy and ignorance with regard to sexual relations and the
reproduction of the species that are also a prolific cause of disease,
immorality and vice, with their pernicious and degenerative
influence on the future of any people.
No one who is acquainted with the trend of medical opinion
to-dav can fail to observe how sadly the “ personal equation ” in
the whole problem of social reform is either overlooked or forgotten
in the consideration of all questions of reform. We hear far too
much of bad housing, of milk and meat as factors of disease, and
of a thousand-and-one other questions that are but mere tributaries
of the great stream which has its source and origin in the
uneducated, undisciplined, uncontrolled physical body itself, in
the ignorance inseparable from educational methods that do not
even teach children a rudimentary knowledge of their own bodies
or how to care for them, and even of the necessity of caring for
them.
Such children have neither the parentage, the education, or
the physical culture desirable to enable them to safeguard their
health even if lodged in a palace, with all the hygienic appur-
K
 128

tenances of modern medical science and surrounded by every

protective device of civilisation. Their liability to disease would
still persist. Its advent might be postponed, but that is the best
for which we might hope.

GARDENING THE PHYSICAL PLANT.

All national reform, therefore, must begin in the physical

education and training of the children just as disease can only be
eradicated in the cells of the individual. Gardening of the most
skilful kind may help the growth of a plant, but it cannot grow a
beautiful and flourishing tree from a plant that is diseased or
unsound at the root. And morality, temperance, virtue, sanity of
mind, everything that the social gardeners of the human plant are
anxious to cultivate to add to its health and beauty depend upon
whether the plant itself is healthy and strong at the very root of its
being. A diseased or unsound root cannot but produce poor foliage.
The welfare of the nation is only the sum total of the welfare
of its individuals. These individuals, like the individual living
cells of our own bodies, determine the health, happiness and well¬
being of the whole, and the truest and best reform is to teach and
train each individual child to grow up so healthy, strong and sound
in itself that it can neither succumb to internal weakness or innate
constitutional tendency or even to its environment. It is not
pathological but physiological reform that is required, for to reform
a nation that is already mentally, morally or physically diseased is
a much more difficult and costly thing than to teach and train the
individual children that are the living cells of the national body
and to make and keep them immune from such disease. Health,
after all, is cheaper than disease, no matter what may be the cost
of its maintenance and preservation.
Many of the conditions of modern life that are so badly in need
of reform, and others with which we could easily and well dispense
altogether, would cease to exist automatically as the natural result
of such a system of physical education and training as I suggest
for the people. Ignorance, indeed, is the only excuse for the
presence of much that is undesirable in the social life of humanity
to-day. A thing at once so beautiful, so complex, so strong, so
wonderful in all its forms, operations and activities as the human
body is a thing to create reverence and awe in the mind of any
individual who learns to know it and understand it. Only a
vandal would willingly despoil, injure or destroy it
 \

Winner of the Gold Statuette of the

Author, presented! by him to en¬
courage the physical regeneration
and reconstruction of the nation,
and for which thousands of com¬
petitors entered from every part of
the British Isles.
129
Winner of the Silver Statuette Winner of the Bronze Medal in
in the same competition. the same competition, which was
held at the Royal Albert Hall.
130
 131

THE ROAD TO SELF-RESPECT.

And it depends entirely upon how it is treated, whether your

body becomes your best friend and the promoter of your happiness
or an enemy to cause you pain and discomfort, for disease and pain
are only Nature's revenge for neglect or ill-treatment. To ill-treat
it or to neglect it is not only to make one a danger to oneself but to
society at large, and given a proper educational system such conduct
should be made criminal, as ignorance of the law could not then
be pleaded. An individual who, after such an education, allows
himself to become reduced in economic value by avoidable disease
inflicts a loss not only upon himself but upon society. It is then
the business and duty of society to protect itself against such
ignorance or negligence.
On the other hand the adult schooled from childhood to health
and health habits will increase and go on increasing in value not
only to himself but to the community of which he is a member.
His moral worth to a nation will bb even greater, because the
inculcation of self-respect in the individuals that comprise the
social fabric must ensure the quality of its fibre and texture. For,
in the worldly-wise advice of Polonius to Laertes, “ to thine ownself
be true and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not
then be false to any man.” Self-respect is the beginning of respect
and consideration for others, and wins the respect of others in
return. The triple duty of the individual to his Creator, to the
State and to society in general is at once performed in the mere
act of doing his duty to himself.
But he must be taught that duty, and all it implies, from days
of childhood, before he can be expected to do it, and to achieve
this the teaching and training must be scientific and even pre-natal.
His education must begin in the womb. It will only end when he
dies. Through life it will be his supreme happiness to keep his
body healthy and well, and with such a body it will always be
easier to resist the encroachments of disease, vice and all such
like. There is no wine that will exhilarate like health, to be
followed by no re-action, for it gives exhilaration without
intoxication.
The spirit or soul that occupies a bodily dwelling filled with
the divine music of health makes a little heaven on earth within
its own body. Vicious cravings, passions and tendencies cannot
tarry long there. This is real re-formation, the physical re-forma-
 132

tion and re-education of man, from which all social reformation

must spring.
RICH IN MIND AND BODY.

True reformation takes place in the mental attitude of the

individual, for conduct is determined not by extraneous matters
so much as by a person’s mental attitude towards himself, towards
others and towards his Creator. That is the keynote of character
and conduct. As a man sows mentally so he will reap. And
though “ ’tis the mind that makes the body rich,” yet the physical
body is the soil through the cultivation of which we must supply
all the essentials for the sustenance of the mental tree, branches,
leaves, and flower. Where are we most likely to find goodness,
kindness, charity and love—in the mind nourished, sustained and
fortified by a healthy and vigorously functioned body or in a mind
diseased, tainted and deformed by the self-generated poisons of an
unhealthy, stunted, ill-formed, or weakly functioned body?
To restore the human body to its pristine vigour and splendour,
to make it superbly powerful to resist disease, and to make it
even disease immune are the steps by which we will advance to a
higher mental and moral as well as physical standard, and I am
gofng to show now that this can only be done by a return, so far
as in humanly possible in these times^, to the natural life, and
especially to that all-round and balanced movement which the
physical body was designed to have from the first and which
sufficed for health and freedom from disease in those far-off days
“ when Adam delved and Eve span.”
The Author inspecting a squad of Colonial soldiers carrying out physical movements
on the lines described in this book.
 ^ ’

5j ,

r.t
 135

CHAPTER VI.

Life is Movement.

Life is movement. Movement—self-movement—is life. The

fundamental phenomenon of all organic life is change of form (or
movement), sometimes so slight as even to evade the microscope.
Breathing, the beating of the heart, and the circulation of the blood
—the three witnesses of life—are also witnesses of movement.
Life is of two kinds, animal and vegetable, and for both, move¬
ment is essential. Indeed, both animals and vegetables may be said
to live by movement. Food is the fuel that supplies the motive
power, the plant receiving its motive power and sustenance direct
from the earth itself, the power that enables it to grow upwards
even in defiance of the law of gravitation.

MAN WAS MADE TO MOVE.

Man was ordained to wrest his food from the earth by his own
muscular power, and his muscular system was given him for that
purpose, and also partly to convert his food into motive power by
digestion and assimilation. Human life begins in the womb in
some mysterious way by movement, the first throbbing of a child’s
heart—like a clock of which the mainspring is wound up by Divine
power—announcing the advent of Life, the child afterwards keeping
the clock going itself by using its own muscular system as the key.
It is as if the Creator wound up the clock of Life and handed us
the key in the shape of a muscular system, which has been given
us for re-winding it again from time to time, so as to keep the
“ works ” of life going smoothly, and enable the “ clock ” to show
correct time throughout life.
The main, indeed, I may say the only, difference between living
activities, visible or invisible, through which their life is expressed
—nutrition, growth, function, reproduction and decay. All
organised and living things grow by their own movement from
 136

within. This is characteristic not only of man or any animal, but

of every living thing in general down to the earliest known form
of life, which consists only of a single cell. And man, as we know
him to-day, is but a bundle of cells, every organ, system, and tissue
of the body being built up of living cells.
Before, however, we begin to study movement as modifying the
life and health of man, let us stand in wonder when we regard
movement as the fundamental law of life, animal and vegetable,
the energising and governing power, as shown alike in the minutest
speck of living matter as well as in the great world of systems in
the firmament
The proofs are to be found everywhere in the Universe, on
land and on sea and in the air, and if we ourselves had long ago
more fully realised that life is movement, that civilisation was
gradually robbing us of the natural physical movement of other
days, and that lack of movement in whole or in part inevitably
leads to disease and death, we would not, perhaps, have so long
neglected physical movement as an agent—perhaps the greatest
agent—in maintaining life.

A UNIVERSE IN fVI OVE M E NT.

Everywhere we live in the midst of movement. “ Nothing,” as

Professor Carl Snyder says in his great work, “ New Conceptions,”
“ is at rest.” There are worlds in the great firmament above that
are continuously moving at speeds scarcely credible to the finite
mind of man. Away up there, the invisible wind is never at rest,
but whirls, speeds and performs evolutions more wonderful than
anything known of on the land or in the sea.
High up above the Andes where the great condor soars, swarms
of minute insects, invisible to the eye, are also carried about by the
moving wind in contradistinction to the soaring eagle, whose own
innate power of movement enables him to contend with and against
the wind and to steer his masterly course through the air by the
power and control of his own muscular and mighty wings. Move¬
ment everywhere in every element of the great Universe is essential
to life. On the moon, where no evidence of life has yet been revealed
by the minutest telescopic scrutiny, there is death-like lack of
movement in the absence of that moving sea of air and water which
alone makes life oossible.
JL

On the earth the same principle exists, viz., that there is and
can be no life without movement. The great rivers that “ rive ”
 137

the country move along fastly speeding to the sea, and so remain
pure and sweet, supporting a myriad forms of life, while the
sluggishly moving streams become contaminated with fermenting
and poisonous matter, and are uncongenial to life. Pools, having no
natural movement whatever, breed all sorts of poisonous and
pestilential vapours, and foster the germs of disease. The stillness
of the pool is the stillness of death. The fast moving river and the
stagnant pool are two of the most striking contrasts of movement
with life and stagnation with death that Nature affords. Not
only are the pools dead and full of death, but they would spread
death all around them if every moving current of the air did not
quickly purify and dissipate the pestilent vapours and poisonous
gases that arise from them.
Similarly with the land and the vegetable life of the land.
The land must be moved and kept moving if the life in the seed is
to become fruit, vegetable, or flower. Movement brings the land
into touch with the sun, air and rain, and makes it fruitful. Left
to itself and unmoved by plough, spade and harrow, it degenerates
and becomes arid and sterile.

THE REAL POETRY OF MOTION.

The sea, in its perpetual and rhythmic ebb and flow, would be
little more than a big cesspool filling the atmosphere with poisonous
filth if it ceased to move. Life on sea and land alike would, indeed,
become equally unendurable without the unceasing movement of sea
and air. As it is, we bring our infirm and invalid, on the other
hand, to the verge of the moving sea, or transport them for long
voyages on its bosom, so that they may fill their lungs with the life-
giving ozone which permeates the atmosphere above and around it.
Not only is the sea a great and ever-moving mass of water
containing essential life elements in itself, but it teems with an
ever-moving life, a strange, unseen or rarely seen, and compara¬
tively unknown life, so fitted and adapted to its watery environment
that it can live without coming in direct contact with man's first,
last, and most vital necessity, air.
Through the whole animal world, in every element the essence
of life is movement—and in all animal life movement is made by
muscular power—and it is because the animals, apart from man,
have been able to adhere to the law of natural physical movement
more closely and continuously than man that they are consequently
kept in better physical condition than him, and are less liable to
 138

disease, even when degenerated through contact with civilisation

and the diminished necessity for movement.
Look at them even when held in captivity by man. What is
more graceful, more truly “ the poetry of motion ” than the elastic
tread of some lordly lion or tiger, the stealthy, measured stride of
the wolf or the leopard, or the sprightly antics of the nimble and
ever-active lemurs. Compared with this, the movements of most
men to-day seem awkward, unnatural, and ungraceful.
The very restlessness of these animals in their cages, “ cabin’d,
eribb’d, confin’d,” their powerful muscles rhythmically undulating
beneath the skin at every step, shows the deep natural instinct
implanted in what we call the “ brute creation ” for natural
exercise and movement, the prime and primitive essentials of
healthy life. In their own wild state, they never died of disease,
but only through slaughter, accident, or the natural law. Why?
Because they were kept disease-free, in a state of Nature, by the
necessary movement and use of all their muscles, thus naturally
keeping the whole organism in perfect balance, even as man himself
once did.

MAN ROSE BY MOVEMENT.

All forms of life and all living organisms in the Universe,

then, including man, demand movement for their very existence.
They eat, breathe, digest, work, fight and have their being by
movement — self-movement. “ Man,” says Professor W. K.
Clifford, “ may be described as an automaton. An automaton is
a machine that goes by itself when wound up, and we go by ourselves
when we have had food. There is no reason why we should not
regard man as an exceedingly complicated machine which is wound
up by putting food into the mouth. But the body is not merely
a machine, because consciousness goes with it.” And it is by the
conscious movement of the voluntary muscles, as I show in another
chapter, that all parts of this wonderful human automaton can be
put and kept in motion, and without which, even food would be
valueless.
Man rose from the primeval slime to his present conscious and
erect position, his complex and altogether wonderful organism, by
movement. Bv continuous physical processes and activities he
evolved first from the ielly-like amoeba or single-celled speck of
living protoplasm, and thence, bv slow degrees, ever upwards to the
complex multi-cellular being he is to-day, a being, truly, but a very
 Photographer, M. N. Coupee, New Zealand.
Man as He Might and Should Be.
Greece nor Rome in its palmiest days ever produced a finer all-round specimen
of virile manhood surely than this truly distinguished-looking Frenchman.
Strength, grace and comeliness all combine to convey an impressive idea of
the true dignity of manhood. Trained and developed by these methods, this
splendid figure might well symbolise the magnificent bravery and glory of
la belle France. This is a gallant son of France, but not the Frenchman so
often depicted by myopic and morbid writers of fiction.
139
Here again, you see man as he is, and as he might be, indeed as the Creator
intended he should be. The difference in physique between the pathetic figure
above and the others is due to lack of scientific physical training in the one case
and the application of these methods in the other two,
140
 141

little lower than the angels. Shakespeare—himself called “ that

myriad-minded man ”—well and truly apostrophised this wonderful
living human automaton, this self-supporting, self-propagating,
self-controlling, self-propelling, self-heating, self-lubricating, self-
operating and self moving mental and physical machine, when he
caused Hamlet to exclaim :—
“ What a thing is Man !
How noble in reason ! How infinite
In faculty ! In form and moving
How express and admirable !
In action how like an angel,
In apprehension how like a god.”

Such was man as he was intended to be. When God created

man He made the most wonderful and the most perfect thing in
the world, perfect as a whole, because the human body was perfect
in every part, even to the most minute and miscroscopic detail, and
perfect in balance. There was not a weak part in it anywhere, and
it was as beautiful in its design, construction and perfect balance
as it was strong It was, as it should be to-day, so balanced in
perfect strength everywhere that disease could make no impression
upon it.
Man then was made by God in a state of perfectly balanced
strength and his daily life, with its free and full physical activity,
sufficed to maintain that balance. To-day, men and women after
centuries of an artificial and partially inactive civilised life, are
born lacking in this balance, and are, therefore, more liable to
disease, from the very moment of their birth. To regain that
balance which we had in primeval days is the first step in the
eradication of disease, and we can only do this by returning once
more to a life in which all-round physical movement is supplied to the
body in a way compatible with modern habits of life. When we
have restored this balance to the body, especially from childhood,
ordinary games and sports will, to some extent, preserve this balance
afterwards, just as the hunting and chasing of his food and the
fighting of his enemies did for primitive man.

MAN’S WEAPONS OF DEFENCE AGAINST DISEASE.

Disease was probably co-existent with Adam, but unknown,
for it could not reveal itself then because disease germs could not
conquer the human body in its pristine strength, so long as it
 142

received reasonable attention and care, and that all-round physical

movement which was natural and necessary in days when bodily
strength and activity were absolutely essential for the provision of
food and for the protection of life against fierce animals.
Man was given the possession or stewardship of a body strong
enough to contend successfully against all his enemies, even what
has since proved to be the greatest of all his enemies, Disease. In
those early days, man was too strong and too active to succumb to
disease, because each and all of his bodily cells were made and
kept naturally strong enough, by daily and balanced physical move¬
ment, to resist and defeat disease. By possession of a brain and
mind he was given dominion over every beast of the field and every
bird of the air, and by the right use of both his body and his brain
nothing could prevail against him.
At first he was compelled by Nature to use both these powerful
weapons to defend himself against his enemies many and mighty.
Consequently, men were giants in those days.
“ The Derves that joined their limbs were^firm and strong,
Their life was healthy, and their age was long,
Returning years still saw them in their prime,
They wearied e’en the wings of the measuring Time.”

Gradually there dawned a more pastoral era of man’s history

when the peaceful tillage of the soil enabled him to live a life less
strenuous, and the barter and exchange of products brought him
food and clothing without the hunting and slaying of animals for
himself. The days when he had to do everything bv the use of his
own muscles began to depart, and all-round physical movement
became more and more a matter of choice rather than of necessity.
Later, someone invented money, and man began to discover that
money could buy almost anything without much physical effort,
and that monev could even make more money for him than all the
work of his toiling body. So man began to neglect those wonderful
muscles upon which so much depended.
Less and less physical activity now entered into his dailv
existence, and more and more his brain was cultivated and
exploited to the neglect of the rest of his body, with the result that
disease at last was able to assault him with greater and increasingly
greater prospects of success. So disease, as we know it to-day,
slowly came into our everyday life with the growth of civilisation,
until it has come to be regarded patiently, and even tolerantly, as
an inevitable and necessary evil of modern life.
 Photographer, Geo. H. Cassill, Boston.

The Modern Adam.

A model for a sculptor, being a beautiful photographic study of a young

American, who owes this strong and graceful physique to these methods.
143
I
 144

If we persist in this mistaken attitude towards disease, we

must, with the continuing progress of civilisation, become still
weaker and more diseased year after year. Man transgressed and
has continued to transgress the fundamental and universal law of
life, the law of movement, and thus the body was slowly but surely
despoiled, to no small extent, of its own primitive weapons of
offence and defence against disease, strong muscles and muscular
power. Man now became like a lion stripped of its claws or a
tiger without its fangs.

CLOTHES THAT CLOAK PHYSICAL SINS.

Unfortunately as civilisation advanced and education

increased, man, in his search after greater ease and comfort, instead
of trying once again to make his body stronger did just those very
things that made it still weaker. He invented clothes to rob his
skin of sun and air, he discovered the wheel and made it take the
place of his nether limbs, to a great extent. He was carried
forwards and backwards, upwards and downwards, instead of
walking and climbing. As one humorous writer in the Daily Mail
has put it, “ ubiquitous cheap transport suspended our physical
animation and turned us into so many bales of carted goods.”
Human necessity for physical movement grew still less than ever,
and man grew into “ the custom of shirking locomotion except on
wheels.” In fact, he only used his muscles and limbs when obliged
to do so to earn his living or for play, which inevitably led to lack
of bodily balance, physical degeneration and disease. Man had
not discovered that balanced physical movement was the law of
healthy life. With the inevitable loss of his primitive muscular
strength and his superb natural physique and constitution he also
lost his splendid immunity from disease.
Man, as the Creator intended he should appear, was a noble
being, with the physique of an Apollo or a Hercules, commanding,
statuesque, and awe-inspiring, like the splendid heroes of ancient
Greece and Rome. Since man became a clothes-wearing animal,
his body has been, like Topsy's origin, “ wropt in mystery.”
Civilisation and education with their ever-increasing lack of all¬
round physical movement, have at last sapped and undermined his
physique to such a degree that to-day his clothes are often only a
cloak to cover a multitude of physical sins. They are frequently
so stuffed and padded that they resemble miniature “ cotton plan-
 145

tations," the better to hide modern man’s physical blemishes and

shortcomings.
Handicapped as he is by the physically degenerative environ¬
ment of modern civilisation, and the diminished demand for
physical movement, is it to be marvelled at that disease buds in him
an easy prey instead of its triumphant conqueror and master. He
has invited disease to be his guest and it has arisen in the night to
slay him. Civilisation has, indeed, become a slaughtering-car
crowned by a grinning effigy of Comfort, before which man blindly
and voluntarily hurls himself in his own ignorance.
When the mind of man invented the wheel it most rapidly
accelerated his physical downfall, for the wheel of civilisation has
broken more men in a physical sense than ever did the wheel of the
French Revolution. As a child, he is “ wheeled ” in his peram¬
bulator or bassinette; as a youth, a wheeled vehicle takes him to
school and home again; as a man he is “ bound to the wheel ” which
carries him Mazeppa-like to his doom, because it has robbed him
more and more of his muscular power through the comparative
disuse of manv of his muscles.
It is a well-established fact that disuse, or even the diminished
use, of any part of an animal body leads to its deterioration and
atrophy, and man became more and more liable to disease as he less
and less depended upon his own muscles. We know that when
man lived in primeval forests and jungles, and had to be incessantly
vigilant against the fierce and savage denizens that infested those
parts, and which were his unsleeping enemies, when quickness of
hearing and sensitiveness to sound were as necessary for his
protection and safety as among wild animals to-day, he possessed
the power of moving his ears by means of muscles, just as we can
see even in some of our domestic pets to-day.
As civilisation advanced, however, this keen and alert sensi¬
tiveness to sound became less and less necessary. Through
continued disuse then, he lost the power of those muscles that cause
the ears to lie back or stand forth at will, and catch the slightest
noise that might threaten danger, until to-day the ears of the
majority of men are immovable because the muscles of movement
have atrophied True, in very rare instances, we find individuals
who still possess this strange and now, to most of us, almost
uncanny power.
This loss of power through use and movement is possible with
all the muscles in the body. During my travels in India, I was
very much interested in a wonderful old fakir, one of those devout
 146

beggars who resort to all sorts of self-mutilation to excite the

sympathy of the charitable public as well as to display their fanatic
willingness to sacrifice themselves for religious purposes. This
grey-bearded old fellow had kept his arms for so many years in one
fixed position that they had become absolutely withered and had lost
all muscular power of movement. Such is the natural and
inevitable result of the lack of movement anywhere and everywhere
in the body.

PUTTING YOUR STOMACH IN A SLING.

Everyone knows how an arm will weaken if carried in a sling
and unused. Place your own arm and keep it there motionless for
sufficient length of time and its muscles will lose all their natural
power to move it. When a limb has been injured or broken, and it
has to be kept immovable in one position for any length of time,
the power of muscular movement naturally becomes greatly reduced.
It is at first only by a great effort that it can be moved at all, while
such an arm, if kept long enough in a sling, would lose all muscular
power and become absolutely useless. The lost power of the disused
muscles can only be gradually restored by easy and graduated move¬
ment, but only so long as there is still life in the cells of the limb.
Just in the same way, the muscles of movement associated with
any or every bodily organ and function will grow weaker and weaker
through disuse, and unless the weak spot is strengthened and
developed by use and movement, the enemy, disease, will sooner or
later have the opportunity to break through at the point of least
resistance.
Or, to take another instance, if you were to go without food or
with very little food for a week or two, while living an active life,
it will be surprising how little your bodily strength will diminish
while you keep the body moving. The body will continue for some
time to live on its own reserves of heat and energy, but the stomach
itself will grow weaker and demand less nourishment through lack
of regular use, and will, in consequence, become a ready prey for
disease. When you again commence to eat food, your food will
have to be of the lightest kind at first, because the stomach has
become so weak through disuse, and the food must be gradually
increased in its nature and quantity until the stomach regains its
former strength, which it can only do through its own daily use
which means movement. It is just as if for a time you had put
your stomach and digestive system in a sling until it became too
weak for its work through disuse and diminished muscular move-
 147

ment, and has to be gradually “educated,” as it were, back to it

again.
In one of Mark Twain’s stories, he describes how a crew of
dyspeptics were wrecked on a desert island and nearly starved to
death. They became, according to the genial humorist, so weak
and hungry that finally they ate the leather of their boots, which
proves that Mark Twain was not a physiologist. If so, he would
have known that, at such a time, to have given a shipwrecked
mariner even a mild chop might easily have caused his death after
long starvation, because the stomach has got too weak, through
disuse and lack of movement, to digest it. In such cases, feeding
must begin with the lightest possible diet, being gradually increased
in quantity and quality until the digestive system is strong enough
to digest any kind of food.
Now, supposing, to take another instance, a person were to lie in
bed and not move at all, but eat as much food as ever he desired.
This time the unmoved muscles of the unused limbs would
degenerate through lack of movement just as the muscles of
digestion did in the previous case, because these muscles, or rather,
the cells of which these muscles are composed would become enfeebled
and even atrophied through disuse. These cells must have muscular
movement to make them hungry, just as muscular movement
increases our own appetite and makes us require more food to live.
But when the limbs and the muscles of the limbs are not called upon
for movement, not only do the cells of these limbs and muscles
weaken and waste because they no longer are sufficiently nourished,
but the cells of the digestive system also gradually weaken because
less movement is now necessary on their part, and consequently
thev demand less food, and the whole cellular workers of the body
would then have to suffer in proportion, “ their services,” to use a
familiar expression, “ being no longer required.”

THE BODY AS AN HOTEL.

It might make it clearer to the reader if I used the language

of metaphor. Let us imagine the body as an hotel built for the
residence of some 500 busy people. The demands of all these people
necessitate the maintenance of a large and efficient staff for all their
needs. But suppose that some two or three hundred of these
residents are thrown out of employment, and no longer can maintain
themselves in the hotel, this immediately causes a cutting down of
the staff and a general lowering of the standard of efficiency among
 148

those who remain. If the number of residents sank still lower the
hotel must inevitably end in bankruptcy.
So with the human body and the 500 and more muscles upon
whose activities it depends for existence. When all these muscles
are moved and used in balance, it means that the cell workers of the
body in every system, are kept well-nourished, active, fit and
efficient. The fewer of these muscles are called into play, or the
less we use them in balance, the fewer the number of cell workers
kept in employment and the more those that remain become lax,
indifferent and inefficient until the body finally becomes weak, open
to disease and, perhaps, even actually in a state of disease.
The whole body must be understood as a great organisation or
establishment in which every department and system is inter¬
related and inter-dependent, each department being linked up with
every other by the blood circulation and the nervous system. By
giving movement or employment first to the voluntary muscles, all the
other cells of the body are immediately and automatically set moving
also, and upon this united and associated movement of all the cells
in harmony and balance depends the health of the body and its power
in any or every part to resist, conquer and prevent disease, as I show
more fully in the following chapter.
1 ID
150
Movements for Strengthening Abdominal Muscles.

As described in this book being carried out under Author’s personal direction before Medical Men
 151

CHAPTER VII.

The Movement that Resists and Defeats

Disease.

.Now, man, as I have already said, is simply a bundle of cells,

millions of living cells inter-dependent and inter-related each to
one another.
Life In the final analysis, begins in the cell, for, as that great
scientific observer, Professor Verworn, says, “ everything we our¬
selves do is done in the individual cell. The muscle-cell gives us
the cue to the nature of muscular contraction and the heart-beat,
the gland-cell reveals to us the causes of secretion, the white blood¬
cell explains to us the assimilation of food, and the secrets of the
mind are to be found in the ganglion cell.”

THE LIVING CELLS OF THE BODY.

We must, in short, begin with the true physiological assumption

that it is to the individual cell—the unit of the multi-cellular man
—that the consideration of every bodily function which regulates
life and health must lead us. Through the cell and the cells of the
body, therefore, we can reach, cultivate, train, develop and recon¬
struct every part and organ of the human body, and every cell of
the body is dependent on, kept alive and maintained in health and
power by the movement of the voluntary muscles, as I fully explain
in my next chapter.
As it is, therefore, only movement and the power of movement
that distinguish life from death—the little living organism that
is the Alpha of life from the atom of inorganic and inanimate
matter—so by increasing and improving or bv reducing each cell’s
power of movement we also increase and improve or diminish
its vital power, and through it reach for good or ill the whole bodily
life. All the tissues of your body in all its systems and organs
 152

are composed of millions upon millions of these protoplasmic cells,

creatures each of which has muscles and functions like yourself,
and each of which is part and parcel of the wonderful organisation
of every human being. To keep all these cells in perfectly balanced
strength is the true secret of health, vitality, and resistant power
to disease.
This, I contend, we can only do by the balanced physical move¬
ment of the voluntary muscles as I describe, especially as in the
compelling circumstances of modern life we are deprived of the
natural and all-round physical movement which made and kept
our earliest ancestors superior to diseas/e. As life became more
and more artificial, new occupations, of a sedentary or semi-
sedentary nature necessary for the upkeep and advance of modern
civilisation, were introduced, and this natural balanced movement
gradually became less and less necessary, and the consequent loss of
balance in the body lowered man’s resistant power and led to the
ascendancy of disease over man.
The living cells supply the power for every bodily function
under the control of directing cells in the brain. The cells are the
component parts that go to build up the tissue of every organ and
system, that form bone, blood, muscle, flesh, sinew, membrane,
ligament, cartilage, nerve and brain, and they individually and
collectively are responsible, therefore, for the condition of each and
every organ or system, and the success or failure of its functions.
All living organisms, even these microscopic cells of the body
require food as the very basis of life and growth, and the many and
various cells of the body must also receive food in such a form as
contains all the essentials necessary for repairing waste, brought
to them through the agency of the circulating blood.

OURSELVES !N MINIATURE.

Each of these millions on millions of cells is a living entity like

ourselves. Together their bodily cells constitute us and represent
us in miniature. Each eats, breathes, drinks, works, fights, sleeps,
and reproduces its species just as we do. “ It has no lungs and
yet it breathes; no mouth, still eats; no definite shape, yet grows;
no nerves, yet is sensitive; no sex, yet may give birth to endless
progeny.”
Each cell, too, I claim, can be made strong or weak, healthy
or ill, through physical movement or lack of it. The organised cell*
 A Belgian Apollo.—Maurice Arioso, Gold Medallist.
The grandeur of manhood could scarcely be better illustrated than it is here
from life, the original being Maurice Arioso, who hails from that country
of heroes—Belgium. This figure, which might well be taken for an old
master, was obtained by following out the methods described.
153
 Comte de Boisgirard.
*

Glorious France is not behind in this great movement, as the above striking
photographic study from life shows. Virility is the keynote of this study, and this
young French Count owes his physique and physical power to the methods explained
in these pages.
154
 155

in short, lives much as we do, but by simpler processes, grows by

assimilation, produces after its own kind, and then decays and
dies. The performance of the functions of these millions of cells
naturally leads to the accumulation of waste matter in the body,
which the organs of elimination are only enabled to remove out
of the system by muscular movement. It will be easy to understand,
therefore, that physical movement by speeding up the circulation,
increases the nutrition of all the bodily cells, the elimination of their
waste and also the supply of their essential oxygen, at the same time
developing and continuing to produce new and healthier cells in
every organ and system of the body.
This most miraculous of machines, the human body, consisted
at the earliest period of its existence of a single cell so small that
nearly 200 of them would not measure an inch. This cell grew,
developed, and reproduced other cells by division and sub-division,
until its family reaches into billions, these again being distributed
among various systems and organs until the complete organism we
call man is developed. All these cells are divided into classes just
as is society itself, some occupying more responsible positions and
performing the higher duties of life, while others fill more humble
spheres, and do the “ hard labour ” of life.

NO “WEARY WILLIES” OR “TIRED TIMS.”

To go fully into a description of the various species of living

cells in the body would require a volume as large as an encyclopaedia.
Suffice it to sav that there are cells of one kind in the brain to
think, control, and direct all the operations of this wonderful com¬
munity, cells in the blood to carry supplies of air and nourishment
everywhere, and to fight enemy disease germs that invade the body,
cell chemists in liver and lungs and kidneys, cell-stokers and
engineers in the heart, cell food-producers in the stomach, cells to
move our bodilv dwelling at will in the brain and muscles, cell
builders and masons to erect bone and tissue, and cell scavengers
distributed throughout the intestines, kidneys, liver, lungs and skin
to eliminate waste and poisonous products.
Each cell in the healthy body performs its duty silently,
efficiently and easily, and only when any cell or group of cells grows
too old, too feeble, or too diseased to carry out its duties easily and
well, do we experience the discomfort which we trulv call dis-ease.
In this industrious community there is no room for Weary Willies
or Tired Tims, nor are there any idle rich. All must work and
 156

move or die. Disaffected, old and unfit cells die quickly, if they
cannot perform the duties demanded of them in the shape of rapid
and strenuous activity through the united movement of all the
voluntary muscles, for their waste outbalances repair under an
increased and increasing physical strain beyond their power, and
because they cannot assimilate the essentials necessary for their
life.
Now, we ourselves are just what our cells make us, or, rather,
what we make ourselves, because whether the living cells of the
body do their work well or ill depends almost entirely on how we
ourselves treat them. If we keep them healthfully occupied, and
do not overwork them, if we feed them well and give them plenty
of fresh air, if we see to their sanitation and hygiene, if, in short,
we keep each and all of them healthfully active by physical move¬
ment—as I show in the following chapter we can do by moving all
the voluntary muscles of the body in absolute balance—we will
live better and healthier and happier lives, do our daily work more
easily and more efficiently, become less liable to disease and increase
our length of days in the land. To this extent, indeed, everyone
can be a self-made man, the master of his own fate and the captain
of his own soul.

“ half-dead, wish-to-be dead, and UNBURIED DEAD.”

All these cells must be properly nourished, given plenty of

fresh air, and kept just as clean as the outward body by well
regulated and balanced physical movement, that keeps them bathed
in a continuous stream of pure and well oxygenated blood which
cleanses them of all waste and disease-generating matter. Thus
the happiness of the whole bodily community and your personal
immunity from disease can be assured. If, however, as I have
said, some of them are starved, or ill-treated or become unfit through
lack of this movement, they will fail in the performance of their
duty, or do it only in a listless way, when the body itself must
inevitably sicken unless steps are taken to restore the happiness,
health and integrity of these cells.
Your health, in short, defends ufon the health of your cells.
According to the degree of physical movement—always provided
there is neither excess nor too little—the state of the bodily health
will generally be found to correspond. Those who live as near as
possible to the natural life of movement man was meant to live are
the healthier and happier, while every large community to-day,
 157

through lack of such movement, has its half-dead, wish-to-be-dead,

and unburied dead who exist rather than really live.
In other words, it is only the movement of all the voluntary
muscles within balance that promotes and maintains that healthy
and balanced movement of all the bodily cells, which gives them
individual and collective strength, linking them in harmonious
cellular co-operation, and making the whole organism a single and
powerful unit to resist and defeat its natural enemy, disease.
Without this, of course, one may live, as so many do to-day, with a
very little physical movement, but with a body weak in many parts
and places tending ever towards disease in one or more of those
parts and places, Another may obtain more physical movement
either through his occupation or recreation and live with a body
having fewer “ weak spots/’ but still ever liable to disease. No
occupation or recreation, however, can supply that perfectly
balanced movement of all or nearly all the voluntary muscles which
is absolutely necessary to establish perfect balance between every
cell and each group of cells that alone gives the body security and
immunity from disease.
On the other hand, every form of occupation in civilised life
to-day, no matter how much or how little physical effort it entails,
tends to aggravate the loss of balance and to lower resistant power
in some part or parts, and so to make the body liable to succumb
to disease in some part or parts. No occupation or sport will give the
body an impregnable front against disease, because some cells will
be under-nourished and under-developed and vice-versa, and some
will always remain with some weakness tending towards disease.
It does not, in brief, supply physical movement in a balanced and
scientific way.
To make it clearer still the clerk and the agricultural labourer
experience varying degrees of physical effort in their daily
occupations. The latter, as a rule, lives a healthier life than the
former because he lives more by the movement of his muscles, or,
rather, by the movement of more of his muscles, but each is liable
to disease with a liability differing only in degree, and each is most
probably liable to disease in different forms or in different parts.
The trained athlete, as a rule, lives a healthier average life than
either, but he, too, through his specialised training, may also possess
a body so unbalanced in some part or parts as to be only liable to
disease in a still lesser degree, and he would be in the modern
standard of civilisation the one who would most enjoy life and
escape most frequently from actual disease. Indeed, such a man
 158

would possibly escape disease altogether, only if attacked by it in

its gross and most deadly form, and even then his superior vitality
might just enable him to pull through at great peril to his life where
the others would have perished.

NO A1 BODIES WITH C3 CELLS,

Between all other forms of physical movement and the balanced

movement of all the voluntary muscles there is a wide difference.
It is only by such balanced movement (which I describe fully in
the chapter following) that the cells of every organ and associated
with every function of the body receive equal nourishment and are
strengthened in equal and proportionate balance, and so are each
and all brought into line as one grand defensive army and protector
of the body against every assault of disease. It is because physical
movement that is perfectly balanced makes every cell equally strong
and fit to do its duty that it produces a perfectly disciplined and
efficient cellular army of defence against disease. It is only by
^—1—i—i—^^ -■— ■■■ ■ m ii-M .mi mil i

commencing with the children that we can really create such an

army of defence as a permanently fighting force against disease
for life. If we take the children in time and give them this
powerful cellular army of defence, there would be no more need to
lament in the future C3 men instead of an A1 people. To para¬
phrase Mr. Lloyd George’s famous words, it is impossible to have
an Al body with C3 cells.
It is only when, on the other hand, from some cause or other,
some of the bodilv cell-workers and fighters grow weak, break down,
strike, and neglect their duty that it is possible for disease to enter
the bodily kingdom like an invading and conquering army. Certain
cells of the bodv become too weak or unbalanced through lack of
the physical drill necessary to make and keep them strong enough
to fight off the invaders, and through lack of those supplies which
only come to them in sufficient and evenly divided quantity through
this balanced physical movement, they grow ever and ever weaker
and less resistant to disease. And only in the body’s own resistant
power to disease can we look for absolute security and immunity
from disease.
Dr. Sir George Newman, K.C.B., F.R.C.P., Chief Medical
Officer of the Board of Education, in an official Report^ (presented
* This Report, by the way, to which I refer in several places throughout this
book, or, at least, that part of it which deals with Preventive Medicine ought to be
 Two Good Types of Chest Development
resulting from these methods, assuring almost complete immunity from
chest and lung complaints. Both these results were achieved in
middle life, and show what could be done if we began with the children.
159
M
 160

to both Houses of Parliament by command of the King), that will

always stand as a landmark to medical exploring parties in search
of that still undiscovered country where disease is unknown, agrees
that “ the first line of defence is a healthy, well-nourished and
resistant body.” It is also, if I may use a homely expression, “ the
last ditch ” in which the body entrenches itself against disease and
death, for the medical verdict as to life or death at the last, most
critical moment, is always determined by the patient’s own vitality,
that is, the vitality and resistant power of the living cells in one
or more parts of the body.

HOW TO INCREASE VITALITY.

Where, then, does this death-defying vitality come from ? Of

what does it consist ? Why should one body possess it in great force
and another in greatly diminished quantity and quality? What
is it, in short, that makes and keeps a body “ healthy, well-nourished,
and resistant ” ? The chief sources of vitality, we know, are food
and air, but both have to be carried to and equally distributed
throughout every part of the body if we are to have a body well-
nourished evervwhere in balance, and not to have a body well-fed
and strong in one part and ill-nourished and weak somewhere else.
Besides, the food has to pass through many processes before
it is converted into a form from which the varied types of bodily
cells in the different parts of the organism can extract and assimi¬
late the elements essential to their nutrition and repair. The
blood itself needs certain elements, bone needs others, muscle vet
others, and skin, hair, nails, tendons, ligaments, etc., all need
different nutrient material. How do these transformations of
food and this equal distribution of supplies essential to “ a healthy,
well-nourished and resistant body ” take place but by movement,
even though sub-conscious movement. Food would lie and putrefy
in a body that had no power of such movement, and air would not

read not only by medical men and medical students but by every individual of the
community interested in health and the conquest and prevention of disease. It is
as amazing in its completeness as in its consciousness, and it is a model of lucidity
and clear thinking beautifully expressed. It does not peer at health, medicine or
disease from the bottom of a well, but takes the sweeping and comprehensive view
of a man who has built his observatory on a hill. It is broad, liberal, and even
catholic in its wide range of his thought, and is worth a dozen treatises or text-books
in its simplicity and pregnancy of diction. It can be obtained from His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, Imperial House, Kingsway, London, W.C. 2, and only costs 9d. or
1/- including postage.
 161

be taken into it, nor carbonic acid gas eliminated. And without the
movement and circulation of the blood neither food nor air would be
distributed to every part of the body to nourish it fairly and equally
everywhere. Even while we sleep, this sub-conscious movement, in
a diminished degree, goes on or we would die. If it were not so we
would at last very quickly lose all resistant power essential to combat,
conquer or escape disease. To make the body supremely resistant to
and triumphant over disease, however, this sub-conscious movement
must, in our civilised life, be supported and reinforced by conscious
and balanced physical movement.
Now it is reasonable to suppose that if we can by our own free
will accelerate all this internal and involuntary movement, as I
show hereafter we can do, we can also increase the nutrition and
aeration of every part and every cell of every part of the body,
liberate greater quantities of poisonous carbonic acid gas and other
waste and disease-provoking matter from the system, and thus build
up a body in healthy balanced strength and resistant power in any
or all of its parts and systems, so that in this way and in this way
only we can have just such a body as Sir George Newman describes.
It is my chief purpose in this book to show that there is only
the one way in which we can do this, and that is through the agency
of the voluntary muscular system, which each and all of us have or
should have under our own control, but I need not describe how
this is accomplished here, as to do so would only be to anticipate
my next chapter.

THE BLUE-BIRD OF HEALTH.

As all disease is admittedly due to lack of balance,

and as the perfect and balanced movement of all the
voluntary muscles of the body alone leads to perfect internal
balance, including perfect balance between body and brain
and between the body and its environment, it is evident that when
such a system of national physical education and reconstruction
as I am advocating is once established in our schools, we shall have
begun an irresistible advance movement against the enemy of
disease, which will bring us, at last, to the attainment of that long-
cherished ideal, a diseaseless world. Personally, I can see no other
way of arriving at that goal, but I know that we can reach it when
the world awakens to a full and complete realisation of the fact
that Nature’s law of life is movement, and that we must obey that

/
 162

law or perish. A body developed in balanced strength by such a

method as I describe is the only body so powerfully resistant to
disease as to be immune.
This is the crucial point—the pivot—of every measure that
aims at the prevention of disease, and it is just the point that is
missed in every plan and scheme towards that end which I have
yet seen. They revolve round it, as it were, but fail to reach the
centre. The authors of such schemes are looking everywhere for
the Blue-bird of Health, when all the time it is only to be found
within the body itself. “ A healthy, well-nourished and resistant
human body 55 is admittedly the one and only successful preven¬
tive measure against disease, and while all the hygienic, social
and even dietetic reforms advocated may be helpful to its up¬
building, they are but the scaffolding and are only essential while
the physical structure itself is being erected.
When a body has been so educated and developed in harmony
or what I call balance, it is built upon a sound physical foundation,
for it is then so perfectly balanced in every cellular detail of its
structure as to be itself resistant—successfully resistant—to disease.
Movement is the law of life, and balanced movement is the first
law of health. Even, for instance, if disease germs find a lodg¬
ment in a perfectly balanced body they will quickly be killed or
sterilised by the body’s own army of defence. Indeed, Sir George
Newman himself declares that “ many persons carry in their bodies
the bacillus of tuberculosis without suffering from any clinical form
of disease, because their bodies are resistant.” (The italics are
mine.)
“TORPEDO NETS ” AGAINST DISEASE.

It is not evident, therefore, that the health of the individual

body and its immunity from or liability to disease is determined
and modified by its own innate power of resistance to disease, rather
than by its environment, or any particular circumstance of its
environment, however opposed it may be to health or however
disposed it may be towards disease. Reduced, therefore, to Its
logical conclusion, I think that Sir George Newman will agree when
I say that we can only make the body really immune by developing
and establishing within itself the fighting strength and quality of
every individual living cell, and the balanced strength and efficiency
of all these cells, so that these living cells will separately and con¬
jointly defy and conquer disease either from within or from
without.
163
Young and old alike can reap the health benehts that are to be derived from the natuial ph\sica
movements, if scientifically applied as the Author describes. A youth and an elderly gentleman, \\ 10
follow out these methods, and the result, a well-formed and well-developed body, strong to lesist disease.
Can you imagine these men being medically rejected as unfit for military
service ? These men have taken the trouble to develop their bodies
as Nature meant them to be developed, by natural methods such as are
advocated by the Author, and there is no reason why everyone should
not do the same.
164
 165

To search out and destroy disease microbes, whether within

or without the body is of little use, if we do not at the same time
increase the resistant power of the body itself, for other microbes
of the same or other diseases, and even as yet undiscovered and
unrecognised microbes of disease that will assuredly reveal their
presence if man is allowed to grow still weaker through advancing
civilisation and diminished physical movement, will also attack it,
and attack it successfully.
There, in a nutshell, you have the whole case against isolation
(except to restrict and prevent the extension of a communicable
disease to others for a time as, say, in the case of an epidemic), or
the employment of what I may call medical “ torpedo-nets ” of many
kinds as preventives against disease or even any particular form of
disease. They do not and cannot prevent disease, so long as the
bodv itself is not made strong enough in its own armour-plate of
health and strength as to be able to defy and defeat it. They may
defend it against some particular form of disease for a time, but
the moment the defensive barrier is removed, the patient is liable
to succumb again, or, at least, to fall a prey to some other species of
disease microbes, revealed or as yet unrevealed, which are swarming
in ambush everywhere, and always waiting their opportunity to
overthrow a weak and feebly resistant body.
Isolation, while it will temporarily protect, does not and
cannot give a man an atom of physical resistant power to combat
and conquer disease. Only the individual who has attained this
resistant power is safe, not only against disease germs but against
the weakness within that leads to disease.

THE BODY’S FIRST LINE OF DEFENCE.

That some bodies do possess this power of resistance in a high

degree while others are deficient in it is the only reason why disease
has not already swept mankind out of existence by now, and as
civilisation tends to make the body become progressively weaker,
generation after generation, new forms of disease which even yet
have failed to reveal themselves have a good innings before them,
unless we make every hum,an body and every cell of the individual
human body powerful enouqh individually and in balance collec¬
tively to resist and defeat them.
To strengthen the resistant power of the body is, on Dr. Sir
George Newman’s own admission, to strengthen the body’s first line
 166

of defence against disease. If, therefore, we make the first line of

defence sufficiently strong, we can prevent disease from breaking
through, so that other lines of defence, judicious though they be as
supports and reinforcements, are by no means vital. The first line
of defence, therefore, that is the resistant Dower of the body, is
the paramount factor in repelling the attac ss of disease. Any-
thing that will not increase and strengthen this resistant force is
of little value in the grim struggle between the human body and
disease. Isolation cannot do it. Food cannot do it. Medicine
cannot do it. I have shown wherein isolation or food are valueless
without bodily movement, that, if anything, they will actually tend
to lower bodily resistant power to disease by allowing some cells
to become weaker than others and causing disturbance of bodily
balance. This equally applies to the use of medicine or drugs.
The utmost that medicine can do is to stimulate, irritate and
arouse some organ or organs into action artificially, to soothe or
benumb nerves and brain, or to supply certain chemical elements
that are deficient in weak or diseased cells or elements that are
destroyed quicker than they can be replaced owing to weakness in
some of the cells responsible either for the elaboration of food into
suitable nourishment, or for its transmission or its assimilation.
But it does not and cannot give even a microscopical increase
of strength to any cell or groups of cells, and it certainly does not
develop the innate resistant power of the cells. Nothing but their
own movement and use can do this. On the other hand, cells
artificially fed or stimulated by medicine must tend to become still
weaker, and more and more dependent upon such artificial and
temporary aids and supports just as a leg grown weak through
lack of movement requires a crutch or stick to support it, and will
never regain its natural strength except by use and movement.
Medicine, therefore, is not only not a preventive of disease—
which is the great object of the medical profession to-dav—but
it often actually tends to cause and cultivate disease by inducing
the condition of weakness and imperfect balance that permits and
fosters disease in the part or parts of the body affected. To give
medicine to the weak or diseased body is like lending money to a
spendthrift child instead of teaching the child to be independent
of such aid, and providing it with the education and training
necessary to enable it to earn its own living. Scientific physical
movement, on the other hand, educates a weak, helpless or diseased
organ or system to be self-supporting, self-reliant and strong enough
 167

to defy and defeat its worst enemy, disease, especially if people are
educated and trained to it from their earliest childhood.

THERE IS ONLY ONE DISEASE.

Disease, after all, is a unified enemy under a single command,

although it assumes Protean forms. There is only one disease or
cause of disease, and that is lack of balance and loss of innate
resistant power somewhere in the body itself due to lack of balanced
strength in any and all of its parts. What we call diseases have
a common origin in the unbalanced body itself, for the body in
perfect balance refuses to bow down before any form of disease,
microbic or otherwise. The nosology or classification of what are
really “ symptoms ” of disease as distinct and separate “ diseases ”
is one of the greatest errors of medical science and has led to much
confusion in the battle against the common enemy. For you cannot
treat the human body, as is so often done to-day, as if it consisted
of a series of watertight compartments or hermetically sealed
chambers.
The body is also a unit, with organs and systems and functions
and cells that are not to be dealt with as things distinct and apart,
but as one embracing whole, for that which affects one organ or
system affects the whole in some degree, just as the breakdown of
one wheel in the works of a watch will stop it or cause it to show
incorrect time. We must begin now to treat the body and to
consider disease both as distinct entities at continuous war with
one another from childhood to old age. Until we do this we may
temporarily “ patch up ” a body diseased or weak towards disease
in one or more parts, which, however, cannot bring about perfect
balance and will never succeed in preventing disease or in radically
eradicating it from the human body.

TO CURE ONE DISEASE IS TO CURE ALL.

That very keen observer, Dr. Push, in his “ Theory of Fever,'’

puts the case against the classification and multiplication of diseases
very effectively. “ Science,” he says, “ has much to deplore from
the multiplication of diseases. It is as repugnant to truth in
medicine as polytheism is to truth in religion. The physician who
considers every different affection of the different systems of the
body, or every affection of different parts of the same system, as
distinct diseases, when they arise from one cause, resembles the
 168

Indian or African savage, who considers water, dew, ice, frost and
snow as distinct essences; while the physician who considers the
morbid affections of every part of the body, however diversified they
may be in their form or degrees, as derived f rom one cause, resembles
the philosopher who considers dew, ice, frost, and snow as different
modifications of water, and as derived simply from the absence of
heat.
“ The physician who can cure one disease by a knowledge of its
principles may, by the same means, cure all the diseases of the
human body, for their causes are the sameAll disease, in short,
springs from a common cause, lack of balance somewhere in the
body itself, with inevitably lowered resistant power, and this can
only be prevented and overcome by the natural and balanced move¬
ment of the muscles within and under our own control. This is the
only way to correct that condition of the body that predisposes to
disease by strengthening and developing the body itself, or, in other
words, to prevent disease, in any of its many forms, in the individual
body.
If we can prevent it in the individual we can prevent it in the
nation, and, indeed, in the peoples of the world. But to do so with
the greatest and most beneficial results, we must begin with the
children, and see that they are from the first, safeguarded against
“ those minute departures from the normal which foretell the
coming of disease.” No man realises this more truly than Dr. Sir
George Newman himself, whose official position gives him unique
opportunities for the study of disease in childhood, and who has
seen what medical care and supervision of the children, even in a
small way, can do.
A TRAMP IN A PALACE.

If we do not take the children and educate them to know how

to build up and care for the human body, to respect the bodies
committed to their charge during their tenure of life, and to bring
their bodies into a condition of perfectly balanced strength so as to
make them impregnable to disease, no medical examinations, no feed¬
ing schemes, no housing, sanitation, or other methods of reform will
avail to prevent, much less eradicate, disease. One might as well
take an illiterate tramp from the wayside, put him in a palatial
home, dress him, and feed him well and provide him with all he
desires, and expect him to forget old associations, old ideas, old
habits without the necessary preliminary education and training.
A tramp he would still remain, and he would soon be as dirty,
 This is the physical type

that the Author would like to

see more common, for here is

a body perfectly developed in

balance in every part, and

powerfully resistant to disease,,

the result exclusively of carry¬

ing out physical movements,

as described by the Author.

Photographer, M. N. Coupee, New Zealand.

169
 170

as slovenly, as improvident and as helpless as ever, no matter how

hygienic or how pleasant his surroundings. The thing that would
suffer most would be the temporary dwelling-place he had occupied
and contaminated. So with the body of a child unschooled and
untrained to healthy and hygienic rules of life and a proper sense
of self-respect. The child must first be taught to appreciate, care
for, and to improve its own bodily dwelling, and then all things
else for health and happiness will be added unto it.
In his very thorough scheme of medical education for the
prevention of disease, I am glad to note that Sir George includes
physical training and “ the application of physiology to physical
exercise.” But I would remind him that there are few schools
where the children have not received or do not receive some form
of physical training already, and still there remains with us disease.
Why ? Because physical education and physical culture, as. a
preventive and curative of disease, has not even yet come into its
own, and while its hygienic value has been recognised since the time
of Hippocrates and even before, medical men and the people in
general have not yet realised that there is an actual science of
remedial and preventive physical movement as well as a science
of medicine, and that the former is, indeed, if anything, a more
exact science than the latter.

USING EVERY BODILY MUSCLE,

For we know every voluntary muscle of the body, and it only
remains for medical men to study just what is the exact physio¬
logical effect of the movement of any muscle or muscles on the organs,
functions, systems and even cells of the body, and apply that know¬
ledge in a scientific way, just as they do with medicine and drugs
to-day. It is only because I have made this science an exclusive
life-study and my experience is admittedly unique, that I have
been able to prove these physical methods to be so successful in
curing and preventing illness or disease in thousands of men, women
and children.
The mistake, unfortunately, that is too often made is in the
somewhat Procrustean method of forcing the individual to suit the
exercise or physical movement or some special system of exercise
and movements because doctors have not discovered how to supply
just that balanced physical movement that would suit each indi¬
vidual, and especially each individual child, and as a separate and
independent human entity.
 171

UNREVEALEO SECRETS OF THE BODY.

If medical men will study this subject as thoroughly, as deeply,

and as scientifically as they have studied medicine and disease (as
I believe they will and, indeed, must do in the future), they will be
amazed at its wonderful possibilities in the treatment, cure, and
prevention of disease. Physical therapeutics applied from the
early days of childhood will yet play a much more prominent part
in our warfare against disease, and in the prescription of physical
movement the doctor of the future will study the subject of the
living body, how to make and keep it healthy, and how to increase
the sum of human health, rather than merely how to fight disease
that might have been prevented or avoided. (Since this was written
a remarkable article and letter on the value of physical treatment as
a curative agent appeared in The Lancet. This is specially dealt
with towards the end of this hook )
It is this study of the living body—that wonderful automatic
machine, which in its marvellous intricacy, the complexity of its
mechanism and its awe-inspiring mystery and grandeur, almost
defies human intelligence and understanding and has still a million
secrets to unfold—from a biological, physiological and psychological
view-point that has been too long neglected by the medical profession,
because the tradition of the profession has been mainly clinical,
while pathology has, to a very considerable extent, usurped the place
in the medical student’s curriculum that rightly belongs to
physiology.
It is my hope yet and very soon, too, to see a few more strong
and independent medical thinkers, like Sir George Newman and Sir
Bertrand Dawson, casting aside the burdensome impedimenta of
ages-old tradition that have so long handicapped the profession,
and a new orientation taking the place of the old which devoted too
much attention to the dissection of the dead body and the study of
a diseased one rather than to mastering the wonderful mechanism
that, when properly regulated, directed and controlled, will keep
the living body in health, increase its health, and give it that
resistant power to disease which is its only sure and safe shield
under all circumstances, in all climes and at all ages of life from
the cradle to the grave.

A NEW MEDICAL STUDY.

The study of the establishment and maintenance of perfect

balance of power in every part of body and brain is in itself a work
 172

of research besides which the study of medicine and disease will

seem mean and insignificant to him who approaches it in a truly
reverent spirit, as he must do if he is to unravel the great mystery
of life and health to fathom the secrets of this marvellous and
Divinely created machine, and to woo it by patient devotion rather
than to coerce it by violent methods, until it has no longer any
confidences or reservations that conceal from us its real and most
innermost self.
True, we are at present permitted occasionally to intrude
behind the curtain, and to know something of what is going on there,
but there is still a virgin mine of immeasurable and incalculable
value as yet untouched, and, until now, beyond the ken of man.
In physiology alone, there is much rich ore waiting to be crushed,
and the exploitation of this one field will make us rich in know¬
ledge beyond the dreams of men.
When man is taught from childhood to know and understand
the many operations and activities of his body over which he can
exercise a supreme and undivided control, subject only to Divine
interposition and supremacy, he will have mastered one of the
greatest lessons of life, and if he profits by it he need no longer
remain familiar with disease, except through his own caprice,
blasphemy or neglect. It is that lesson which the man of the future
must be taught, and must begin to learn from early childhood at the
feet of skilled, competent and experienced teachers. Our medical
teachers and advisers will then have new ideals, their fundamental
notions of medical science will be completely changed, they will
prostrate themselves before the human body in its ascension towards
the zenith of health rather than in its descension towards the nadir
of disease. Thev will ask themselves not “ what is disease and how
o

can it be prevented or cured/’ but “ what is health, how can it be

attained and maintained,” and they will find the answer in a full
understanding of the supreme fact that life is movement, health is
movement, and balanced physical movement is the prime factor in
both.
In my next chapter I show, I think conclusivelv, how scientific
physical movement as I mean it can alone give us this balance and
resistant power to disease in modern times, and I explain in greater
detail just what I mean by balanced and scientific movement.
 173

CHAPTER VIII.

What is Scientific Physical Movement P

What, it may naturally be asked, are the chief points of difference

between scientific and unscientific methods of physical movement?
What, again, is meant by balance and balanced movement?
These and similar questions will naturally arise in the mind of
every inquiring reader, and it is my object here to answer them in
such a way that no one can fail to follow my arguments and grasp
my meaning. There are, I may say, many vital points of difference,
as I will now strive to make quite clear to the reader.
The far-reaching influence and importance of the voluntary
system to the economy of life and in the prevention of disease has
never before been fully understood and realised, and without the
primary recognition of this outstanding fact, physical exercise must
fail to be scientific either in its conception or execution. Let me
explain.
HEALTH BY DIVINE RIGHT.

The voluntarv muscular system is the key that operates every

conscious and sub-conscious bodily movement, and “ winds up ”
what has been called “ the human automaton/' and it does so by the
direction of our own brain and mind. It was, in fact, given to us
by the Creator for the purpose of that balanced movement which is
essential to healthy life, and which, as I have shown, was absolutely
necessary for existence in primeval days.
Through it and through it alone we can reach and develop and
strengthen in resistant power to disease every part of the body, so
that each and all of us has, by Divine right, the freedom to choose
for ourselves between health and disease, weakness and strength.
That fact has not yet been fully grasped, and until it is, no physical
exercise or training can ever succeed in building up a strong and
disease-proof bodv. The fundamental fact of scientific and
balanced physical movement may be tersely put as follows :—
The involuntarv muscles and their component cells, and, indeed,
all the cells of everv organ of the bodv, are dependent entirelv for
 174

their maintenance, health and well-being upon the voluntary

muscular system just as a helpless child is dependent for its
sustenance upon its mother. Only through it can we reach, move
and make each cell and all the cells of the body equally strong,
separately, collectively and in relationship to each other.
The recognition of this fact compels us, then, to the conclusion
that the only certain and absolute way in which we can prevent
disease, is to make and keep the body healthy, strong and power¬
fully resistant in each and all of its cells by the wise and balanced
use of these voluntary muscles, because only through them can we
develop and increase the strength and resistant power of all these
cells against disease. By the movement of the voluntary muscles
under our control we are, therefore, able to determine our own
weakness or strength, and we can only build up a strong and
disease-free body through the perfectly balanced and regulated
physical movement of all the voluntary muscles, through this move-
ment strengthening all the involuntary muscles and all the cells
of the body in harmonious relationship. The directing and con-
trolling power which we possess we also can develop and strengthen
through the balanced movement and use of all the directing brain
cells, employed in consciously “ willing ” the movement of any muscle
or group of muscles, for the brain is a thing of tissue and blood just
like the rest of the body, and every act of thinking or willing causes
a material change in the brain cells, and develops them in power and
strength.

IS DISEASE A SIN ?

To no little extent, therefore, it is true to say that disease is a

sin against our Creator, for our bodies have been placed entirely
under our own control to make or mar them at will. That is the
law which everyone should know, for ignorance of the law is no
excuse and will not save a man or woman from inevitable and
inexorable punishment in the form of physical weakness, ill-health
or disease.
When I speak of balanced physical movement I mean, briefly,
the use and development of each and every muscle or group of
voluntary muscles in proportionate degree and strength, so that
no muscle or muscle-cells will be stronger or weaker than others,
 1 /5r
*7

but all will be moved, nourished and developed in harmonious

balance and co-relationship. The importance of this in building
up a disease-proof body cannot possibly be over-rated.
It is very important, therefore, to discriminate between
physical movements conducted by scientific and exact methods and
general methods of physical training or our familiar games and
athletic sports, because an intelligent grasp of this distinction is
essential to a full understanding of the remarkable claims I advance.
The methods that I describe here may for the sake of con¬
venience be called a “ system ” (though, there is not and cannot be
any strict systematising of movements, as each person must be
dealt with according to individual age, needs, physical condition,
etc.), of physical and constitutional education and re-education,
that is intended to give us back once more that power of control
over the mind, the nerves, and the voluntary muscles which man
originally possessed in a state of nature, but which has largely
departed from us through long civilisation and non-natural habits
of life.
This self-control over our voluntary muscles was given us
because by movement alone we can live healthfully, and balanced
physical movement is essential to perfect constitutional health and
strength and to the fortification of the body against disease. The
method of utilising and developing each and all of the voluntary
muscles in absolute balance, which I am advocating, will, I contend,
give us back our splendid self-mastery, and is an essential feature
of what I call scientific physical education and culture. The great
difference between this and unscientific exercise in basic details I
will show shortly.
tj

LEARNING HOW TO BE HEALTHY.

Society in its present lowered physical condition requires some

convenient and simple method of re-educating degenerate muscles
and nerve centres, and of repairing and even re-constructing the
somewhat dilapidated physical structure of the modern man, so as
to regain perfect balance, co-ordination and control. But how?
This is the question that naturally confronts us. Some of us have
almost forgotten how to use and control our muscles and nerves to
the best health advantage; more of us are painfully ignorant of
their nature, use and possibilities; most people have yet to learn
how they can, through the voluntary muscles, place the whole bodily
system under a course of strict self-discipline, and so to bring about
N
 176

perfect team-work between all the cells of the body, which I show
is possible only in this one way.
The muscles of the body may, for the sake of convenience,
here be described as of two kinds, voluntary and involuntary,
Over certain muscles of the body we have been given complete and
direct mental control. Others, however, are directly beyond any
effort of will. For instance, you can contract the muscles of an arm
at will, increasing its substance and power by repetition of that
contraction, but you cannot by the most superhuman effort of will
directly increase the power of, say, the heart, which is, after all,
only a large involuntary muscle.
You can, however, do so indirectly by gradually increasing its
capacity to sustain effort through physical movements of the volun¬
tary muscles, which bring into play all its involuntary muscles,
including the heart. Briefly, the mere movement of any voluntary
muscle brings also into play automatically other and involuntary
muscles. This means that not only are the voluntary muscles
directly under our own mental control developed and strengthened
by movement, but that the involuntary muscles are also exercised and
developed in association.
It means, however, more than this, for through the involuntary
muscles again every individual cell of the body in all its parts,
including the cells employed by the directing brain and, the nervous
system, can also be strengthened and developed in proportion by
these movements, because you cannot develop one group of cells in
the body without in some degree improving the physical condition
of all the others.

NATURE’S “WEEDING OUT.”

All the bodily cells, in short, must keep in step with the move-
wwMTimwM^MmnMmTTmrnMMnTMnwrMnnnBiBTMwnTBminnTMmnmii ■ imiii ~i n iibii riia n ihiimi mi t in mum mu m n ■—!■■■■—■!— i ■mu ■■

ment of the voluntary muscles or they will die through lack of

movement and consequent innutrition. If, in response to the
increased exertion demanded of them by the voluntary muscles, they
are able to assimilate nutrition faster than they expend the force
brought to them by the blood, they will become healthier and stronger
and more reproductive. If waste exceeds repair, however, they will
become weak and eventually die. The cells of the body must, in
short, develop with the developing voluntary muscles especially when
all are moved in perfect balance, or thev are “ weeded out ” by the
stern relentless laws of Nature, while the younger and fitter cells
left will multiply more rapidly, producing, in their turn, still better
 177

cells of their own species, until every organ and muscle and system
is perfect in every cell, and perfect balance is established and
maintained between all the bodily cells.
God created man in the beginning—even the stoutest Dar¬
winians agree that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation
-but the process of evolution since his creation from the single
protoplasmic cell to the many-celled man, as we know him to-day,
was a process extending over incalculable thousands of years, though
what may seem aeons to us would seem infinitesmal to the Creator,
wrhose measure of Time is not a clock but Eternity.
From the very beginning, however, man was, as he still is, a
being created and designed to live by movement, as was each
individual cell of the billions of cells that compose his wonderful
body and brain.

GIVING THE CELLS AN APPETITE.

Movement, as I have shown, is the great law of life throughout

the Universe. In the human body, it may truly be said that nothing
moves alone, and the slightest muscular action, voluntary or involun¬
tary, is like the movement of a little wheel or cog of a wheel that
immediately brings into action numerous other and larger wheels,
or that like a pebble flung into a pond sends waves undulating even
to its remotest corners. As I have already explained, the cells of
the body, being mutually associated and inter-dependent, the move¬
ment of one or more implies movement in others also. For instance,
you cannot flex the biceps of your arm without bringing millions of
cells in various organs and systems into action.
This simple action, slight though it seems, used up the force
supplied by the blood to the cells of which the muscles that made
the movement are composed, and many muscles are employed in the
act. Immediately, a call is made from the cells of the muscles
directly moved, the circulatory and digestive systems and the blood
hurry up the necessary supplies to make good this expenditure of
force used in the movement. In simple English, all muscular move¬
ment sets up a demand from certain cells for food to replace wraste.
To satisfy this demand, you eat, let us say, a ham sandwdch.
Numerous other cells are at once set moving to convert this bread
and meat into an assimilable form, then to transport it by the blood
not only to the voluntary muscles and muscle-cells moved, but also
to the other cells of the body, which have also been called upon to
work harder in preparing and transforming the food into a suitable
 178

form from which the various kinds of bodily cells can extract the
nutrient suitable for the manufacture and maintenance of flesh,
blood, bone and cartilage, nerve, muscle, tendon, ligament, and
sinew, artery, vein and capillary, etc., in short, for each and every
tissue of the various systems and organs.
In other words, the one simple voluntary movement of the
muscles necessary to contract the biceps of the arm provides employ¬
ment for millions and millions of living cells, that must “ get busy ”
and “ keep moving ” to repair the waste caused by this apparently
simple muscular effort.

WHAT MOVING A MUSCLE MEANS.

All these cells, as a result of this voluntary movement are, in

short, developed, strengthened, increased in vigour and become
more reproductive of other cells, because they themselves have to
move more actively to do the added work, and consequently demand
and receive more nourishment, air and the chemical elements
essential to life. They breed faster, because more working cells are
required to assist in this labour of life, and this multiplication of
cells especially takes place in the voluntary muscles. In this way,
the whole bodily community of cell-workers and cell-fighters is
improved in individual health and vigour.
If this can be accomplished by one simple muscular movement
such as that described, it is easy to understand then that when we
exercise all the voluntary muscles in equal degree and balance as I
suggest, perfectly balanced strength is established everywhere
among all the cells of the body, and this perfectly balanced strength
everywhere is the secret of health, resistant power, and freedom,
therefore, from disease.
In such a simple act as I have described, of course, the results
would scarcely be perceptible, but think what can be accomplished
by a great number and variety of such movements, if applied
scientifically and continually to the body from childhood, bringing
into play in absolute balance every voluntary and involuntary
muscle of the body and all the cells of the body in association.
Is it not evident, then, that the fine and vigorous muscular
condition of the external and visible body when so developed is and
must be the mirror of the internal body, and that the superficial and
visible muscles of the body must give us a fair index to the internal
organic condition of the body
 Q
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Author, and their instructor.

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179
iso
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Another beautiful tableau formed by Colonial enthusiasts trained according to these method
 181

BALANCED AND UNBALANCED STRENGTH.

Circumstances, of course, vary and are influenced by many con¬

siderations, and it might very easily, of course, be possible for a man
with an abnormal development of some muscles to have, say,
occasional functional disturbances in other parts of the body,
because the excessive development of these muscles deprives, to a
certain extent, these other parts of the body of their fair and equal
share of nourishments. The cells of these specially developed
muscles become pampared, as it were, in comparison with, and at
the expense of other cells elsewhere, which explains their hvper-
development. This is why it is essential to the upbuilding of a
really disease-proof body that all, or nearly all, the voluntary muscles
are given movement in due balance and relationship, or, otherwise,
there must be weak spots somewhere liable at any moment to succumb
to disease.
A trained professional pugilist, or other champion in any form
of sport, might, for instance, though magnificently muscular in
appearance, and apparently healthy and strong, be an easy prey to
disease, simply through the want of physical and organic balance,
and the over-development of certain muscles to the detriment of
others. What is generally regarded as a strong man might be weak
in the sense I use, i.e., weak tending towards disease, unless his
strength were perfectly balanced in every part; and the strongest
man in some particular direction need not necessarily be the
healthiest or the most disease-proof, unless his strength is in perfect
balance in every part of his body.
Again, even the most perfect type of all-round muscular man¬
hood might be prostrated with some slight functional trouble tem¬
porarily, such as, say, indigestion, through worry or tainted food,
or some other cause, without any serious effect showing on his
muscular development for some time, but if long continued, the
superficial muscles would soon begin to lose both size and quality, as
the internal organism also deteriorated through the degenerative
effect of the lack of movement of certain cells in an organism that
demands and needs movement for healthy existence.

OUTWARD MAN MIRRORS THE INTERNAL MAN.

On the other hand, you would never expect to see a confirmed

dvspeptic develop into a good muscular tvpe, no matter what he
were to eat or what exercise he took, until by special physical move-
 182

ments he first developed and strengthened the particular muscles

associated with digestion and assimilation of food, or, as I explain
in another chapter, until his weak and disordered digestive system
were replaced by a new and healthy one.
You will agree then, that to a very considerable degree, at least,
the external and visible man proclaims the internal and invisible
man, and that only the carefully balanced movement of the voluntary
muscles to suit each individual’s special needs and physical require¬
ments can build up an internally and externally healthy and disease-
free body.
Glance, for instance, at the contrasting types of men, women
and children in this book, and ask yourself which is the more likely
to escape disease, those whose fine visible and balanced muscular
development proclaims a life of balanced physical movement or those
weak, almost muscle-less, and flabby persons who have neglected or
innocently transgressed the law of healthy life, and whose photos
are but typical of the average human being to-day. The grand
and visible physical development in symmetry and balance of the
one mirrors a body as healthy organically within as the puny and
ill-balanced physique of the other may be safely assumed to indicate
internal disease or weakness that tends towards disease.
Through the physical movement of the voluntary muscles, then,
we can develop the individual health. Thus through voluntary and
balanced physical movement, we can have a permanent cellular army
of defence and offence against disease, strong both individually and
collectively. And the greater the number of cells, and the greater
their individual and collective strength, the more powerful the body
is to resist and conquer disease, and the greater your vital reserves.

A PROCESS OF CELLULAR EVOLUTION.

In the case of children, such a method of physical reconstruction

will not only give us healthier children in the present generation,
but must progressively improve the “ breed ” of children in each
generation, by cellular evolution, and scientific methods of training
both body and mind in perfect balance will give us perfectly healthy
and disease-proof men and women, physically and mentally. When
the present ignorance of body and health culture has thus been
dissipated, we will come to regard disease as a crime rather than
a misfortune, except in very rare cases where accident or some
unavoidable “ act of God,” to use a well-known legal phrase,
intervened.
 183

Physiologically, then, a life of physical movement and activity

in harmonious bodily balance, such as man was ordained to live from
the beginning, and to which we must return as far as is conformable
with modern conditions of life, means the upbuilding of more
and better cells in every system of the body, each and all of which
are more able to resist and defeat disease. Let me now explain
this, as promised, in greater physiological detail.
The movement of the voluntary muscles and their cells, for
instance, consumes or destroys the force contained in the cells and
at once enlists the services of the digestive cells to renew it and make
good the waste, as I have just shown, because the muscle cells
through this movement and expenditure of force naturally demand
more nourishment and the digestive cells, for the same reason, also
demand more food to enable them to do the work necessary to supply
these vital essentials. To replenish the waste of the cells of the
voluntary muscles, the chemical cells have also to provide chemical
elements that have been consumed by the movement, and these too,
must in turn, be better nourished and oxygenated. The voluntary
muscular movement also calls upon the heart cells to pump the blood
faster through its channels, upon the cells of the lungs to breathe
quicker and deeper, and in other ways, upon the cells of the liver,
kidneys, intestines, skin, and, in short, every system and organ, so
that all of these, through the voluntary muscles receive that physical
movement which is essential for their existence and well-being,
demand and receive more food and become better nourished,
stronger, and more efficient, while their waste and poisonous products
are more freely excreted.
They also become more capable of multiplying their species
faster, and of an ever-increasingly better quality, until the limit of
physical perfection in reached in every part of the body, and the
body is made far too strong in all its cells and tissues to fall before
disease. Even the directing brain and nerve cells, as I have said,
are developed by this scientific muscular movement for the brain
cells controlling and directing these movements have to send a
message along the nerve routes to the muscles implicated, and the
directing brain and nerve cells are themselves thus developed and
strengthened hv movement. All the brain cells, in fact, are
stimulated by these movements through the increased flow of rapidly
changing blood recharged continuously with fresh supplies of food
and air to the brain, so that such balanced movement is beneficial
.•alike both to mind and body.
 184
THE POWER THAT RESISTS DISEASE.
The great value, therefore, of physical movement in balance that
employs each and every voluntary muscle of the body, and certain
directing cells of the brain, must be apparent after this explanation,
even to one who has little or no knowledge of anatomy or physiology;
while, conversely, it must be evident that lack of movement in any
part leads inevitably to the decay and death of many cells, lowers
the combative efficiency, individually and collectively, of the bodily
community, depletes the numerical strength of the cellular army of
workers and fighters, thus rendering it in time an easy prey to
disease.
Health and strength, indeed, simply mean that the body has a
populous and efficient community of living cells, workers and
fighters, all equal in strength and vitality, sufficient in number and
collectively and individually powerful enough in vitality to resist
and defeat disease. In other words, health means resistant power
to disease, and resistant power is simply the perfect balance and
strength in every cell of the body which ensures a high reserve of
vitality. Disease, on the other hand, shows that the cells fire
either not sufficient in number or not sufficiently healthy and strong
in themselves individually or jointly or are unbalanced in strength
in one or more parts, with not sufficient vigour and fighting power
to defeat the enemy in the part or parts attacked.
Without balanced physical movement and the resultant
balanced physical fitness of all the cells, the body must, indeed,
become “ an unweeded garden,” for it will also lack perfect internal
and organic balance.
VALUE OF AMBIDEXTERITY.

Let me explain now what I mean by perfect physical and

organic balance. I mean that first within the body itself there must
be a correct balance between assimilation and elimination, between
organ and function and muscle and nerve, between the mental.,
nervous and muscular svstems, between each and everv species of
bodil v cells, between all the cells of anv particular species of cells,
between everv cell in everv part of the bodv, and, finallv, that nice
adjustment and total adaptation of the bodv to its environment all
of which ensures perfect health and freedom from disease. The
failure of this balance in anv one or more parts means the loss of
balance and imperfect adjustment to environment, and lavs the bodv
or some part of the bodv open to disease.
 185

Lack of balance in any part means, then, disproportionate

development and strength between one or more species of cells and
the rest, because through lack of balance the food is not equally
distributed and equally consumed, which creates weakness in one
part in comparison with others, and so throws the whole machinery
of the body out of balance.
How or why, it may naturally be asked, is the food not equally
distributed and consumed through lack of balance ? In the first
place, food is sent by Nature where it is most needed after any move¬
ment is carried out with inevitable expenditure of force, and the
amount of supplies necessary for any cell or cells is determined by the
force such cells expend in movement. The less the force spent in
any physical movement by any cells the less food and air required to
make good the waste. And, remember, it is not always the actual
feat performed that causes the greater destruction of this force and
leads to an increased supply of food and air, but rather the effort
relatively necessary to perform any feat, and the force actually con¬
sumed in the movement
A trained weight-lifter can lift, say, 2001bs. with less effort and
less expenditure of force than an untrained and weaker man can lift
lOOlbs., but the extra effort and expenditure of the latter would
bring greater supplies to the cells used in his case than in the former
to replace the extra expenditure. The relative effort and expendi¬
ture of force in the latter case is much greater than in the former,
and the cells, in consequence, receive more supplies of food and air
than the cells of the former, though both get food and air in propor¬
tion according to the amount of force consumed by the movement.
To make this clearer, take the muscle of the right arm as an
instance. In most people to-day the right arm is naturally stronger
than the left. Now, supposing exactly the same number of move¬
ments had to be performed by both arms alike. It might naturally
be supposed that both would continue to develop equally, and that
the right arm would always be the stronger as it was at the beginning
of the movements. This, however, is not so if the movements are
scientifically carried out, that is, with the maximum of effort and
mental concentration on the muscles moved.
In the first place. Nature sets a limit to the development of power
in a muscle. Now, the right arm being almost invariably stronger
will reach that limit first,"provided both arms carry out exactly the
same movements and number of movements daily. Let us say there
are 25 movements for each arm with a 21b. dumb-bell. The cells of
 186

the left arm being weaker than those of the right will have to make
a far greater effort and expenditure of force to move that 21b. weight
the same number of times than those of the right arm. In fact, the
cells of the left arm are doing work and consuming force equal to the
weight of lifting, say. 3, 4, or 51bs. compared with the effort the
right arm is called upon to make, while the cells of the right arm do
not need to expend force in anything like the same ratio as they,
being stronger, do the work easily and with less effort and less
destruction of force.
The result is that the cells of the left arm having more waste to
be repaired through this extra expenditure will receive from boun¬
teous Nature more supplies of food and air to build up more and
better tissue in its place and even to build it stronger than before,
through exactly the same movement or number of movements. This,
too, will continue until the left arm becomes equal in power to the
right. When Nature has re-established the balance between them,
the cells of both arms will receive equal supplies, because the effort
and expenditure of force will now be equal (as both arms are now
equally strong), so long as the same movements and number of move¬
ments are continued with both arms and the same weight lifted with
both.
Now this applies to every voluntary muscle of the body also and
the cells of all the voluntary muscles, and we have seen how these
muscles and muscle cells are the keys that wind up the whole involun¬
tary machinery of life. When, therefore, we move all the muscles in
balance the weaker muscles and cells being called upon to expend
more force than the other and stronger ones are continually receiving
greater supplies of food and air than the others, and are thus gradu¬
ally made stronger and to multiply in greater number, producing
always better cells of their own species, until all the cells of the
voluntary muscles and through them the cells of every part of the
body are developed, or, as it were, evolved in perfectly balanced and
proportionate strength up to the limit set by Nature and as Nature
intended them to be, leaving no weak spots anywhere to succumb to
disease. This is what I describe here as a body developed in per¬
fectly balanced strength, where each voluntary muscle and its cells
are developed to their maximum power, as are the involuntary
muscles and their cells, and all in due proportion and harmonious
relationship to one another, with consequently increased resistant
power to disease, and, indeed, disease-proof.
It will be seen, therefore, that the physical movement applied to
any part of the body means its better nutrition, better oxygenation
 187

and greater freedom from waste and poisonous contamination, and

that balanced physical movement is the pivot upon which depends,
the equal and balanced supply and distribution of nutriment and
oxygen, and upon which every organ and system and cell rely for their
healthy freedom from waste and toxic matter.
Now, I merely use the illustration of the two arms just described
for the purpose of making quite clear to every reader the physiology
of balanced physical movement, but, of course, this does not touch the
very important question of correct diagnosis and the scientific and
successful prescription of physical movement for one who is ill or
diseased or weak in some part of the body towards disease. This
is a much more difficult matter, for naturally the personal equation
enters into the calculation. Now let me again, to simplify matters,
take the same illustration as before. As it is now evident that the
cells in any muscle, organ, limb, or part of the body are nourished,
developed and made to multiply more rapidly in proportion to the
effort and expenditure of force made by any given number of move¬
ments, so long as these are not carried to the point of fatigue and
fatigue toxins generated, the food and air taken into the body to
nourish these cells would, as I have shown, be equally divided when
there is the same expenditure of force. So, to accelerate both the
consumption of cellular force and the consequent nutrition of the
weaker cells of the left arm, it would be necessary to prescribe a
greater number of movements in their case. This is what I mean
when I speak in my next chapter of accelerating metabolism. The
stronger cells of the right arm would have only to be given sufficient
movement to keep them strong and healthy for the elimination of
waste and poisonous matter, and would naturally require less
nourishment in return because of their less expenditure of force. So,
by careful prescription, the share of the nourishment that would
otherwise go to the stronger cells of the right arm in equal propor¬
tion, can be partly diverted for the benefit of the weaker cells, in pro¬
portion to the force they are expending or destroying. This also
applies to every muscle and every cell of the body as I have just
explained.
Here, then, enters the delicate and difficult problem of diagnosis.
No man should be better qualified for this diagnosis and prescription
than a medical man, for he has already a good knowledge of diagnos¬
ing and treating disease, and a sound knowledge of anatomy, physio¬
logy and pathology, but, unfortunately, the medical profession has
not given any study to the subject of physical therapeutics, which is
now fully explained in these pages for the first time.
 188

In fact, up to now, nobody has been able to explain clearly and

fully the physiological and pathological value of physical movement
from the cellular point of view, for the simple reason that no one has
ever before made it the subject of deep and exclusive study. In a
general way, the value of exercise has been appreciated and recog¬
nised for ages, but its power to promote cellular reconstruction and
cellular function, with improved metabolism and the continual
evolution of better and better cells, has never yet been understood.
Yet it is to the cell that we must ultimately look for the prevention
and eradication of disease, for it is only by making cells so uniformly
strong and healthy that they will not become diseased in themselves
or succumb to disease microbes from without, that we can ever hope to
banish disease entirely from the human body.
The cell holds the secret of humanity’s immunity from disease,
and it is this microscopic speck of living matter millions of times
multiplied that constitutes the human body in all its organs, parts
and systems, and through which alone we can solve the riddle of the
ages since the dawn of civilisation, viz., of how to again rehabilitate
the human body in all its pristine physical grandeur and freedom
from disease of everv kind. Until medical men realise this, and
understand that by physical movement alone, scientifically applied,
can we reach each and every cell, give it the movement it needs to
live, and so reconstruct the whole cellular body and evolve a body
disease-immune by making its every cell immune they must not
expect to prescribe physical movement successfully.
Before prescribing physical movements, the patient’s condition
or disease must be thoroughly and most accurately diagnosed, for
some diseases naturally of themselves must largely determine the
nature and number of movements to be prescribed. Some knowledge
of the patient’s family history may also, in some cases, be advisable,
for the purpose of noting any inherited weakness towards disease.
Accurate information must also be obtained as to the patient’s
age, occupation (very important, especially in neurasthenic cases, to
regulate expenditure of energy), physical condition (with special
observation of the state of the heart), blood pressure, on arteries and
veins, state of the nervous system, etc., before prescribing any move¬
ments. Then, again, very great skill, experience and care is
necessary to prescribe just such movements as will exactly meet
each individual’s requirements, to keep such movements always
subjective to the state of the heart and the nervous system,
also to understand how to grade and vary the movements
and the number of movements to suit each case, and in
 :

A study in bal ance. 1 he type of manhood we want to see , and which we can
have by the methods of physical education advocated, Weaklings are not
likely to spring from such a parent stock. The photo is of Mr. E. Powell, of
Dublin.
 A Modern Venus.
Type of woman whose body has been developed in the scientific way
described here. This is the feminine type the State needs for the mothering
of children who will!be a credit and a source of strength to the nation.
 191

accordance with a patient’s progress and improvement. The exact

physiological influence and sphere of physiological influence of each
and every movement on organ, function and cell must be known and
understood, and, indeed, a knowledge and study of man from a biolo¬
gical, anatomical, physiological, pathological, and psychological
viewpoint. Such a subject may well, to use Dr. Sir George New¬
man’s phrase, be in “ the very vanguard of physical therapeutics,”
and that is why I suggest in this book that it should be added to
every student’s curriculum, for it is a subject which doctors and
students have vet to master.

MOVEMENT MUST NOT BE SUB-CONSCIOUS.

Physical education and bodily culture such as is described here,

demands, in the first place, organised knowledge of the living body
and all its requirements, at least in a strictly physical sense, with
the skilful application of such knowledge by qualified and competent
persons, preferably by medical men themselves or under trained
medical direction, and the intelligent employment by the individual
of muscles under his own control, so as to cause them to act upon
the involuntary muscles that are responsible for all those internal
bodily activities and movements, which are implied in the word
function.
The doctor who employs this method of physical therapeutics
must know the exact number and relationship of movements
necessary for any muscle or group of muscles to secure or restore
perfect balance internally and externally.
The human body has only so many voluntary muscles, each
having its own special duty in the body, capable of a certain number
and variety of movements (though these, of course, can be blended
in many combinations) and it should always be possible, therefore,
for any qualified medical man, with a little study and experience,
to select, vary and combine any or all of these movements of the
voluntary muscles as required to suit each or any individual, and to
reach and develop every individual cell of the body, or specific groups
of cells to restore balance. It will thus be seen how far-reaching
must the study of this subject be.
These voluntary movements can be applied locally or generally
as needed in each individual case, for no two individuals are alike
owing to the varied conditions of civilised life. The movements
must be selected, combined, varied and graduated, and so applied
as to ensure a healthy balance everywhere, while at the same time
o
 192

enabling the pupil or patient to put by a sufficient and ample reserve

of vitality to meet unexpected demands and emergencies.
When physical movement is thus prescribed to suit each indi¬
vidual, and afterwards carried out as I describe, it cannot fail to
lead to life on a higher, healthier, and, therefore, happier plane.
By such physical movement, we can regain lost weight, lost muscular
power, lost nerve tone, improve every bodily function, and toughen
the bodily tissue and fibre so as to make it impregnable against
disease.
But voluntary physical movement may be carried to the point of
fatigue, overstrain and exhaustion, or movements may be ill-chosen,
ill-arranged, and too severe for the physical condition of the pupil
or patient. This makes the most exact individual study and
diagnosis always advisable before physical movement is prescribed
for either adults or children, and explains why remedial or cura¬
tive movements, at least, should preferably be prescribed by one who
has thoroughly studied and mastered the whole subject of producing
a perfectly balanced organism by balanced physical movement.
When we realise then, how important it is to obtain and main¬
tain balanced strength among all the cells not only of the body but
of the brain, it is scarcely necessary to point out the value of training
either a child or an adult to the equal use of both arms and legs and
to the equal employment and development of all the muscles on both
sides of the bodv Ambidexterous development, indeed, is absolutely
necessary in establishing perfect balance between the body and the
cells of both lobes of the brain, for unless both sides of the body are
equally developed both the brain and the body must be imperfectly
developed and balanced.
The training of the muscles of both the right and left sides of
the body not only helps to ensure better bodily balance everywhere,
but means the development physically of a stronger and better
balanced brain, making the acquisition and assimilation of know¬
ledge and the exercise of self-control, both easier and more perfect.
However, this important phase of educational physical culture I
have dealt with at greater length in another chapter of this book.

IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUAL TREATMENT.

The scientific education of the voluntary muscles must be

carried out so gradually that progress is almost imperceptible.
 193

Milo Uearnt to lift the ox, because he first began to lift it when it
was a new-born calf and continued to lift it daily as it grew and
increased in weight. An athlete does not attempt to win a long¬
distance race without a course of carefully graduated training to
improve his strength, pace and stamina if he expects to prove a
victor. And muscle or muscular power, never for a moment forget,
is just as essential for life and perfect health as for feats of
strength, speed and stamina, and can only be developed in balance by
the judiciously balanced movement of all or nearly all the voluntary
muscles.
It is most important that these voluntary movements are never
allowed to become automatic or sub-conscious, as they would lose
their effect, just like work repeated in a mechanical way day after
day. The pupil or patient must be taught and trained to concen¬
trate his or her mind on the muscle or muscles brought into play by
each movement or movements, and to put his or her utmost effort
into each and every moment as it is made, and also to understand
the object and results of such movement, for this also develops the
directing power of the mind and teaches a person how to regain
complete control over the muscle or muscles moved. (The reader
will find this subject very fully explained from the curative point of
view in the chapter entitled “ How and Why Scientific Physical
Movement Cures Disease.”)

EXERCISING MIND AND MUSCLE.

I want particularly to emphasise the importance of this intense

mental concentration on the muscle or muscles employed while
making any movement, and also of exerting the maximum of possible
muscular power in making it, for this is what I may call the ABC
of such a system as I am now advocating for general use.
To make quite clear, then, what I mean by the maximum of
effort when contracting any muscle or muscles, let me give a homely
example, one wdiich, indeed, gave me the germinal idea from which
the methods I advocate have only been extended and elaborated.
Watch a baby as it awakes from sleep. Its first movements
are to stretch and yawn, putting every ounce of unrestricted effort
into the movement. Probably this is done once or twice before it
is fully awake,and its little arms tremble from the amount of effort
put forth in the sub-conscious contraction of practically every muscle
 194

in its body. Indeed, it is not too much to say that every voluntary
muscle is contracted to the fullest extent.
Now, why does Nature give us this instinct even from child¬
hood? There must be a reason, for Nature is essentially logical
and never trusts to guesswork. The reason is this. During the
night, waste and toxic matter has accumulated in the system, and
Nature prompts this natural contraction or exercise of all the
muscles, to help in its elimination. That natural and involuntary
contraction of all the muscles, though only carried out once or twice,
achieves Nature’s object by squeezing all this toxic matter and
helping in its elimination.
But that contraction was sub-conscious and was directed by
Nature. I want to see men and women taught from childhood how
to contract their muscles consciously in the same way, and with
full mental concentration upon the muscles or set of muscles moved,
and how to do it on a much larger scale, employing all the muscles
or any muscle or separate group of muscles as desired, to bring the
body into perfect balance in and between all its parts. I have no
“ system ” in the meaning of that word, as generally understood
when applied to physical exercise. What, for convenience, I call a
“ system ” is based entirely on Nature and Nature’s laws, and my
part is only the enlargement and broader application of the simple
and instructive act performed by the baby in its cradle.
The “ system ” I advocate is simply the outcome of this and
similar observations and of a life-long study of Nature and especially
of human nature, and I am merely doing what modern engineers have
done with the waters of Niagara, harnessing Nature for the benefit
of humanity, and finding in a baby’s cradle the secret of health just
as Newton discovered the law of gravitation in the simple falling of
an apple from the tree.

HEALTHY ACTIVITY IN “TABLOID” FORM.

Moreover, it is only in this way that it is possible to provide

mankind to-day with the equivalent of his primeval physical
activity in a compressed or tabloid form just as Nature provides it
for the baby.
Taking my cue, as it were from Nature, I have studied Nature’s
methods and laws and applied Nature’s lessons in a scientific way.
Man has not yet surpassed Nature in any sphere of life, and just as
our greatest inventions have been anticipated by Nature so in the
 195

prevention and healing of disease the doctor must learn from Nature
and adapt and utilise her methods. When medical men know and
understand how to employ natural physical movement either locally
or generally as required so as to build up a body in perfect balance
everywhere or to restore an ill-balanced one, they will know and
understand how to conquer, prevent, and eliminate disease.
When men and women have re-learnt the very old lesson of
contracting and relaxing any or all of the voluntary muscles in the
manner I have described, the contraction being made with the
maximum of effort, as Nature prompts in the cradled baby, they
will have mastered the true secret of health and the best method of
combating disease in a natural and tabloid form. They will have
learnt how to extend still further and apply the great natural law
which is the basis of healthy life, and to provide compensation for
the physical inactivity inseparable from modern civilised habits.
Only in this way, too, can a person be taught to regain lost
control over the muscles and the nervous system, and only in this
way can he or she learn how to completely relax muscles and nerves
in equal degree to the contraction as thoroughly as does the healthy
baby when it lies down to sleep. For, as the relaxation of a muscle
should be equal in degree to its contraction, it will be seen at once
how important is this intense mental concentration and muscular
effort in teaching one also how to completely relax a muscle or group
of muscles completely, or all the muscles when and as desired, while
it is only by such fully conscious mental and muscular effort that we
can also reach and develop the brain cells controlling and directing
the muscles, and sympathetically the cells and nerve-centres which
give us control over the nervous system, thus leading to the re¬
establishment of that complete control over the whole body which
has almost become extinct in the human species.
Children, of course, must be most carefully educated to this
power of maximum effort and mental concentration on the muscles
moved, as I describe later in the chapter on “ The Machinery of
National Physical Training.” In this way, both children and adults
can be taught to completely relax muscles and nerves at the direction
of their mind and will, and attain to that condition of repose and
serenity which is the high-tide mark of health.

THE REPOSE OF PERFECT HEALTH.

Tennyson was something of a physiologist, and when he spoke

of “ that repose which stamps the class of Vere de Vere,” he uttered
 196

a deep physiological truth, for such self-mastery indicated the

possession of a standard of health rarely to be found in the poor or
even in the nouveau riche, but which comes from centuries-old habits
and standards of healthful living and life, such as I hope may yet
become the common inheritance of all.
Let me now show by a simple illustration the value of conscious
movement, such as I describe, as distinct from comparatively sub¬
conscious and imperfect physical movement which is the kind of
physical exercise usually taught and practised to-day. The black¬
smith whose daily labour calls upon him to swing the heavy hammer
which, in the familiar words of the poet, makes “ the muscles of his
brawny arms as strong as iron bands,’’ does so sub-consciously,
because his mind is not concentrated on the muscles moved in the
operation but is engrossed wholly with the work that has to be
accomplished.
The movements, therefore, are sub-conscious, and the cells of
the muscles employed are only developed in strength sufficient to
perform that work. As a result, the strength of the blacksmith
remains stationary, after a certain stage has been reached, and the
cells of the muscles used do not continue increasing in number,
youthfulness or vigour, because they are allowed to live long after
they have reached and passed their highest standard of efficiency.

PUTTING YOUR MIND INTO YOUR MUSCLES.

On the other hand, if another man carried out similar move¬

ments, even for a much shorter time, with a much lighter hammer,
or even without any hammer or other weight, but with his mind fully
concentrated on the muscles moved and full muscular effort through¬
out each movement, this conscious movement would develop and go
on developing his muscles until he became stronger even than the
blacksmith. In his case, there would be the continual birth of new,
younger and stronger cells, and this would continue just as long as
he continued this conscious movement as I have described, until he
reached his highest possible physical standard so far as these
particular muscles were concerned. After a time he would be able
to wield a much heavier hammer than the blacksmith, because there
would be a continuous supply of young and more vigorous cells each
better and stronger in their generation than the preceding one.
This is what I refer to when I speak of cellular evolution.
But if this man, in turn, began to carry out these movements
 197

sub-consciously like the blacksmith this would no longer be the case,

and his strength would decline to just sufficient to carry out the work
automatically. The conscious movement of the muscles keeps the
cells always in their youthful prime, and keeps “ breeding," as it
were, cells of an ever-increasing vigour and quality.
In both these cases, however, this particular development of one
set of muscles while others are neglected must result in lack of
balance both externally and internally, as I have already explained,
and it is only when all the voluntary muscles are thus moved
consciously and in balance that we can produce the perfectly
balanced and disease-free body.
Of course, once this natural and perfect balance has been
obtained, games, sports and even physical labour will, to some
extent, go far to maintain this balance, especially if one has been
so schooled from childhood as I suggest. But it is always preferable
in modern life that, in addition, each and all of the voluntary muscles
should be given a few contractions daily in turn, no matter what the
nature of one's sports or occupation may be.

WHERE GAMES AND SPORTS FAIL.

You will see, then, how vitally important this conscious con¬
centration on the muscle or muscles used is in any system of physical
education, for without it there can be no truly scientific foundation.
Here, too, is another difference between the training I am advocating
and physical exercise in which the movements are carried out in a
sub-conscious and ineffective manner. In the same way does the
method I advocate differentiate scientific physical education and
training for games and sports in which the mind is centred mainly
on the game itself or on the winning of the game and not on the
movements that the individual is performing in the game or the
muscles that are performing the movements. The movements, in
fact, are not carried out consciously as physical exercise, and so the
cells do not develop in balance as they would do by the scientific and
balanced movement of all the voluntary muscles.
In games, onlv such muscles as are necessary in the games are
called into play, and, consequently, certain cells employed in the
muscles more moved than others are better nourished and developed
while others suffer neglect. Thus certain cells, as in the case of the
blacksmith, remain stationary, while others through lack of move¬
ment, are deprived of necessary nourishment and exercise. Con¬
scious and balanced movement of all the muscles alone, or, at least,
 198

nearly all those muscles under our control, will develop the body in
harmonious balance and so make it impregnable to disease. It is not
for me to condemn games or gymnastics, but merely to say that help¬
ful though all or any of these may be, as a recreation for those who
are physically fit to take part in them, they are not to be recom¬
mended either for adults or children, until at least a child or
adolescent has reached a certain physical and constitutional standard
of fitness and health, as harm may result in many cases through over¬
strain and physical efforts of an unbalanced nature. In modern life,
time does not permit the expenditure of time necessary to indulge in
games sufficiently varied to exercise all the bodily muscles, and indeed
the physical body to-day would not be able to stand the physical
strain.
REBUILDING THE NATIONS CHILDREN.

All that we can do, therefore, is to enlist scientific knowledge,

thought and experience, and to adopt methods by which each indi¬
vidual citizen, from childhood to old age, can obtain balanced physical
movement, easily and without interference with his or her daily
circumstances of life, and atone, as far as in humanly possible, for
the deficiency due to the enforced conditions of modern civilised life.
Such a method must be scientific in its conception, organisation and
administration. It must be based on a sound knowledge of anatomy,
physiology, and pathology, and it must be State encouraged, if not,
indeed, State endowed, as I have already pointed out, and have
behind it the loyal support and service of the whole medical pro¬
fession, and, indeed, of the whole nation.
It must take a liberal and sweeping view, not only of the actual
physical welfare of citizens, but also of those well-meaning efforts for
the better conditioning of the people in every way which are auxili¬
ary to it. Over and above all, however, those responsible for such a
system of education must ever keep in mind the outstanding fact that
man himself only lives, moves and has his being by and through
muscular movement, that lack of balanced movement means physical
deterioration and disease, and that to approximate more and more
closely as far as possible to natural primitive life and physical
activity is to diminish and prevent disease and finally to eliminate it
altogether.
By these means, too, it is, I argue, possible to literally and
actually rebuild a new body, a new system, organ, muscle or limb by
operating in conjunction with the natural changes ever going on in
the body, as described in the following chapter.
 199

CHAPTER IX.

The Physiology of Bodily Re-construction.

As everyone with even a slight knowledge of physiology knows, all

the cells and tissues of the body are in a state of perpetual unrest
and change, so much so that we are literally re-born every few years
by the regular and continuous birth of new bodily cells. Our whole
future health and well-being are dependent entirely on the nature
and character of the new cells to which birth is ever being given.
It is my purpose now to show that by the application of specific
and balanced voluntary muscular movements, in a scientific way
such as I have just described, we can steadily improve all these
cells in quality and increase them in number and efficiency until we
attain to a cellular perfection that makes the whole body in all or
any of its parts free from disease or any weakness that would make
it a victim to disease.
The lightest thought, the slightest movement, the most casual
feeling or emotion causes waste in the brain or body, and this waste
has to be removed from the system or it would remain and putrefy,
tending towards illness and disease through what medical men call
auto-toxication, while new material also has to be supplied in its
place. This work of elimination, like all the work of the body, has
to be done by muscles or muscular cells, partly under our direct
control and partly reached only through the involuntary muscles.
In its place, food and air supply, or should supply through the blood,
new material containing all the elements of which the cells are
composed in equal if not greater quantity, to repair and make good
the waste. For we now know that the cell itself is not destroyed by
muscular movement, but only the force contained in and brought to
it by the blood.

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE BODY.

Now I am going to demonstrate my truly amazing claim, viz.,

that by balanced physical movement of the voluntary muscles,
 200

scientifically applied, we can re-build not only a new but a better

body in every part, but also a better body than we actually had at
birth, and quite as strong in every way as when man was first
created in the very prime of his existence. Mow ? By building
the new body with better cells through what I may call conscious
evolution—that is, the conscious application of all our knowledge
and experience gained through the centuries, and scientifically
organised—to these ever-changing cells of the body. I hope also to
be able to show that it is now possible for us to build up better,
healthier and disease-defying bodies with much less and more
agreeable physical effort than our ancestors, because our present
knowledge enables us to apply physical movements far more
effectively than those of primitive life casually performed without
any particular objective except the immediate one of fighting
enemies or securing food.
This method, which I discovered (and am still studying), after
careful observation and study, unremitting thought and a unique
experience, I have tested and proved in the case of tens of thousands
of men, women and children whom I have cured of weakness and
disease by the scientific application of this fundamental law of life,
the law of movement.
By means of the scientific physical education and training of
the body, especially in the young, we can so modify and regulate the
changes of the body to which I have referred, as to accelerate the
cellular birth-rate, improve the cell-species of tevery part of the
body, eradicate disease, or the weakness that alone makes disease
triumphant, from any body, and make that body so strong that it
will be able to ward off all attacks of disease—in other words, both
cure and prevent disease.
These metabolistic changes or processes1 as they are called,
constitute the real life of every individual, and regulate his health
in every way, for defective metabolism leads to loss of balance and
so to disease.
All or practically all the ailments and diseases with which we
are so familiar to-day may be ultimately traced to this cause, that
is, to the retardation, arrest, or diversion of nutrition the imperfect
elimination of waste and poisonous matter and, consequently, lack
of balance between certain cells of the body, or between these cells
and other cells. These evils arise almost invariably from the loss of
natural and balanced physical movement as a consequence of our
modern and sedentary civilised life through many centuries.
Graceful and well-developed figure built up by natural methods of
physical reconstruction, such as the Author recommends for all the
children of the nation as a State system of physical education and
reconstruction.
201
 202

CELLS THAT DIE AND ARE BORN DAILY.

Through the natural and normal bodily changes our soul and
spirit may, to some extent, be said to inhabit a new bodily building
every few years, and the hygiene or otherwise of this bodily dwelling
is dependent on movement. Even after we have lain down to sleep
at night many of these vital changes continue to go on. Old cells
die off and new cells take their place, so that we may be said to
awake, to some extent, quite a different person to the individual that
lay down. By modifying, regulating and accelerating in balance
these processes of change, the application or administration of
physical movement in a scientific way will literally re-create a new
and better body in all or any of its parts as desired.
As I have said, with our present knowledge and experience
there lies to our hand, indeed, the means by which we can actually
“ breed ” new and better cells in any body on an ever-ascending
scale to an ultimate state of physical perfection, so that modern
man may even yet actually surpass in physical fitness and power of
resistance to disease the man of primitive times. This, too, without
the incessant phvsical activity that was necessarv for man in
primitive times, every hour of his waking life. By these means,
we can achieve better results through a few minutes of physical
movement, without interference with the occupations of civilised
life, because we now possess knowledge and experience that enables
us to obtain the equivalent of this all-day-long physical movement
in a scientifically compressed and concentrated form.
By carrying out the mov/ements with conscious and concen¬
trated mental and physical effort the results of a few simple move¬
ments are equal to the day-long activities of our ancestors. We
can, as it were, “ touch the spot ” or spots in any body that is or are
weak or ailing, and apply balanced physical movements in the best
way and in a manner that is truly scientific, to such a body or any
part or parts of such a body.

‘SPEEDING UP” BODILY CHANGES.

Balanced physical movement thus scientifically applied, as I

have fully explained in the previous chapter, means that weak or
diseased cells must either grow out of their weakness by the physical
movement of the voluntary muscles or die through lack of movement
and consequently lack of nutrition. It means also that the cells
 203

multiply in number more quickly even than in an active state of

nature. It will not allow even healthy cells to become too old or
degenerate in the body or to propagate weak or inefficient cells of
their own species.
It will enable us to modify the chemical changes that convert
what you eat and drink into the living cells that make up bone and
muscle, nerve and sinew, tendon and ligament. It will strengthen
the great heart muscle, which will then send the blood more quickly
flowing through arteries, veins and capillaries, distributing copious
supplies of air and nourishment everywhere, and hurrying all waste
and poisonous matter out of the system, thus increasing nutrition,
respiration, and excretion. It will increase lung capacity,
enriching the blood and purifying it, thus striking at the very root
of anaemia and other blood disorders. It will stimulate the sluggish
liver and cause it to rouse itself from its torpor. It will, in short,
speed up all the bodily processes of waste and repair, compelling
nutrition and growth to exceed waste and decay, and will, indeed,
as the familiar saying puts it, “ make a new man of you/'
To revert again to the individual cell which gives us the basis
for all physiological argument and deduction. Man was, as
we have seen, once only a single cell which fed itself and ejected its
waste by simple muscular contraction, drawing into itself the food
it required and excreting its waste. The single-celled animal takes
in body-building material and ejects its own waste by a sort of
muscular contraction. In man, a multi-cellular being, this power
of internal contraction is supplied by that part of the muscular
system beyond our voluntary control, but which, as I have shown,
can be reached and to an extent regulated by the movement of the
voluntary muscles. Man, unlike the single-celled being, has special
organs for carrying out the functions of digestion, assimilation,
nutrition, respiration, circulation, secretion, and excretion, and the
cells that make up the working population of these organs are
responsible for these varied functions.

“ BREEDING ” BETTER CELLS.

This means that the whole body is in a state of perpetual

movement, and upon this movement, which has its origin in muscle,
depends the whole health. Anything that naturally stimulates and
accelerates this movement must inevitably lead to the better nutrition
of every cell of the body, and this is why perfectly balanced move¬
ment of the voluntary muscles, directed and employed in an
 204

absolutely scientific way, has such a beneficial influence upon these

internal bodily movements of the millions of cells of which we are
composed. .
By increasing the nutrition of the body and hastening the
elimination of all waste products in this way the new cells that are
continually being “ born ” in the body are better fed, better
nourished, have more air, and so thrive and reproduce even healthier
young of their own species, just as do human beings living a healthy
life in a healthy environment, so that every organ and system
becomes better, healthier, more efficient to carry out its functions and
more resistant to disease. In most cases this is effected directly by
these muscles actually under our own control, but in others, it is
accomplished indirectly by these muscles acting through the agency
of the great sympathetic nervous system, upon muscles beyond our
direct control.
HOW BETTER T!SSUE IS BUILT.

As all the tissues of every organ and bodily system are built
up by the living cells, and as these cells are steadily increased in
number and liveliness, with great reproductive power and the
reproduction of progressively better and better cells in each
succeeding generation, the effect of balanced physical movement
must be to build up and keep building up better tissue in every part
of the system, so that structurally and organically, at least, we must
have certainly a better as well as a new bodily fabric in time, with
the perfectly healthy performance of all the bodily functions.
I might summarise the structural effect of such a natural and
scientific system of physical movement as I have described upon the
whole body as follows :—
1. Life is movement. Death is stagnation. Health
swings between these two poles, and is modified and determined
by movement. Perfect health is perfect movement in all parts
and of every individual cell of the body in absolute balance. It
follows logically, therefore, that if we can make the human body
a perfectly balanced moving machine in all its parts, we can
have perfect health and freedom from disease, so long as we
receive nourishing food, pure air, and the essentials that sustain
life through this perpetual movement of and in muscles, organs,
blood, bone, cells and tissue of every kind.
2. All tissue is composed of cells, each cell being a living
entity like yourself, requiring air and nourishment to thrive.
 The Might of India.
Another example from tropical India of physical development'achieved by the natural methods recommended
by the Author,
L>06
 207

producing and causing to accumulate waste matter by its

activities, and with the power of reproducing its own species.
That air and nourishment can only reach it by muscular move¬
ment, working through the circulation of the blood, and its
waste be similarly removed.
3. Each cell has to have the air and nourishment necessary
to its existence brought to it by the blood, and depends also
upon the blood to carry off its waste matter which would other¬
wise accumulate, decay, and ferment in the body and tend to
cause disease.
4. But the blood and the. cells of the blood, which are the
distributing agents for this air and nourishment to these
millions of living microscopic cells of the body, and which
carries away 'their “ refuse,” depend for their activity and
continuity of movement upon muscular motive power, the heart
itself being but a large muscle that distributes the blood through
the body, and the arteries and capillaries having also the power
of muscular contractility to propel the blood onward.
Balanced physical movement, if scientifically applied, causes the
blood to flow faster in every part of the body, and the cells it
contains to travel faster, bringing more and better supplies of
food and air to each living cell of the body, and also ensuring
the freer elimination of all waste and poisonous matter, so that
with every sweep of the blood through the system better tissue
replaces the old and effete.
5. This, in turn, means that each cell becomes individually
more healthy, more muscular, more vigorous, and more active,
having a greater reproductive power, and reproducing better
cells until perfect cells only remain, the cells being, as it were,
kept always in a condition of perpetual youth. All the organs
and systems of the body will then be better protected in every
way as a result of the greater bodily movement, because they
will have more and better working and fighting cells to safe¬
guard their interests, until finally they possess cells that will
neither be weak in themselves nor tolerate disease, and much
stronger than those of the preceding generation.
6. Thus structurally and organically, physical movements,
scientifically applied, re-build newer, better, and healthier tissue
in every part of the body, and as tissue is the living fabric of
which the human body is made, and upon which the healthy
p
 208

performance of every function depends, really scientific physical

education will thus build up a new, better and disease-free body.
Let us now show briefly how this physical and structural re¬
construction affects and improves the f unctioning of the body :—
1. Life is movement, and all human movement, including
organic function, is muscular, for muscle has been well defined
as “ crystallised function.”
2. Owing to civilisation, the natural movement which is
necessary for the healthy life of the body has become less and
less, until lack of movement or insufficient movement in balance
has permitted disease to enter.
3. With the aid of the knowledge and experience humanity
has gathered and acquired through centuries of investigation
and education, I claim that we can now compress and concen¬
trate the physical movement necessary for healthy life into a
“tabloid ” form to suit modern conditions of life. This move¬
ment can be applied locally or generally as desired by scientific
methods such as I have already described.
4. Such physical movement will improve the “ breed,” as it
were, of the bodily cells by evolving a better and better type
until physical perfection is attained.
5. How ? Because, in the ordinary way, the cells are
continually dying, others being born. The more balanced the
physical movement, scientifically controlled and regulated, the
more rapidly too old or feeble cells die. Only the better cells
are left, and these reproduce a better offspring even Than
themselves.
6. Why? Because the more we move all the voluntary
muscles of the body in balance the more air and food all the
cells of the body receive, the more equal is both the distribution
and consumption of this air and food, the better nourished they
are, and the healthier their environment. The cells of every
part of the body have to move in balance with this movement
of the voluntary muscles, thus developing their muscles and
improving their functioning. The cells of the digestive system,
for instance, supply better nourishment, the cells of the various
secretory glands secrete more of their essential fluids, the cells
of the lungs, the skin, the intestines, the kidneys, and of every
muscle, nerve, organ and system do their work more easily and
more efficiently. In other words, all the bodily functions will
 Back and front view of an Australian

follower of this method of physical

upbuilding.

Photographer, A. G. Doolette, Australia.

209
 210

in time, be better performed by fitter cells through the balanced

movement of the voluntary muscles.
7. Weak and unfit or diseased cells are ruthlessly weeded
out as the physical movement is increased and the strain upon
each cell becomes greater. Only fit cells remain to perpetuate
their species, and this process goes on until through generation
of cells after generation, physically perfect cells are evolved, to
carry on the functions of life healthfully and vigorously. This
is, in short, a beneficent application of the doctrine of the
survival of the fittest to the cells of each individual body rather
than to the individual himself or herself, thus “ breeding ”
better cells until perfection is attained and we have a body that
is like a perfectly balanced engine and a faultless machine.
(This is the effect of balanced physical movement upon the
structure and function of every organ and system of the body,
and its value, then, from the curative point of view, will be
apparent. Those who are more especially interested in the
effect of such movement upon pathological or diseased conditions
should read my chapter on “ How and Why Scientific Physical
Movement Cures Disease,” in conjunction with this chapter.)
In conclusion, I may explain that the structural effect of such
movement by a simple illustration, taking the case of a man who
wishes to perform an athletic feat like, say, running 100 yards in
ten seconds. Now if he were foolish enough to attempt such a feat
without the special training of all the muscles employed in such a
feat he would overstrain and might possibly kill himself, while he
would most assuredly fail.
Why does specialised training enable him later to achieve his
object? Because, better and better cells are “bred,” as I have
described, in those particular muscles he exercises and develops
until the muscles become absolutely new muscles, far fitter and with
a greater capacity than the old, having been consciously “ evolved ”
by graduated and progressive training methods to the standard of
physical perfection necessary for the performance of this feat.
Some, of course, would never be able to achieve such a feat no
matter how long and assiduously they trained, for there will
always be standards and degrees, with limitations, of individual
excellence, though in generations hence these differences must become
less and less, until thev will disappear, if such a system as I advocate
be adopted in our schools. A few men, on the other hand, might
become able to run a 100 yards even in a shade less than ten seconds.
 W//,
ft

The Nation’s Burden

can never become too heavy if our manhood is taught and trained, as
these men have been, to possess strong, well-developed backs like these,
with all other parts of the body in balanced strength.
211
 212

WHY AN ATHLETES MUSCLES CROW STRONGER.

But in this training the athlete had not only to “ breed ” better
muscle cells of certain muscles to perform this feat. The same
training caused other cells of his body to cry out for more nourish¬
ment, so the cells of the whole digestive system had to work harder
and to move faster, and they themselves were better developed and
nourished through this greater movement and activity. The athlete
had to eat more or assimilate more nourishment to enable the cells
of the muscles specially developed to get the nourishment sufficient
to do the extra work. This meant more movement for the cells of
the digestive system, and they, too, became better nourished and
stronger by this movement.
In the same way, the cell-chemists of the body were called upon
to deal with the chemical transformation of this additional food,
and had to move faster and work harder. They, too, were conse¬
quently developed and strengthened by the movement, in the first
place, of the voluntary muscles used by the athlete. The cell-
scavengers of the eliminatory organs, the cell-workers of the heart,
of the lungs, of the skin, of every system and organ of the whole
body were proportionately developed to meet the increased effect
put upon them through the increased and increasing effort put upon
the athlete’s voluntary muscles. They received more food and more
air, through this greater muscular movement. They lived in a
healthier bodily atmosphere because of the greater elimination of
waste from the system.
This happy colony of industrial cells grew fruitful and
multiplied more and more under their new bodily surroundings,
their “ children ” grew up still healthier and more vigorous, until
every cell employed directly or indirectly in this athletic feat become
stronger and better developed, including the directing cells of the
brain employed. But such unbalanced training as this, though it
admittedly exercises a healthful influence upon certain muscles and
systems of the body, does not and cannot produce that perfect balance
among all the cells of the body which alone makes the body superior
to disease, indeed, tends rather by special and local developments to
increase disturbance of balance.

EXERCISES AND GROWTH.

It is only when we realise how closely and intimately all the
cells of the bodv are associated and inter-related, that we understand
how and why balanced movement of the voluntary muscles or lack
 213

of such movement must affect their joint life and well-being, which
is the life and well-being of the individual they separately and
conjointly represent. It will, therefore, be easy to realise from the
illustration I have just given how, by applying and directing
muscular movement of all the voluntary muscles of the body and not
in a limited or drastic fashion to some particular number and
group of muscles, we can make and keep each and every cell of the
body not only fit and healthy in itself, but also so powerful and
strong and all so well balanced as to be able to defy and conquer
disease.
While any muscle is being exercised waste is going on rapidly,
and the muscle might waste away altogether, but for the fact that
the moment the movement ceases the blood begins at once to repair
and make good this waste, renews all the force expended, and adds
to its bulk and substance so that the more a muscle is exercised the
bigger, stronger, and better it grows. When, as I have pointed out,
the muscular system is responsible for the functioning of every
organ, it will at once be seen how important is this development of
muscle in a scientific way, and how profound is the influence of
balanced muscular movement and development on the health of the
whole body. For this power of growth and development also takes
place, proportionately, in all the tissues of the body as the result
of the movement, in the first place, of all the voluntary muscles which
causes the simultaneous movement of each and every cell of the
body.
NO UNNECESSARY MUSCLES IN THE BODY.
The human body is no mere chance accumulation of atoms, but
was divinely designed and created with organs and muscles and
cells, each having a specific and pre-determined duty to perform in
the general scheme of bodily operations and activities. The fact
that there are over 500 muscles in the body makes it self-evident,
then, that each and every muscle was placed there by the Creator
with and for a distinct purpose, and it is flat blasphemy to argue
that any muscle or group of muscles can be allowed to fall into
disuse and inactivity without prejudice to the vital functioning of
the whole human machine in which every part is so closely inter¬
related and inter-dependent. Each separate muscle has its allotted
duty to perform and also plays a part in the whole inter-dependent
operation of the human machine, and if it is allowed to shirk that
dutv it is not only injurious to itself but handicaps or prevents the
smooth and easy working of the whole bodily organisation. There
 214

is no muscle in the human body that cannot be moved and exercised

either directly or indirectly in the manner I have described, and
through the joint and balanced movement of the voluntary muscles,
all the involuntary muscles and every cell of the body are also
reached, moved and developed in balanced strength. The results of
such a system of balanced physical movement in our schools to-day
would be amazing, and would quickly be evident in the prevention
or eradication of that weakness or lack of balance which is the true
cause of all disease.
The full realisation of this fact by the medical profession will,
as I have said, mean a complete revolution in the healing art. It
will, as I point out elsewhere, lead more and more to the study of
man rather than of disease or medicine, and still more it will lead to
the study of that humble speck of protoplasm, the cell, of which man
is made, and from which, by incessant movement, he evolved from
the primeval slime. If we begin with the child we may yet achieve
what will seem miracles to the present generation. Just as the
child is father of the man so the cell is father of the child, and just
as it is only by movement that a single cell multiples and increases
until it is a fully formed and organised living child, so the process
is only continued by movement until the child becomes a full-sized
and fully-developed adult.
The more these cells are made to increase and multiply by
movement—the movement which is their only means of life,
and which only can come to all of them in equal balance
through the balanced movement of the voluntary muscles—the
better nourished, more healthy, and more resistant to disease
they must become. It should be, then, the supreme duty of
the future medical man to discover how to select and apply
perfectly balanced movements of the voluntary muscles, so as
to develop all these ever-multiplying cells in such perfect
balance from childhood, or to correct any lack of balance in any
particular group of cells, in this way making the body so perfectly
developed and balanced everywhere as to prevent breakdown or to
permit the intrusion of disease germs from without. I myself have
done this in thousands of instances as will be perceived from the
splendidly cellular-developed and balanced specimens of men,
women and children in many of the illustrations in this book.
In my next chapter, I show how essential it is that all physical
movement be based on the condition and state of the heart, and
why the heart must be made the pivot of the whole machinery of
scientific physical culture.
215
Men in the Making.

Author inspecting a squad of Australian Police at physical drill.

216
Making Men of Men.
Soldiers at exerciseiby the methods described in this book.
 217

CHAPTER X.

The Heart the Pivot of Remedial or Preventive

Physical Culture.

The heart, the most vital of all organs, being itself nothing little
more than a mighty muscle, and most responsive to the movement or
movements of those muscles within our own control, must be regarded
as the pivot of all physical movement of a remedial or a preventive
character, and all such physical movement must be determined and
regulated by the condition of the heart.

WORKS NIGHT AND DAY FOR LIFE.

The heart begins its labours from the very moment that life
signifies its advent in the unborn child, and continues, day after day
and year after year, until death, with no rest or with only a very
brief interval of rest between the heart-beats, that is, between its
own contraction and relaxation.
The heart, which is only about the size of a man’s closed fist,
is, then, the most important muscle in the body and should be the
strongest, for its work is never done, waking or sleeping. It con¬
tracts automatically for about half a second, and each beat is
followed by a rest of about the same duration. At each beat, the
ventricles lift into the arteries about 2^ ounces of blood, and this
even under the most favourable circumstances. “ Let anyone,” says
Dr. A. T. Schofield, “ firmly clench his fist seventy-two times a minute
for only ten minutes, and see how he feels, and then remember the
heart does this day and night without ceasing, with a force stronger
than that it would take to lift itself each hour higher than Mont
Blanc.”
Exercise or physical movement of any kind naturally increases
this work of the heart, and for this reason it is imperative in
prescribing physical movements to any person to regulate such move¬
ments entirely according to the strength of the heart, and to keep all
physical movement in the strictest subjection to that organ.
Before any physical movement then is prescribed, especially
 218

where there is existent or suspected weakness to disease, and always

in the case of children, the condition of the heart should be ascer¬
tained by the most painstaking examination, and if the heart be weak
or impaired in its functions, this condition must be attended to in
precedence of everything else, and the action of the heart rectified
and strengthened. This is the only way to secure pupil or patient
against physical injury, and to prevent the “ medicine/’ as the saying
is, from being worse than the disease.
The prescription of physical movement, or even of deep
breathing movements in heart cases must never, therefore, be
undertaken m any perfunctory manner or without considerable
study, knowledge and experience, in the selection of such physical
movements as will impose no excessive strain or tax the heart beyond
its own strength. These movements should be most carefully
graduated both in the number and the degree of effort required, and
time should not be spared in arranging these gradations, while
continuous re-examination and tests should take place from time to
time.
THE HEART AS THE INDEX.
When this is done the heart muscles will be developed con¬
sistently, and in balance with the developing voluntary muscles.
In other words, the effort demanded of the voluntary muscles, under
the patient’s direct mental control, must be regulated entirely by the
muscular power of the heart, for only in this way can that great
vital muscle be developed proportionately and in harmonious
balance with the other muscles and organs of the body. Even where
the heart’s action is normal, this is the only safe rule to follow,
because, unless the heart is taken as the index of the muscular strain
placed upon the voluntary muscles, there will always be danger of
dilation or enlargement—what is known as athlete’s heart—if not
even more serious structural and valvular troubles.
This great care and skill in diagnosis and in the prescription
of balanced physical movements, especially where there is actual
heart weakness or disease, is another of the fundamental features
that distinguish physical culture which is scientific, curative or
preventive from exercise that is mere play or physical movement that
is unscientific and likely to prove dangerous or even fatal, and this
is why I am so emphatic in advising that, especiallv in the case of
children, games, sports and competitive athletic contests, should only
follow physical education and training on scientific lines, and then
only after medical examination and on the doctor’s recommendation.
 219

Otherwise there is always the grave danger of overstraining in

early life, and lack of that nicely adjusted and balanced physique
and' organism towards which all scientific physical movement ever
aims and tends. It is just this lack of balance in any organ or
system that causes the weakness somewhere which lays the body open
to any form of disease, and which may even cause organic heart
disease. The prescription of physical movement, therefore, is a
matter demanding serious study and attention from the medical
profession.
Professor Ballet, the distinguished French savant and neuro¬
logist, says, “ it is not enough to prescribe muscular exercise in a
vague manner, leaving to the 'patient the work of finding out what
kind and amount of exercise are suited to him; to do so would be to
lay oneself open to cruel disappointments. It is not uncommon to
see a patient who has aggravated his condition by indulging in
excessive or badly regulated muscular work. The choice and
regulation of the form of exercise require the whole attention of the
physician

PHYSICAL MOVEMENT IN HEART CASES.

The immediate effects of physical exercise on the heart itself

and the vascular system are known, in a general way, to every
physician. It quickens the heart beat, balances the distribution of
blood in the body, increases consumption of oxygen, generates heat,
makes the passage of the blood through the valves of the venous
system easier. But exercise may be beneficial or injurious accord¬
ingly as it is prescribed and carried out in a balanced and scientific
way, or simply indulged in at random without knowledge of its
possibilities and its limitations. It can be used, when carefully
prescribed and carried out, to strengthen a weak, and even to
reconstruct a diseased heart, or it may prove more dangerous than
the most potent drug if carelessly prescribed and faultily carried
out.
The work that is being done at Nauheim in morbid heart
conditions is well-known to medical men, but I do not think that
even there there is a clear understanding of the how and the why
of the beneficent influence of physical movement on the heart and
the action of the heart, or a full realisation of the possibilities of
physical movement in heart troubles. Doctors know and have been
compelled to admit the curative and preventive value of physical
therapeutics, by the results already achieved, but it is my object in
 220

this book to give them a physiological reason for the faith that is in
them.
Indeed, the value of physical movement in heart cases has been
proved at Nauheim over and over again, but even greater results will
be accomplished when the doctors who select and prescribe physical
movements have themselves passed through a long course of study
and actual personal experience in physical culture and physical
development before being considered fully qualified to prescribe the
physical movements best calculated to improve the condition of their
patients, especially in cases where there is even a suspicion of heart
trouble.
A far more careful and exact diagnosis will be necessary in
prescribing physical movements than in prescribing medicine when¬
ever there is any heart trouble or even pseudo heart trouble, and the
movements must, as I would again emphasise, be most carefully
selected and varied, taking great care to prescribe the right sort of
movements according to the individual circumstances of each case.
Physical movements, including breathing and balancing exercises,
so selected and applied, will be wonderfully successful in many
functional heart troubles, and in organic heart disease, if taken in
time, except where there is serious structural malformation. In
fact, the time may come when, thanks to the careful and scientific
physical education of the people from childhood heart disease will
be a thing of the past or nearly so.

DEVELOPING WEAK HEARTS.

The first effect of physical movement on the heart, provided it

is prescribed and carried out as I point out, is to develop and
strengthen it just as any other muscle of the body is developed and
strengthened by. use and movement, and a great deal of the heart
weakness and disease of to-day is the inevitable result of lack of
balanced physical movement, as naturally the less we use the volun¬
tary muscles in balance the less we develop the heart, because the
action of the heart can only be strengthened and improved by the
exercise and movement of muscles under our control.
Without such movement the heart becomes weaker and weaker
like an unused limb until it is liable to succumb to serious organic
disease, especially in a boy already weak and imperfectly balanced.
Only through re-educating it gradually by the use and movement
of the voluntary muscles can we bring back its normal and healthy
action, and make it even stronger than it was before.
 Three Models for the Youth of the Nation.

Every boy can do the same as these three young men have done if they
follow out the same methods, which are fully explained here.
2 22
 223

It is, moreover, only by securing perfect balance in these

voluntary physical movements that we can secure the best results,
for we cannot and must not consider the heart as an independent
organ but as one of many organs all closely inter-related and inter¬
dependent. Imperfectly balanced movement means, as I have
explained, lack of balance somewhere in the organism, and this lack
of balance must, consequently, affect the whole organism, including
the heart. For this reason, perfectly balanced physical movement
is absolutely necessary to reconstruct a heart that has been weak or
diseased and to make and keep it strong and disease-free in every
cell.
It must not. of course, be thought that even the most scientific
application of physical movement in heart disease will effect miracles
in cases where the sufferer has reached a stage where he may,
perhaps, die at any moment, and where the disease has progressed too
far, for the heart can only be re-educated to its work very gradually,
and the process of cure and reconstruction takes time even under
the most favourable circumstances. In many cases where this
treatment would prove effective, too, the sufferer loses patience at a
very early stage and gives it up, and so, of course, there is never
really any opportunity of effecting a cure. As doctors know,
especially in cases of this kind, it takes two to effect a cure, and
co-operation between patient and physician is absolutely essential
to complete success. No treatment can be successful if the sufferer
does not submit patiently to the carrying out of the doctor’s advice
from first to last, however slow or tedious progress may seem to be.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF EXERCISE.

Not only in heart disease, but in the treatment of nearly every

form of disease, this holds good, because the state and condition of
the heart must dictate the nature and progress of all treatment by
means of natural physical movement. The heart must first be got
into condition, and the patient can only travel at a rate or progress
towards cure that must be determined and regulated by the actual
state of the heart, which organ must not be jeopardised however
anxious the sufferer be to get well in other ways. It is because the
patient rarely realises this that he becomes impatient, declines to
continue the treatment, and so sacrifices his last hope of recovery.
Let me now enter more fully into the physiological effect of
muscular movement, especially as it affects the heart and the circu¬
latory system, while we must never forget that it is through this
o
 224

muscular movement that the whole organism in each and all of its
cells can be reached, cleansed, nourished and developed. When any
muscle is exercised, the muscular cells and fibres are made to
contract and relax, and in doing so the stale and poisoned venous
blood in the system is squeezed out by the act of contraction and
afterwards eliminated, while fresh and well-oxygenated blood, with
copious supplies, takes its place immediately the muscles are relaxed,
and does so in greater quantity.
In this way the muscles themselves are first benefited, their vital
activities quickened and, as a result, their size and bulk increased
and quality improved. As any muscle or set of muscles is contracted
the blood is quickened in its journey to that muscle or muscles, but
the moment it is relaxed the blood is pumped more quickly and
vigorously to the lungs, where it is relieved of much of its poisonous
matter and takes in fresh supplies of oxygen. This, of course, means
faster breathing and increased consumption of oxygen, so that the
blood is, in consequence, purified and enriched. By this muscular
activity the heart muscles themselves are developed just as the
biceps is developed by repeated contraction and relaxation.

SPEED AND VIGOUR OF CONTRACTION.

Of course, much depends on the quality and nature of the

contraction, the amount and regulation of the effort, and the
conscious concentration of the mind upon the muscle or muscles
moved, as I very fully explain in my chapter on “ The Machinery
of National Physical Training.” It is here that the medical man
of the future will be called upon to exercise his utmost skill when
it comes to prescription of physical movement, especially where
there is heart weakness or disease and still more so in the case of
children.
Equally, too, the utmost care will be necessary as to the speed
at which such movements are carried out, because the faster the
movements are made, even if sub-consciously carried out, the greater
the work thrown upon the heart and the less benefit derived in pro¬
portion. The speed of the movements will require the most exact
regulation, according to the state of the heart, or the gravest results
may ensue. An athlete training to run 100 yards in ten seconds
only does so by increasing his pace very gradually, but an ordinary
individual might do himself serious and even fatal heart injury if
he attempted to run 100 yards even in 20 or 30 seconds. The pace
of all physical movement as the vigour of effort should always be
 225

determined and modified by the state of the heart, being graduated

only according to the improvement shown and maintained in the
heart. This, indeed, should be a guiding principle in every case
whether there is any heart trouble or not.
I have explained in an earlier chapter that when all the
voluntary muscles are moved in balance many involuntary muscles
and cells are also set in motion, so that the benefit of this movement
though at first local is ultimately general, leading to the better
nutrition and aeration not only of the muscle cells directly moved,
but of all the bodily cells, thus bringing about their greater purifica¬
tion and nutrition, and the rapid multiplication and maintenance of
younger and more healthy cells in every part of the system, including
the heart itself while old, feeble and diseased cells die because they
are unable to keep pace with the movement of the voluntary muscles,
and because their waste outbalances nutrition and repair. In this
way, too, I assert, we can give a man a new limb or even a new organ
or system and even greatly improve a malformed heart organically
diseased by improving the quality of all its cellular constituents.

PREVENTING HEART TROUBLES.

With the effect of balanced physical movement on the circulation

I have already dealt. It is also the best and surest preventive of
that hardening of the arteries known as arterio-sclerosis, and its
faithful attendant cardiac hypertrophy or enlargement of the heart.
In the same way, physical movement, when balanced as I suggest,
prevents or disperses fatty and gaseous accumulation in the
abdominal region, with consequent venous dilatation, and dis¬
turbance of the circulation, which may, if neglected, lead to valvular
disease of the heart
The heart, however, can not only be consciously influenced
directly and indirectly by the balanced movement of all the voluntary
muscles, but it is also susceptible to mental influence through the
nervous system and its action may be readily affected, as we know,
by any strong emotion, passion or sensation, such as anger, love, fear,
shock or acute grief. Such control as we can exercise over it is
physical, and only through the correct and balanced use of the
voluntary muscles can we develop and adjust it to bear still greater
strains and to become stronger in itself and in its functioning.
The complexity of the heart’s mechanism, the wonderful
delicacy of its structure and the exact nicety of its operations might
convey the impression that it would be easy of derangement or would
 226

quickly wear itself out by its increasing labours. Yet in an

octogenarian it goes on night and day for 80 years at the rate of
100,000 strokes every 24 hours, while at every beat it has to overcome
a great resistance, and as a rule, without derangement or weariness.
It contracts over 4,000 times in an hour, and there passes through it
every hour nearly 8,000 ounces or nearly 7001bs. of blood.
As the whole mass of blood in an average adult body is nearly
one-tenth that of the whole weight of the body (one-fourth of the
quantity being contained in the muscles alone), a heavy quantity of
blood equal to the whole mass of blood in the body passes through the
heart over 28 times an hour, or once in every two minutes. Such a
feat is super-human and the power to perform it would only come
from a Divine source beyond the finite understanding of the human
mind. Indeed, the wisdom of the Creator is seen in these
marvellous operations and activities of the human heart, and it is
well that the absolute control of this tremendous force is placed
beyond our volition. For, if we had to control it by our own volition
we could never know the refreshing balm of sleep, as we should have
to keep watch over this wonderful human engine night and day, for
fear it might cease to beat even for a few seconds and we would die.
As a great anatomist has truly said, “ fortunately it is so made, and
‘the power of the Creator in so constructing it can in nothing be
exceeded but His wisdom.”
 227

CHAPTER XI.

The Machinery of National Physical Training-

Before I attempt to outline my ideal method of applying balanced

physical movements, especially to children, in a scientific manner—
for merely to give anything like the complete details of such a com¬
prehensive scheme would require a volume for itself quite as large
as this, and is not, therefore, to be attempted here—I may at once
anticipate what I know will be one of the first arguments advanced,
viz., that of expense.

CUTTING DOWN THE HOSPITAL BILL.

Apart from the fact that in a time of national crisis the British
Empire had to find as much as £8,000,000 a day for purposes of
defence in war-time, and that it would scarcely be too much to ask
for even so large an amount to avert another and even greater crisis,
or, at least, to give the country a physical backbone that would make
war too grave a responsibility for the most audacious statesmen to
incur rashly, I contend that the cost would be more than met by the
tremendous reduction that would be effected in the present charge
made annually for hospitals, infirmaries and clinics, police,
reformatories, asylums, penal and charitable institutions of every
kind, the care and after care of the diseased, the weak, the criminal
and the insane poor, and a thousand other channels of wealth wastage
due mainly to disease and physical unfitness.
However, let me go into this matter in proper sequence, and
name only some of the methods by which we might employ a well-
conceived system of natural and scientific physical education and
culture for the gradual elimination of physical weakness, ill-health
and disease, with all their immoral spawn in the form of degeneracy,
vice, crime and insanity, from a world intended by the Creator to
furnish us with every rational pleasure that the heart of man
might desire, provided we, on our part, do our duty to ourselves and
by so doing begin a grea,t pioneer work in the re-construction of a
nation.
 228

THE DUTY OF THE STATE.

It should be the first duty, as it is the interest of the State—

that is, the Government chosen by and representing the people—to
give every child, rich and poor alike, an equal opportunity of
possessing a sound body as well as a sound and educated mind. To
do this is essential to the very existence of a people, for weakness
and disease are in direct antagonism to Nature, a conflict that can
only end disastrously to any individual or community of individuals.
Every child born into the world ought surely to receive at least as
much attention to the development of its physical power and its
whole bodily well-being as a pedigree puppy or a thoroughbred colt
or filly.
A really sound and scientific scheme of physical education and
bodily reconstruction ought to be drafted by a responsible
authority, preferably the Ministry of Health, assisted by a Medical
Council of eminent medical men. For, as I have pointed out, so
grave a matter should not be left, as at present, in the hands of the
educational authorities. It is a matter first and foremost of
ensuring and establishing a good physical basis for our little ones
instead of still further sapping their vitality and physique by over¬
education of the mind in a weak, diseased and unbalanced physical
body, for, as Mr. Arnold Eowntree, M.P., the famous sociologist,
told the House of Commons, “ healthy childhood was the foundation
of all education.” The policy of the past has been a mistaken one.
If we pursue that policy further it will lead to a more grave crisis
still, for it is madness to think you can produce a people able to win
and keep commercial power and prestige if their minds are educated
while their bodies are being neglected. Physical education has too
long been made secondary and subsidiary to mental education,
whereas I contend, on the contrary, that physical education should
come first, and be carried out in a really scientific way and under
medical direction and supervision.
A recognised programme and plan of national physical
education and health culture should be drawn up, medical officers
appointed to carry it out, and all the doctors placed under one
Central Authority to whom they would be responsible. Physical
instructors of experience and high qualification should be appointed
to assist in the carrying out of this great work of national physical
reconstruction, and we should then be in a position for the first time
to formulate a system of health and physical education really worthy
of being called scientific.
 229

SCIENTIFIC v. UNSCIENTIFIC METHODS.

I am, of course, prepared to hear many object that already the

majority of our schools and educational institutions are devoting
considerable attention to the physical education and training of
children, which, to a certain extent, is true. But my contention is
that, as a present carried out, the methods are unscientific, and, in
many cases, even injurious because they do not take into considera¬
tion the weakness that may be apparent or latent in each individual,
or aim, from the outset, at the physical and constitutional upbuilding
of the young in perfect balance.
Indeed, in many of the methods in vogue to-day the child has
itself to be naturally very strong in every part to bear them, and not
to injure heart, lungs, or other vital organs, the condition of which
has not first been taken into consideration. A weak child may be
injured for life, and even the strong given a badly balanced physique
and organism by any method of physical culture that is not scientific
in its conception, organisation and execution.
In many methods, there are serious faults to be found. The
aim of the instructor is too often to produce a series of nicely fitting
and smoothly changing movements in mass so as to form a pretty
tableaux on examination days or at public demonstrations, while
the individual weakness of each individual child are overlooked or
forgotten. The physical movements, too, are only carried out in a
sub-conscious way, and are utterly useless to train the will, improve
muscular and mental co-ordination, in order to acquire complete
control over each and every voluntary muscle, or build up a really
balanced physical organic and mental organisation.
What I mean when I speak of scientific physical education is
as far removed from such immature methods as the educational
system of a modern 'Varsity or public school is from the old “ hedge-
school ” teaching of an unmourned past. I would have physical
education conducted on just as scientific lines as mental education
already is, separating the children at first into classes, categories or
standards according to age, constitution, family history, etc., the
younger and weaker children in the lowest class and only winning
their way to higher classes and standards by examinations and
actual improvement in physique and health.
Where there is incipient weakness or evidence of any weakness
inherited by the child (per the parents' own medical historv already
in the hands of the doctor, as I explain later), actual disease or
malformation, the child should, at first, receive special and individual
 230

attention and physical treatment until it has attained a physical

standard to qualify it for classification. Above all, no effort should
be spared to give such a child a well-balanced body and brain with
every muscle, organ and even cell developed in proportionate power
and vigour.

SAFEGUARDING THE WEAK, DELICATE, AND DISEASED.

The present methods are most unfair to weak or delicate or

backward children, apart from being too drastic, and can never build
up a body in physical and organic balance. Indeed, it is no
exaggeration to say, on the other hand, that there are tens of
thousands of the men and women to-day who have grown up to suffer
all their lives from injury received during their youthful physical
training and games at school. Many unable to trace this to its real
cause, attribute it to family weakness. This, however, is not always
so, but it more often the result of allowing children to enter into
competitive games and sports before they are physically fit to do so.
Only when the doctor passes them as physically fit for games should
they be permitted to indulge in them.
Just as scientific mental education not only sorts out the children
according to their mental standards, so it also aims to rectify all
mental and moral defects, and to develop the brain and mind
gradually until it is solidly, firmly and permanently established.
This is exactly what I want to see done in a physical sense as well,
a system of physical education that would gradually and har¬
moniously develop every muscle (voluntary and involuntary), every
organ and every system and every cell, building the body, as it were,
in storeys upon a solid, firm and secure foundation, which would
continue to the end of a person’s days. And just as the brain is
most receptive in the young, so the youthful body is best adapted for
this physical education, training and .development 'of every cell,
organ and system, for the establishment of a harmonious and perfect
balance between physique, constitution and brain, of, in short,
healthy mental and muscular co-ordination.

GRADING THE CHILDREN.

For, after all, the process in brain and body is very much the
same. The physical brain, like the physical bod}q is simply a
community of individual living cells, partly independent yet all
inter-dependent, with muscles and activities like ourselves, although
 231

these muscles and activities are naturally more simplified in the

cell. Mental education consists of developing each of these indi¬
vidual living cells by mental use and activity, so improving its
health and muscular quality and increasing its faculty of multipli¬
cation, because the more numerous and better developed they become
the more intelligent will be the individual.
If you can so educate, train, develop and increase the number of
these living cells of the brain by mental use, exercise and daily
activity, so similarly you can develop and strengthen the cells of all
parts of the body by what I describe as their balanced physical
movement.
In other words, the bodv must be educated scientificallv, as we
train the mind, if we are to build up a people healthy, strong,
courageous and self-reliant, and we must proceed in much the same
way to grade the children from the very outset, according to their
physical and organic condition, as we do mentally to-day. This
work, of course, must be the work of an expert, and none should be
better qualified for it than the members of the medical profession.
It would be for these medical men to see that each and every child
has its body trained to the highest standard of physical excellence
in every cell, rather than that its little mind is crammed and over¬
developed at the cost of bodily strength.

STATE IVS E DS CAL EXAIVBI NATS ON AND SUPERVISION.

Every school should have its doctor or medical staff, according

to its size, whose duty it should be to look after the bodily welfare of
the children and to supervise and direct the scientific physical
education of every child. This ivould be a position of great responsi¬
bility and prestige, and the greatest care should be exercised to select
physicians and surgeons with a strong and sympathetic personality,
likely to command at once the respect of the teachers and the affection
and regard of both the children and their parents. This is a basic
essential of such a system as I advocate, and it is of paramount
importance. Every country boasts such medical men in profusion,
who follow the noblest of all human professions not for lucre, but
are animated by a truly sublime spirit of unselfishness, service and
even sacrifice.
It would be the work of such men to “ sift ” the children
medically and physically, and to prescribe movements to suit each
individual pupil or patient, taking, as I have just said, age, sex,
temperament, constitution, personal idiosyncracies, physical defects,
 232

family history and other individual detail into full consideration.

The rectification of individual defects whether physical or organic
or functional, the establishment and preservation of physical and
organic balance, the co-ordination of mind and nerve and muscle,
would be some of the chief aims of the medical men.
All this, of course, will be a matter requiring the utmost care
and attention on the part of medical men, as yet comparatively
inexperienced in this matter, but in a few years after its establish¬
ment we would have quite a new generation and type of doctors,
men who have made a special study of curative and preventive
physical movements in their University or College, and who will
have themselves gone through a course of special physical education
and training, and passed examinations as to their own physical
standard of fitness, making them physically as well as mentally fit
for their duties.
The admission of a child to any school or other educational
institution should be equivalent to a guarantee to the parents of the
safe custody of the child’s health and physical body during school
hours, and a child should enter school much as a recruit enters the
army only after passing a thorough medical examination. On the
other hand, the parents would be reasonably held responsible to the
State for the child’s health out of school hours up to a certain age
fixed by legal statute.
Before a child was admitted the parents should be obliged to fill
up a printed form containing questions regarding the child’s and its
parent’s health history, somewhat similar to those asked of appli¬
cants by insurance companies, but even more stringent and far-
reaching in their details.
The answers would supply valuable information as to the cause
of the grandparents’ death, the age, and medical history of the
parents themselves, whether they had any disease or physical short¬
comings, etc., etc. The answers to these questions would be a kind
of index to the doctor before he examined the child personally, to
help him more readily to discover any inherited weakness or tendency
towards disease.
Charts for each child would then be prepared, to unfold, show¬
ing the various bones, muscles, organs, nerves, etc., of the body, and on
this chart the medical man would be able to mark all local weaknesses
and derangements, to make notes of any lack of muscular, mental or
organic balance, and also to record any improvement in the child
from time to time
Especial attention would be paid to lung capacity, for no
•) • to
.)*)
Photographer, Geo. H. Cassill, Boston
Xo danger of phthisis claiming a man with the line chest and back development obtained by these methods.
More of this type of manhood is wanted in the future and less of the narrow
chested, tiabby, undeveloped and disease-introducing type too prevalent in our midst
to-day. To the methods of physical rebuilding described here all these men owe
their hne bodies and developed physique.
234
 235

function stands so near to the centre of vitality as respiration. For,

as medical men are aware, the ratio of the lung capacity to the bodily
weight is considered the vital index of a person’s general vigour and
power of endurance. Where there were narrow chests or weak
lungs from family history, round shoulders, or anything likely to
invite or induce consumption, such an examination would be
invaluable, and movements to improve the carriage, strengthen the
muscles of the spine, square the shoulders, enlarge the chest cavity,
deepen and broaden the chest, increase lung capacity and strengthen
the cells of the lungs would be a powerful preventive measure against
deadly consumption.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION BEFORE MENTAL.

The doctor should be attached to the school, just as much as the

schoolmaster, and it should be part of his duty to give popular
lectures to the children on anatomy and physiology, to instruct them
in the value and effect of exercise, to explain to them the reason of its
absolute necessity, to make clear to them its influence upon the
anatomy and physiology of the body, to describe its value as an aid
to mental work, and especially to warn them against the self-abuse
and pollution of the body by self-drugging, alcohol, smoking in early
life, and other evil practices and habits. Just as there are annual
mental examinations so there should be an annual examination and
inspection of all the children to ascertain their knowledge of
anatomy, physiology and hygiene, and prizes awarded.
Physically and organically the children should be examined
periodically, reports made and careful records preserved. Competi¬
tions could be inaugurated, and prizes awarded for physique and
health, and altogether at least one-fifth of the time devoted to mental
training should be set aside for health education and the building up
of the physical body in the case of physically normal children, and as
much time as the doctor thinks necessary for delicate and diseased
children, while the doctor should even have power to order a total
cessation of mental training in extreme cases, until the physical
body was made strong enough to support the mental effort. Reports
on the child’s health should be forwarded to the parents with the
customary school reports, with medical advice when necessary to the
parents, while in the more serious cases the parents should be com¬
pelled to attend personally for medical advice regarding the require¬
ments of the child or children.
Under the present system, disease is often allowed to develop
 236

unnoticed in a child at school until it is firmly established, and

precautions such as these will go far to 'prevent disease, instead of
merely waiting until it develops and then attempting to cure it
with more or less success; or, as Sir Kingsley Wood puts it, “ building
a hospital at the bottom of a cliff instead of erecting a rail at the
top.” Fortunately, with the education of those who themselves will
be parents of another generation, a double check on disease will be
•added, and all this will lead to the total defeat and rout of the
enemy. It is, at least, certain that such ailments as heart disease,
adenoids, and all ailments to which children are especially liable,
consumption, debility, rupture, and physical deformities, defects
and weakness towards disease of every kind, can thus be practically
obliterated if the children have such a really scientific physical
education and training as this, with the conjoint State and medical
supervision of all schools.

THE DUTY OF THE INSTRUCTORS.

Every large school would have its own department exclusively

devoted to health culture by physical movements, with all the
necessary apparata, and its staff of highly trained, experienced and
carefully selected physical instructors with a proved knowledge of
anatomy, physiology and hygiene. Smaller schools could be similarly
catered for under one control. These instructors will be as vital to
the success of such a scheme as I propose as the doctors, and they
must be dealt with financially in no niggard fashion. On the other
hand, they must not only be handsomely remunerated for their
services, but must receive every encouragement for their study and
research, for they will be, to no little extent, the working builders of
the nation, and indeed of the Empire.
The instructor would stand in relation to the doctor much as
the chemist does to-day. Just as the chemist has to understand
chemistry, the nature, use and action on the body of the many
medicines in his store, and the doctor prescribes from these such as
are required in proper proportions, doses and combinations to suit
the individual pupil or patient, so the instructor should have a
thorough knowledge of the body and bodily hygiene, of anatomy and
physiology, and of the effect of every muscle and its movement on
the body, to see that the exercises prescribed by the medical officer
after careful diagnosis of each case, are carried out correctly and
successfully. This diagnosis would be, of course, the supreme duty
 237

of the doctor, for only the medical officer himself would be allowed
to diagnose and prescribe.
While the children should be taught to take a pride in the size,
substance, and quality of their muscles and of their body as a whole
—a natural thing for every healthy boy at least—they should be given
an intelligent idea of exactly what muscular development meant to
them in health as well as in physical appearance, and girls should
be shown how it helps to improve their carriage, their gait, their
figure, and even their complexion and their health. Special prizes
should be offered to those with the finest physique, carriage, and
gait.
All the exercises, however, should be selected and grouped with
the one main object of always developing the muscle necessary for the
healthy functioning of the vital organs (and of developing both the
voluntary and involuntary muscles in balance) that are jeopardised
by lack of balanced physical movement under modern and civilised
conditions of life, on the part of their parents or ancestors.

WHY APPARATA ARE HELPFUL.

The classification that we need for guidance in our labour for

the all-round and balanced development of the individual in which
health plays the chief part, must be founded upon the effects of the
exercises upon the organs and their functions. An ideal classifica¬
tion would be one ivhich grouped together in indissoluble union such
exercises as affected a given function in a definite manner. That
is the ideal at which really scientific physical training must ever
aim.
Before the children begin their systematic exercises they should
have their own interest aroused, and have impressed upon them the
result of every movement they perform, or otherwise they may be
inclined to regard the physical training as mere labour and carry
out the movements without concentrating their mind upon them,
the latter one of the most vital essentials to the success of what I call
physical reconstruction. To help them to concentrate their mind in
this way it is always better at first to use some apparatus (for some
children have not sufficient power of muscular and mental co-ordi¬
nation, and having an apparatus to carry and control gradually
schools them to perfect self-control not only of the muscles but of
the nerves and brain).
Apparata may or may not be dispensed with afterwards, but
I maintain that an apparatus of some kind is desirable if only that
 238

the medical man has an agent by which he can measure, check and
regulate the progress of each child and protect it against over-effort.
Moreover, the use of apparata in the form of light dumb-bells in
contracting the muscles of the forearm and biceps will help the
children to see these muscles contracting and to understand what
is meant by the contraction of muscles that they cannot see. I
might add also that I am not in favour of the movements being
performed to the accompaniment of music except for exhibition
purposes or merely for a display of the children’s ability. Where
physical movement, indeed, is meant to be educational, corrective, or
remedial it is by no means necessary for it to be made pleasant or
to be regarded merely as a pastime. The mind must be totally
engrossed with the movement or movements and concentrated on the
parts moved.
CARRIAGE, POSTURE, AND GAIT.

In every case, particular attention should be paid to the develop¬

ment of the muscles associated with the vital function of respiration,
the abdominal and groin muscles which influence elimination, and
all the muscles whose perfect balance holds and supports the spine
and the spinal cord, and weakness or faults of these should be
corrected as they are closely allied with the most vital functions of
life. After any prescribed course of exercises is finished, the
children should, at first, be again medically examined, the state of
the heart, the pulse and the temperature noted, and occasionally
even the blood and the urine should be tested. This medical
examination would become less necessary and less frequent as the
child progressed.
Simple as it may seem the children should be taught how to sit,
stand, and walk correctly, for faulty attitude, either in sitting or
standing or walking causes enormous wastage of vital energy, and
indeed, saps more of the individual vital force than any other factor.
It throws the whole spine out of alignment, it disturbs the spinal
cord, and through it many important functions, it interferes with
the heart's action, decreases respiration and the influence of respira¬
tion on the circulation. It prevents that important muscle, the
diaphram, from performing the natural massage of the viscera and
leads to constipation, it robs many organs of their natural support,
and it is responsible in general for unfavourable conditions of the
organs of nutrition, secretion, circulation, respiration and elimina¬
tion. To prevent this ought to be one of the first duties of the
doctors, teachers, and instructors.
 239

What makes the average physical training lesson at present of

little actual educational value is the fact that the brain is not
employed as it should be. The pupil is taught to go through a series
of movements, without even thinking of the muscles or parts being
moved, so that all this effort is of little value in developing either
the muscles or the brain centres, because it is purely sub-conscious.
It is most important that the mind be concentrated on the muscle or
muscles moved, for this not only means an increased flow of blood to
such muscle or muscles, but develop and strengthen the directing
cells of the brain employed in the movement. It also develops mental
and muscular co-ordination and teaches control over the muscles and
through them over brain and nerves, as I more fully explain later.
Nor is the question of balance taken into consideration by
teachers or pupils, for balance in the body is everything. The
flexors must be balanced with the extensors, and each muscle or
group of muscles, organ and group of organs, proportionately
balanced, with perfect balance between the brain that directs and
the body that is directed. Mere physical movement without
conscious effort and the concentration of the mind on the muscles
moved is only recreative and pretty to look upon and should always
be regarded as secondary only to movement that is intended to
develop a body and brain in equal and perfect balance.
The child should always be taught to contract and relax the
muscles with equal thoroughness if it is to acquire that perfection
of direct control over the voluntary muscles which is necessary to
have perfect and equal control over contraction and relaxation.
Th is is of greater importance than may be thought, and is, indeed.
a vital feature of such a system as I now propose.

1.—CONTRACTION MOVEMENTS.

These, of course, are the very beginning of all physical training,

for contractility is the peculiar and especial characteristic of
muscle. Indeed, if the tendon of a muscle is out, the muscle at once
contracts like a piece of stretched rubber, showing that it is always,
when at rest, a little stretched. Contraction movements should be
carried out with the concentration of the mind upon the muscles or
groups of muscles contracted with full muscular effort. The con¬
centration should continue right through the entire movement with
full maximum pressure and mental concentration, and so should be
continued during the entire number of movements prescribed, the
breathing being normal and natural. This only constitutes the ideal
R
 240

contraction, but, of course, is only possible for those who are

physically sound and well.
The teacher should also explain to the child which muscles are
brought into play by any and every such movement in order that the
child knows upon which muscle or muscles to concentrate. Move¬
ments so performed will increase the power, size, and quality of
muscle, and benefit all internal parts in proportion, and will also
increase a child’s control over the muscles by the brain which
supplies the directing power.
The child should be taught to keep its mind exclusively centred
on the muscles or parts moved at the time, and so through each of
any series of movements, as this develops its will-power and causes a
greater flow of blood to the muscle or muscles affected, and to the
whole area they influence, while the reaction of the blood means a
better flow of blood and supplies to the brain and its greater nourish¬
ment and oxygenation, strengthening the brain and making good the
waste previously expended in mental learning, while also adding to
its receptive capacity. Contraction movements should always be
performed slowly.
(Here, again, I would direct the attention of the adult reader to
my chapter on “ How and Why Scientific Physical Movement Cures
Disease,” with its appendix in the form of a reply to an article in
The Lancet). This chapter explains most fully just why labour
involving muscular movement, general exercises, games, sports and
pastimes or massage, electricity and hydropathy cannot compare
from a curative point of view with the natural and balanced physical
movement of all the bodily muscles in a scientific way, where there is
disease or the weakness tending towards disease. It explains the
reason why conscious and concentrated muscular movement alone has
a remedial and curative value, in the treatment of all sickness and
disease, and this chapter and the appendix should be carefully read
and studied by all who are personally interested, for what applies
here to children as a preventive equally applies to adults for curative
purposes.)
2.—RELAXATION MOVEMENTS.

It is just as important for the child to be taught how to relax

the muscles during each movement as how to contract them, for
above all things else, a perfect balance must be observed between
contraction and relaxation whilst carrying out each and every move¬
ment to prevent the pupil from becoming muscle-bound, and to train
the child also to swiftness of action.
 Study of the Author showing all the muscles in com¬
1 he Author as he appeared at the time of the tests plete relaxation except those involuntary muscles
at Harvard University, as described in this chapter. that support the body and maintain balance.
211
 242

Perfect balance between power of contraction and power of re¬

laxation movement means that the reaction when the muscles are
relaxed is equal to the action by which they were contracted, and
when this balance is ensured strength and speed will alike charac¬
terise muscular action. The practising of contraction and relaxation
movements for swiftness and power of movement will, as I have
already shown, also develop the motor areas of the brain, and when
this mental and muscular balance is established we are approximat¬
ing to physical perfection, especially if, at the same time, there is
exhibited an organic and physical balance between all the various
organs and functions and the muscles responsible for those functions.
It will also give that perfect control over the nerve and brain
which most of us, as I explain elsewhere, have lost through the
diminution of natural physical activity through successive genera¬
tions of civilisation, and which we can only regain by such a system
of physical education and re-education as I have outlined. (See
also chapter on “ Muscle, Mind and Nerve. ”) Such training will
bring about quickness of judgment and decision, swiftness jand
power of action, and will fit a person for success in any business or
sport where such qualities are essential. Kelaxation movements,
unlike those of contraction, should be performed quickly, thus
relaxing from the very beginning of the movement.
We see a splendid example of combined speed and power both
in thinking and acting in the ease of a well-trained boxer, and
where two opponents have an equal knowledge of and facility in
all the tricks of the game, the winner is always the man who can
strike most swiftly and with most power, that is, with the most
powerful muscle or muscles behind the blow and the swifter
execution of an order from the brain. Where there is this splendid
balance between contraction and relaxation in this movement and
between the brain and the associated muscles employed, decision
and action are almost instantaneous and simultaneous.
Indeed, if I may again intrude a little personal experience of
my own, it will help to prove this. While on tour in America, Dr.
D. A. Sargent, M.A., the world-famed medical director of the
Harvard University athletes, was amazed to find that I was as
speedy in action as strong, because, like so many others. Dr. Sargent
expected to find in a strong man that the power of contraction had
been developed at the expense of the power of relaxation, and that
what I had gained in strength and power had been at the price of
agility and speed.
Before a group of athletes, which included a famous boxing
 243

instructor, Mr. Michael Donovan, of New York, a man noted for

his speed in striking a blow, I was put through a series of speed
tests with this specialist in boxing, and it was proved that I was
almost as swift in stinking as Mr. Donovan, notwithstanding all his
greater practice and experience, and the fact that his mind had been
so much better educated and trained for such a performance than
mine. It was shown in 16 trials by means of an ingenious electrical
apparatus that the average time occupied by my fist in travelling a
distance of 15 75.100 inches was 11-100th of a second. Mr.
Donovan's speed in 10 trials averaged 8-100 of a second.
In another test I proved to be Mr. Donovan's superior, my
average time between making up my mind to strike and beginning
to strike being 22-100 of a second, while Mr. Donovan’s was 23-100,
or just 1-100 of a second slower. This was because I had trained
my muscles to contract and relax in perfect harmony, and my mind
•co-ordinated perfectly with both.

IMPORTANCE OF FULL CONTRACTION.

With children, the movements of contraction and relaxation

should be practised alternately, and the child should be taught to be
able to contract or relax each muscle or all the muscles at with while
4 '

its capacity for both these acts should be tested at each physical
examination. Of course, the child cannot learn to relax until it
intelligently understands how to contract, so that contraction is the
keynote of successful physical training. The teaching of intelligent
relaxation will bring increased power of recuperation, for the more
complete the relaxation of the mental, nervous and muscular
systems, as in sleep, the better the re-building of the muscular
system and the whole body will be.
Complete relaxation without movement of any kind should also
be taught, for it is surprising how few there are even among
grown-up people to-day, who can utterly relax the muscles of the
body when they desire, and so obtain that complete and re-invigorat¬
ing rest of a healthy babe, as yet unspoiled by its association with a
degenerative civilisation. The children should be taught how to
relax the muscles either when standing up, sitting down or lying
down. When they have been given the intelligent understanding
of how to control the contraction of the muscles, they will then
more quickly be taught to understand how to completely relax any
muscle or group of muscles. This should be practised, with each
limb alternately, also with the body as a whole.
 244

Such practice from children would undoubtedly be of great

benefit in preventing and eradicating functional nervous troubles
and disorders, as it would gradually develop self-control and the
inhibition of such purposeless and unnecessary activity of a morbid
nature which is responsible for a great wastage and prodigal
expenditure of nervous energy.
The teaching of this valuable lesson of total and equal con¬
traction and relaxation must be most thorough and most careful,
and it would be best always in the case of children—especially
where there is the slightest heart trouble—to teach the child first to
contract and relax only one muscle or group of muscles at a time
while performing a movement. As a simple example, let us take
the biceps. At first, the one arm only should be employed at a time,
and the child taught to contract and relax the biceps, with its mind
only concentrated on that muscle, and with its fullest effort, the
rest of the body being relaxed as fully and as far as possible. The
triceps would, of course, also be brought into play automatically,
but its movement would only be sub-conscious and of a relaxed
character.
The child should be taught at this time to feel with its own
free hand the contraction and relaxation of the biceps in turn,
keeping the hand there during the performance of the movement or
movements, thus having sensory evidence of the hardening of the
muscle in contraction and its softening under relaxation. It should
also be informed that the harder, the muscle when contracted and
the greater its softness when relaxed the better the quality of the
muscle. All this would not only have an excellent educational
value, but it would teach the child to fully concentrate its mind only
on any muscle or muscles moved, and so to derive real benefit both
from contraction or relaxation. Instead of the mind being divided
in its attention between several muscles it would be concentrated for
the time entirely on a certain group of muscles so that the results in
this way would be still further enhanced.
Above all, the strain put upon the heart by the maximum of
muscular and mental effort in one muscle or group of muscles, or in
one limb or one side of the body instead of two, would be lessened,
so that in every case of heart trouble the child should begin any
treatment for its heart only in this way. This illustration is only
given as an example, and holds good with regard to every other
voluntary muscle or group of muscles, the child being taught to feel
the muscle or muscles moved where possible, hardening or softening
during contraction and relaxation wherever possible. When I say
 245

that the maximum of effort and complete concentration of the mind

are essential to achieve the best results, I would point out, however,
that it is best to attain this ideal by gradual stages, especially in the
case of children or when there is any suspicion of organic weakness
or disease or tendency to disease. This gradual increase of effort and
mental concentration should be obligatory with children, and is pre¬
ferable even in the case of adults to avoid the possibility of overstrain
or injury at the outset. The same also holds good with regard to the
speed at which the physical movements are performed, and these
should only be accelerated gradually as the heart grows stronger, as
I point out in Chapter X.
The complete relaxation of the muscles will teach children to
acquire control over the brain itself, and to regulate their nervous
expenditure, a most valuable lesson at a time when nervous troubles
are so painfully in evidence. It will also be of the greatest benefit
for those who are afflicted with sleeplessness, a formidable sapper
of vital and nervous energy, and it will help men and women of the
future to regain that serenity and calm equipoise of health so
marked in contrast to the over-strung, restless fidgety type with
which we are all too familiar to-day.

BREATHING EXERCISES.

Breathing exercises must, of course, receive most painstaking

attention, for breathing is the first and last act of life and the most
vitally essential of all bodily functions, except, perhaps, the beating
of the heart. The teaching of proper breathing at school would
undoubtedly help very much by strengthening each and every cell of
the lungs to completely eliminate the terrible disease of consumption,
and all that fearful train of lung and chest complaints, such as
asthma, bronchitis, etc., which levy so heavy a toll upon human life
to-day.
Children should all be taught the health value of breathing
through the nostrils instead of the mouth, a practice that warms
the air on its passage to the bronchial tubes and the lungs, and
helps to check germs of disease from gaining entrance there. They
should be taught to make each inspiration slowlv in this way, and
equallv to exhale fastly, freely and fully by the mouth. Deep
breathing must be done very gradually, especially where there is
any heart or lung trouble or weakness tending towards such, and
the state of the heart noted after all such exercises.
Deep nasal breathing fills the lungs with the oxygen that the
Photo of the Author showing remarkable power of chest expansion, which everyone
should be taught and trained to possess by the same methods.
246
Splendid arm and chest development of Bandsman Cooper, of Cape Colony,
an enthusiastic and ardent follower of these methods.

217
 248

Hindoo Yogis call prana or life itself, and full exhalation, of

course, means the free expulsion of carbonic acid gas and much
gaseous filth that would otherwise be retained in greater quantity
in the system, very much to the prejudice of the bodily health.
The children should be taught upper-chest breathing, abdominal
breathing and costal-breathing in turns, filling the lungs to their
fullest air capacity at each inspiration, and to realise the difference
in these forms of breathing by placing their hands where the
muscles of respiration in each case can be felt moving in inspiration
and expiration.

USE OF MODELS AND CHARTS.

Above all, they should be vigilantly watched to prevent them

from holding in the breath while carrying out these breathing
exercises, and all this teaching will train them to breathe naturally
and deeply and to exhale fully in later life, while it must, of course,
deepen and broaden the chest, increase the lung capacity, and
toughen the tissue of all the organs of respiration. As the cells of
the respiratory system can only be directly and separately exercised
and developed in resistant power by such breathing exercises, this is
the only way that we can reach them and bring into balance with the
cells of all the other organs and systems, the importance of deep
and natural breathing cannot be over-estimated.
It is important, too, that each child should be made to
thoroughly understand the exact nature and meaning of every
physical movement employed in its education and training, the
muscle or muscles influenced by it, and the bodily organs and
functions also affected. A pupil of exceptional development and
possessing perfect co-ordination of mind and muscle might be used
as a model and anatomical charts should be employed and
teachers or instructor should point out the exact result of every
movement as the model makes them.
I cannot, of course, go into all the details that I consider
essential in such a system of scientific physical education and
training as I advocate as a necessary step to the eradication and
prevention of disease and the restoration of that physical move¬
ment and activity so lacking from modern life yet so essential to life
and health. To do so would mean my writing another volume quite
as large as the present on the practical side of this question alone,
and it mav be that if I find the whole question taken up and
supported by those in authority and the people themselves, I may
 249

yet find time to prepare such a book for the press, and to do my
share to assist the doctors, the physical instructors, the teachers and
the State in this most important part of modern education. I
might just add here that, of course, my whole scheme presupposes
the proper feeding of the children, for no scheme, as I enlarge upon
elsewhere, can ever be effective that is not based on the unchangeable
and unchanging fact that a hungry child needs food to assimilate
before it can assimilate either knowledge or wisdom, or build up a
healthy physical organism.
In conclusion, as a leader writer in the Daily Mail has said very
truly, “ the making of the next generation is the greatest reform of
all. If we can ensure that every child shall have a chance of
growing up with a sound physique and a solid groundwork of health
knowledge, we shall have taken some considerable step towards
transforming our whole national life.”
250
 251

CHiVPTER XII.

A Well-nourished Body the First Step in

Education.

The stomach is the furnace of the human engine, and the food
taken into it the fuel.
It is impossible to raise steam without fuel, and what coal is
to the steam-engine food is to the human engine, the prime source
of all power. It will be impossible ever to successfully educate
starved or starving children, either mentally or physically, any more
than you could train a Derby winner on short rations or while
feeding it on chaff. This is so self-evident a truism that it almost
insults the intelligence of my readers to give expression to it. Yet
it is necessary for me to emphasise it, because any such scheme of
physical education and reconstruction as I propose falls to the
ground if the children, from any cause, are underfed.
We want “ thoroughbred55 human beings even more than
thoroughbred horses, and nothing breeds disease and deterioration,
mental and physical, like privation or starvation, because nothing
more quickly lowers bodily resistant power, as was painfully evident
during the war period when every country suffered in degree, and
Germany endured quite an epidemic of “hunger-typhus ” and con¬
sumption. In Belgium 40 per cent, of the patients in hospital were
victims of phthisis through starvation, and the mortality in Vienna,
through the same cause, was appalling.
Even neutral countries like Sweden and Spain were devastated
by disease, several epidemics arising from privation. It leads to
in-nutrition and mal-nutrition, diminishes resistant power and
undermines all the bodily defences. So, if we seek to eliminate
disease and build up a stronger and better people, it is at once
evident that we must grapple seriously with the food problem which
is responsible for so much disease, especially in the young.
One of France’s most gifted writers, after a visit to London,
ironically remarked of our well-worn boast that all men had equal
rights under British law, that there was nothing whatever to prevent
 252

a rich man from sleeping away a winter’s night on the Embankment

any more than a poor one.
Both would probably be arrested and fined; there the equality
would end. The rich man would pay the fine, the poor man, being
unable to do so, would go to prison. The one was, however, driven
by necessity, the other his own free-will.

THE DEVIL OR THE STATE?

The children of the rich may not get the food necessary for
their health and well-being, the poor often cannot. The parents of
a rich child may be cruel, avaricious, mean, or they may be
dissipated, drunken and neglectful. In many cases, the same holds
good, of course, with the parents of poor children, for even the poor
or comparatively poor are not always paragons of virtue. Both rich
and poor parents can starve or under-feed their children if they
desire. Both, however, if detected, can, and should, be punished
except where poverty justifies or excuses.
The punishment, however, must always fall heaviest on the
poor, and always it is the child that suffers most. Before the
parents are detected and punished a child may even be starved to
death. We must not wait until either rich or poor parents commit
the offence. We must make it impossible for either of them to do so.
Here, too, I wish to express my agreement with the Premier,
who said in his first election speech in 1918, “wages must not be
permitted to drop to the point where the strength of the worker
cannot be maintained in efficiency, and where the mother cannot
discharge her sacred functions of bringing up children to undertake
the burden of Empire in the next generation. The health of the
people must especially be the concern of the State.” Better wages,
better food and better health should now be the watchwords of the
nation.
If, as we are so often told to-day, no child wholly belongs to its
parents but in part also to the State, then we must have fatherly,
if not grandfatherly, legislation, to protect every child from even
the possibility of starvation. It will, of course, cost money, but you
cannot buy good citizenship if you are not prepared to pay the
price. The Devil will outbid the State if the latter bids meanly or
grudgingly for its children.
It matters not however, how or whence the money comes, the
children must be fed with really nourishing food, if any scheme of
any kind for their physical reconstruction and salvation is to bear
 253

fruit. If the parents are able to afford to pay for it well and good.
They'must do so. If they fail to do so, the State must punish them
and save the children. If the parents, from “ any just cause or
impediment,” as we say in another place, are unable to do so, either
permanently or temporarily, the local educational authorities must
do so, and failing them, the State itself.

THE HEADQUARTERS OF HAPPINESS.

The stomach is the real headquarters of the body, and all human
happiness or misery springs from that source. If this applies to
adults, how much more truly does it apply to children who need
food more because they are growing, and who, bv their natural
activities, consume vitality at an enormous rate.
A child has two arms, two legs, two lungs, two kidneys, even two
brains. It has only one stomach, and that stomach ultimately may
decide the fate of a people or of an army. It will certainly decide
a child’s view of life for good or evil. As Dr. B. W. Richardson
well said, “ the centre of the emotion of felicity is not in the brain/’
The centre is in the vital nervous system, in the great ganglia of
the sympathetic, lying not in the cerebro-spinal cavities but in the
cavities of the body itself, near the stomach and on the heart.
Everybody who has felt felicity has felt it as from within the body.
We know, again, where the depression of misery is located; our
physicians of all times have defined that and have named the disease
of misery from its local seat. The man who is always miserable is a
‘ hypochondriac ’—his affection is seated under the lower ribs.”
Or, again, as a distinguished ex-Army surgeon puts it :—“ You
may cut off a man’s leg or his arm, you may knock out a teacupful of
his brains, you may cut and carve him pretty freely, still he will sing
and laugh and keep up his pluck, so long as stomach and liver are
on duty. Let them fail, and the man will sneak or lie down and
whine.”
That was how a soldier spoke of soldiers. What, however,
must be the sufferings of a child who, with an empty paunch, is
asked to master the rule of three or follow the labyrinthine mazes of
grammar.
Every city, town and village should have its communal kitchen
and dining hall, and the food should be selected, prepared and
cooked by skilful cooks, under medical supervision and direction,
so that only the most nourishing foods should be provided and cooked
 254

in the most hygienic way. At least one good meal a day should be
guaranteed to every child whether its parents are able to meet the
cost or not, for a workless father should never mean a starving child.
For, as Sir George Newman has pointed out, over and over again,
all lessons must be lost on a child that is hungry or insufficiently
nourished, and the money spent on education in this way is simply
wasted.

CHILDREN MORE PRECIOUS THAN CONVICTS.

Children at school should be weighed on entrance, and at least

once a month subsequently, and any declination of weight, or any
child not of normal weight, should be immediately brought under
the notice of a doctor, who would then order it such a diet or special
diet as he thought desirable. Of course, any standard of weight
must be, to some extent, elastic according to the build, condition and
temperament of the individual child. No child should be permitted
to lose weight, for even a convict in a prison is not allowed to lose
weight to any reasonable extent without immediate medical
attention, and it is not surely asking too much to ensure that
innocent children should at least be as well treated in this matter as
the inmates of a convict settlement.
Any system of free meals is, of course, open to abuse, and
inspectors should be appointed to see that drunken or avaricious
parents do not attempt to take advantage of such a scheme. Just as
most public hospitals have almoners to inquire into the financial
status of persons seeking admission, so every school or every local
authority should have an official, whose duty it would be to check all
applications for the free feeding of children, to ensure that only
genuinely deserving cases received benefits under such a scheme,
and to prosecute those whose neglect or voluntary idleness threw
their children on the public funds, or who attempted to obtain relief
by fraud in any way.
Free meals should only be allotted on application, except in rare
cases, where medical recommendation would be sufficient, or other¬
wise, or m(any mothers might, through false pride, allow their
children to suffer rather than apply for gratuitous assistance from
the authorities or the State. The school doctor should have the power
to order free meals in every case where he considered a child under¬
nourished, while the almoner should make it his business to
discover whether the parents were culpably responsible or not.
 255

EVERY MOTHER HER OWN COOK.

The proper feeding of growing children is too grave a matter

to be left to chance, for all money spent either on mental or physical
education is money thrown away if the little ones are not supplied
with sufficient nourishing food to support “ each constituent and
natural force 55 of the body. At present, the majority of parents
have but the slightest knowledge of dietetics or food values, and are
equally untrained in that culinary skill which enables a good cook to
conserve all the valuable food essences, oils and salts which are so
often lost in cooking by evaporation.
A better system of education will change all this, as we realise
more and more that food is a most vital factor in the physique and
health of a nation, the fuel that “ stokes up ” the body and energises
the brain. Parents will be better informed as to the value of
different articles of food and better trained in the art of cooking,
for, under the system I suggest, mothers would receive a book from
the State on the choice, preparation and cooking of food, which is,
after all, the great question of paramount national importance in
the dieting of both children and adults. Whether the State, the
school or local authorities or the parents feed the children is not so
much the question as whether they are fed properly and well fed
or not.
Poor or improper feeding cannot but lower that innate resistant
power of the body which is the only true and absolute preventive of
disease. In this respect I may quote from the report of Dr. E.
Wyche, senior medical officer of the Nottingham Educational Com¬
mittee. “ The statistics,'5 he says, speaking of his own district,
“ indicate a remarkable aggregate of ill-health, much of which is
preventable, and should never have been permitted to occur. These
children, handicapped by malnutrition and disease, during the
most susceptible and plastic period of life, are thereby condemned
to grow up with so much per cent, permanently knocked off their
value to their native city and the community at large. As are our
children so must our future be; as they grow up dirty, ill-nourished,
diseased and inefficient, so will be our future place among the
nationsThis is wholesome talking and worthy of permanent
record, while this very intelligent medical officer emphasises the
value of “ a successful offensive against the entrenched enemies of
childhood, dirt, delicacy, and disease,” malnutrition being a
prolific cause of the latter.
s
 256

METHODS THAT OUT-HEROD HEROD,

The experiment of issuing valuable nutritive foods and pre¬

parations to delicate children has already been made on a limited
scale in certain districts, and this, again, is another area of service
in which the school medical officer can exercise a most beneficial
influence on the future men and women of the nation.
All this work of child welfare should not be left under different
bodies as at present, but should be co-ordinated and centralised
under a Ministry of Health, as I have before pointed out, if only that
a continuous record of every child's physical life up till a certain
age fixed by law should be preserved, and the statistics thus gleaned
would be of the utmost value in combating and conquering national
weakness, inefficiency and disease for the future. Even after the
children leave school and begin work, such records should still be
kept under one authority so that we would be able to have a con¬
secutive story of the nation's individual physical life recorded, as
it were, in yearly chapters.
Infant feeding is almost a problem by itself. Tainted and
impure milk is an admittedly generous contributor to the cemetery
through tuberculosis and other wasting diseases. Many mothers
are unconsciously “ baby killers ” through ignorance as to the correct
food for infants and children.
As a writer in the Daily Mail has trenchantly remarked, “ the
law of life for multitudes of babies who have not nursemaids and
* mail-carts ’ is the harsh law of the survival of the fittest. They
are the babies who are given long-brewed tea as a stimulant, whose
milk, polluted before it is delivered, is left uncovered for hours in
crowded dwelling rooms, into whose mouths germ-laden ‘ comforters ’
are thrust when they cry with pain/’ the poor mites, unfortunately,
having “ no language but a cry.” “ This is why/’ continues the
writer, “ ten in everv hundred of the babies who are born in Great
Britain do not live twelve months.” And it is important to bear in
mind that the greatest harm to the human race through faulty
feeding is not merely the loss of precious infant life, but the fact
that even those who survive must grow up with weak. unhealthy or
even diseased bodies. We shall never get rid of national inefficiency
until we have taught every mother how to feed her children.
Our efforts at present to stamp out disease are severely handi¬
capped by our want of organisation and co-ordination. A child is
attacked, say, with phthisis, contracted through tainted milk. It is
admitted to a hospital or sanitorium and either recovers or dies. A
 257

few questions are asked as to family history, habits, etc., and the
case duly recorded, but no further steps are taken to bring what is
really a crime against the public home to the guilty ones.
What I would like to see is a Ministry of Health with similarly
organised powers and forces to fight disease and disease germs as
Scotland Yard has to fight crime and criminals. Such a Ministry
of Health would have a wonderful disease-detective and police
system in the medical profession, with special offices to investigate
the various forms of health-crimes, and staffs to hunt down disease
to its lair and arrest it. The “ evidence ” of the victim should be
taken and by a highly-trained and experienced officer.

A SCOTLAND YARD OF HEALTH.

Let us suppose, for instance, a patient’s statement made it quite

evident that the tubercle bacillus was introduced through drinking
infected milk. Every effort should then be made by the medical
detective system to trace that milk supply to its source, to locate
the exact cause of the infection and to determine responsibility.
Was the cow tuberculous and why? Were the byres clean and
sanitary and well ventilated? Was there any dereliction of duty
on the part of the inspectors? Was anyone who came in contact
with the milk tuberculous ? Or did it get tainted in transit between
farm and dairy and retailer, or retailer and consumer? Such
questions as these pursued painstakingly and conscientiously would,
in many cases seal the doom of the guilty person or persons, and
should also ensure his, her, or their punishment, for to supply tuber¬
culous milk consciously to anyone is as criminal and culpable as to
administer poison, and, if the victim should die, the responsible
person is as guilty of manslaughter or even murder as if the victim
had been killed by knife or bullet.
A Ministry of Health carrying out its work on such lines as
these in every case of deadly disease would soon be able to bring to
punishment many malefactors and be in possession of the most
valuable information for the prevention and suppression of health
crimes against the body, whether self-inflicted or otherwise. Such
measures would also make people more careful, as they would be
warned in time of the punishment their conduct would bring. In
this way, too, many industrial diseases due to unhygienic and
unsanitaray workshops would be “ rounded up,” those responsible
punished, and the annual hospital bill of the nation greatly
diminished.
 258

EVERY CRADLE A CRADLE OF EMPIRE.

The time has arrived when there must be an increasing public

desire to cherish our children. They hold the future in their
chubby little hands. Their cradles are the cradles of Empire. The
occupant of the cradle to-day may be the first Minister of State
some day. The biggest telescope ever made cannot see the far-off
future of to-day’s infant-in-arms. It is no excuse for us to say that
it is the duty of the parents to feed their children. Admittedly
that is so, but it is also the duty of the State which looks to its
children to defend it in an hour of danger to see that the children
are fed, whether there is parental neglect or not. Thousands may
be neglectful, but tens of thousands find it most difficult, if not
impossible to make ends meet. Let neglectful parents be punished
by all means, but do not let the State and the community be robbed
of efficient units because parents are either neglectful or poor.
The time has come for big, broad views on this subject, for if
we punish those who would attempt to rob the State of a soldier, as
the law does at present, is it not worse for the State itself to permit
the sacrifice of a child through lack of food, for that child is the
citizen in embryo to whom the State must look for prosperity in
peace or victory in war.
He who said kt feed My lambs ” regarded the children not
merely as the component units of a country or even an Empire, but
reminded us rightly that “ of such are the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Let us, therefore, treat the children as we would an angel from
Heaven.

GOOD FOOD, GOOD DIGESTION, GOOD HEALTH.

If we see to it that every child is assured of the food necessary

to nourish, strengthen and maintain it, and keep its digestive system
in healthy working order by such methods as I describe, the money
and time spent on the mental education of children would quickly
return a much higher dividend. As I have pointed out, movement
is essential to life, for food without movement remains undigested
and badly assimilated, lowering the resistant power of the body,
disturbing the whole bodily equilibrium, and opening the door to*
disease, while, at the same time, debilitating the brain and nervous
system by the accumulation of waste and poisonous matter, thus
nullifying the best efforts to cultivate intelligence and understand¬
ing in such a child.
 259

To avert malnutrition is to strengthen both body and mind, and

to wipe out at one stroke a whole family of diseases and disorders.
Scientific physical education and reconstruction will undoubtedly
succeed in this if it be carried out carefully, thoroughly and
courageously from the first day a child enters school. The school,
too, will no longer be regarded with something akin to horror as it
is so often by the children to-day, for under the new regime they
will find full scope for the instinctive and natural desire in the
young to display their physical capacity as well as their mental, and
a welcome break to the monotony of mental work.

MAKING GOOD DIGESTION WAIT ON APPETITE.

To give the children good food and a good digestive system is to

facilitate educational progress in every direction. I am glad to see
that the subject is receiving considerable attention both in the
medical and the educational press, and also to note that medical
officers of health in every part of the country are directing attention
to this important aspect of the whole educational problem.
Dr. G. W. N. Joseph, of Warrington, says in his report that
“ One of the great problems of the future will be to see that all
children receive suitable and ample nourishment if a strong and
healthy race is to grow up.” A very distinguished physician in
Dr. Eicholtz declares that “ food is at the base of most of the evils
of child degeneracy, and if we can take steps to ensure the proper
and adequate feeding of children these evils will rapidly cease.”
I could go on quoting similar expressions of opinion by the thousand,
all of which are straws showing in which way the wind is blowing.
If the nation and the State sees to it that the children have good
food such a system of national physical education as I am now
advocating will give them the good digestion that should wait on
it if it is to be converted into useful human energy and power. One
cannot build up a body with a plentiful reserve of nervous energy
and muscular power without good food, and the marvellous muscles
of the body, which play so important a part in every bodily function,
as I show in the following chapter, depend upon food well digested
for the necessary supplies to sustain them and make good their
waste.

j
 260

CHAPTER XIII.

The Marvels of the Muscular System.

How important is the part that muscle plays in the life of an

individual must at once be evident from the fact that for the mere
act of living muscular power is essential. Logically, therefore, we
may deduce the additional fact that the quality and amount of
muscle one has, modifies and even determines, to no small extent,
one’s life and health, the degree to which we may be said to live
and even the length and happiness or otherwise of our days in the
land.
Quality of muscle is of even more importance than bulk, and,
of course, one often finds wonderful strength and vitality in a
person who does not carry any very exceptional show of muscle.
Some will always have a greater bulk of muscle just as some will
always grow taller than others. Each person has a different
standard of muscular development, and when that is attained the
quality of the muscle cells is then the determining factor. When
each muscle cell is developed to its highest possible standard both in
size and quality a small muscle-development may be quite consistent
with strength, vitality and resistant power to disease, for ten of
such cells have quite as much value as twenty of an inferior quality,
just as ten strong men could lift a greater weight than twenty weak
men. But where there is both great bulk and the same high qualit}r
there must be still more strength and more vitality because, to use a
sporting expression, “ a good big un is always better than a good
little ’un.”
Vitality or nerve-force is the motive power of the body (although
some physiologists contend that muscle tissue has contracting power
even without nervous stimuli), acting through the muscular system,
but it must not be forgotten that it is through the muscular system
that this nervous energy is generated, for upon the muscular system
largely depends the digestion and assimilation of food and the circu¬
lation of the blood that carries the vital supplies of air and food
necessary to nourish and support the nervous system, to free it from
 261

poisonous and waste matter, and to replenish its continually decreas¬

ing reserve of nervous energy.

THE UNITED STATES OF THE BODY.

It is surprising, indeed, even in these days, how little is under¬

stood of the value and importance of muscular power in the main¬
tenance, protection and preservation of the nervous force and all
the vital functions and processes of life, and how frequently it is
still regarded as essential only for the performance of feats of
strength or endurance. So much is this so at times that I remember
a haughty young man, whose right arm had grown very weak and
almost helpless, as a result of a long confinement to bed following an
accident, saying to me when I told him that he would only be able to
use it with assistance, and as he used it, it would gradually regain
its lost muscular power; “ Oh, Mr. Sandow, I don’t want to be
muscular, you know.” How he expected ever to move his arms
without muscular power surprised me, so I told him that if he
wanted to use his arms without muscles, he would need someone with
him always to move them for him. For, as I show in another
chapter, disuse of any part of the body must lead to deterioration
and atrophy, because of the lack of movement that maintains life.
Ignorance such as that referred to seems incredible in the twentieth
century, yet there are many who are almost equally in the dark as
to the real value and necessity of muscular movement.
The superficial muscles they can see are the only muscles they
recognise, for many people, to use Emerson’s phrase, are only “ eye-
wise,” recognising and admitting only that of which they have
visible evidence. They do not pause to consider that in the
mysterious wonder-world of the body there are other invisible hut
important muscles associated with every vital act of life—respira¬
tion, digestion, circulation, secretion and excretion. We have not
only muscles to move us about from place to place and to move the
various parts of the body, but muscles also that help each organ to
perform its functions in the body, either under the control of the
mind and will or through association with these involuntary muscles
and through sympathy in a body so closely inter-related and inter¬
dependent, where every system is linked up with every other system
in what may truly be called the United States of the body.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE MUSCLES.

Each of us has certain muscles directly under our own control,

/
 262

and others are operated sub-consciously independent of our will.

Others again, are partly under our control and partly beyond it, as,
for instance, the muscles employed in breathing, which move even
while we sleep, but which, however, we can, to some degree, control
by an effort of will, breathing slowly or quickly as desired. Some
muscles are capable of movement sub-consciously through the
emotions and passions and feelings, without conscious effort of will
on our part—often, indeed, in defiance of it, as, for instance, the
muscles employed in laughing or crying, and in the various passions
which act so strongly at times as to overcome the will. Control over
these muscles can, to some extent, be developed by training, as I
prove elsewhere, especially in children. Some have it more strongly
developed than others, and by closely observing a child’s degree of
control in this wav, a valuable index as to its mentality and moral
trend may be obtained by the doctor or teacher.
Man, then, is a machine capable of motion and locomotion by
means of muscle, voluntary and involuntary, and it is most import¬
ant to recognise as a bed-rock fact how essential muscles are to our
very existence and how much our health and immunity from disease
depend upon muscular fitness and tone, and also how dependent is
the mental structure upon the physical and muscular sub-structure.
We could not open or close an eye but for muscle. We could
not move a finger without muscle. We could not laugh, cry, smile,
scowl or frown without muscle. We could not even speak, sing,
chew, swallow or digest our food without muscle. We could not
breathe “ the breath of life,” our heart could not even beat, and our
blood would stagnate and grow cold, without muscular power.
All the bodily muscles can be set in motion either by the direc¬
tion of our own will or sub-consciously. The facial muscles,
however, are usually moved only in response to some emotion,
thought, feeling or passion. It is the muscles that give expression
to our feelings and emotions, and, therefore, interpret often our
most secret thoughts

WHY SOME LOOK OLD SOONER THAN OTHERS.

The question is often asked why does one man look older than
another of exactly the same age. I will answer this in the Irish way
by asking another question, viz., why does a healthy child look
younger than a man of middle age ? The answer to both is simply
that in the one case the muscles of the face are kept in more constant
 263

movement than the other by the more frequent expression of varying

thoughts, feelings, or emotions.
The child naturally allows its emotions and feelings to express
themselves more fully through the movement of the facial muscles
than an adult. Its every thought is freely expressed by the muscles
of its face, the muscles that move it so quickly to laughter or tears.
The facial muscles being thus, as it were, constantly exercised and
developed by its more emotional life, its freedom from responsibility,
care and worry, its innocence and its carelessness of consequence, its
skin is kept healthy, clear and well-nourished, while the firmness
and chubbiness of its cheeks give the whole face that angelic
experience of youth which we older folk so often envy and covet.
This is entirelv due to the fact that the muscles underneath are well
developed and keep the skin fully stretched.
As the child grows up it is taught to exercise self-control, to
hide or dissemble its thoughts, emotions, and passions, to stifle its
feelings, and so these facial muscles become less and less brought
into active daily use. The result is that the face begins to lose its
firmness, roundness and smoothness, and the muscles being little
used grow weaker and smaller until the flesh hangs loosely and
sags between the bones, because there is less muscle to fill up the
intervening space or spaces.
Now take the case of two business men of the same age in exactly
similar business circumstances. Both are in good physical trim,
but one looks facially years older than the other. The one, as the
saying is, “ wears his heart upon his sleeve,” takes the whole world
into his confidence, accepts “ Fortune’s buffets and rewards ” alike
with smiling face and does not even attempt to conceal or disguise
his thoughts or suppress his emotions.
The other, of sterner mould, has cultivated an almost Indian
reserve, has carefully trained himself to repress any facial expres¬
sion that might reveal his real self behind a face that has become
merely a mask, and the muscles of his face have consequently almost
atrophied leaving deep hollows and furrows and “ crows’ feet.”
Probably the only exercise his facial muscles ever get is when Nature
compels him to the act of yawning or when he occasionally unbends
in private life. Is it any wonder, then, that the former man
preserves an appearance of youth long after the latter?

WHY WRINKLES COME WITH ACE.

The middle-aged, and the old, who are still less susceptible to
 264

the passions, emotions, and thrills of youth slowly cease to exercise

their facial muscles altogether, and their faces become wrinkled,
cadaverous, and gnarled because the unused muscles and fatty tissue
have shrunk to nothingness and there is little left but skin and bone
Were it not for the act of yawning, through Nature’s demand for
more oxygen, which frequently brings their facial, throat and neck
muscles into play, the bones might almost pierce the skin through
lack of muscular protection.
Muscle, again, when fully developed in balance, gives the body
its symmetry of form and grace and dignity of carriage and move¬
ment. It smoothes over the bony angularities and rounds off the
figure, and this outward harmony and symmetry in a healthy and
developed human body is but the visible expression of a similar but
invisible harmony in the internal body, where all the cells have also
been fully developed in true proportion and balance to one another.
What many, including even the medical profession—with some
rare and gratifying exceptions—have not yet fully recognised is that
it is necessary to build up the whole internal body in perfect propor¬
tion and balanced strength if we are to possess a body outwardly
and visibly strong, symmetrical, graceful and balanced, the outward
body being but the reflection of the body within. Because, balanced
movements of the voluntary muscles, in the way I have explained,
will also cause all the involuntary muscles and all the bodily cells
also to move and develop in co-operation as described, with the result
that any or every organ, system and function of the body can be
developed, strengthened and improved thereby.

YOU LOOK AS YOU REALLY ARE.

In a sound and scientific system of physical education and

training for children, the children would be taught to realise this,
and to develop a healthy and well-balanced bodv in every way,
internally and externally. With this internal and external bodily
culture, a child would grow up to possess an exterior physical
appearance of health, beauty and strength with an internal
organism to correspond, and would be little likely to fall a prey to
disease either then or in later life, for muscle once developed,
especially while young, remains, in some degree, for life. Medical
men will, I think, agree with me then that muscular strength and
organic and, junctional health are not things in antagonism or even
apart. These must, on the other hand, go together. They are
inseparable. They are one, in the natural order of things.
 265

The scientific physical training of the muscular system,

including, as it does, all the muscles of the body—the involuntary as
well as the voluntary—will produce better balance and proportion
of the whole organism, because it will develop and strengthen every
organ by giving it just the movement that is necessary to its well
being, and thus bring about the better performance of its function
or functions, and make the body both stronger and healthier in all
its minutest parts.
In short, an individuals health is mainly contingent on his
muscle-power, for as 1 have shown, the nervous system, which
regulates all the functions of the body, depends for its supplies upon
the muscular system, and the better developed and balanced, his
muscular system, visible and invisible, the healthier and better
functioned the nervous system must be. This muscle-power and
balance can only be obtained and developed through balanced
movement of the voluntary muscles in a scientific way.

OVER 500 MUSCLES IN THE BODY.

There are in the human body over 500 muscles of various shapes
and sizes, some flat and ring-shaped, some spindle-shaped, some
fan-shaped, some that look like little feathers, and some that have
the appearance of small fish. When, again, one thinks of the many
varieties and degrees of muscle from the brawny biceps and triceps
of the blacksmith’s arm to the tiny throat and chest muscles regulat¬
ing the musical trills, the crescendoes and the diminuendoes of a
Melba or a Tettrazini, it is possible for us to realise that muscle
should command as much respect as, if not even more than, brain
and nerve, for it plays an even more important part in the general
scheme of things, as nerve and brain and every organ are dependent
entirely on the muscles of the digestive, circulatory and eliminatory
systems for their nutrition, aeration and purification.
Yet many still look upon mere muscle,” as it is sometimes
called, as vulgar. This is a popular delusion that must be crushed
by education, for it is a most dangerous attitude and especially
unfair to the young, while it is a belief that has been and is to be
held largely responsible for the physical deterioration of the people.
People have been foolishly taught to use and develop the mental
rather than the muscular system, because mental work is more highly
remunerated or is considered more “ respectable,” but they have not
been taught, what is far more important, that only by muscular
 266

movement can the body be made and kept strong enough to support
the increased labour of the brain, or to obtain that exact balance
between the mental and the muscular systems without which there
must be the ever-present danger of mental breakdown.
Muscle, indeed, is just as essential to the brain-worker if he is
to reap the best results from that organ, as it is to the manual
worker, and must not, therefore, be despised or regarded as a non-
essential.
FUNCTION DEPENDENT ON MUSCLE.

A man or woman will faint or grow pale as the blood flows away
from a cut or a blow, or will be quite alarmed at any appreciable loss
of nerve, but will watch his or her muscles grow weak and flabby
almost to helplessness without a qualm. Why? Because even yet
the health value of muscle is not fully understood nor the fact
realised and recognised that it is the muscular power of the body
that maintains both life and health.
Neglect, abuse or ill-treatment of the muscles brings its own
revenge, because all or at least some of the functions will become
weak and impaired if the muscular system is not well-nourished,
well-treated and well-trained, and thus the balance of the body will
be disturbed and its resistant power to disease diminished.
In the human body not the least important work of the muscles
is to regulate nutrition, and to supply and maintain heat. The 500
muscles themselves consume a great part of the food we eat. What¬
ever food is not immediately used is stored away as a reserve in the
form of tissue. By carefully regulating one’s exercise and daily
food the weight of the body may be maintained practically at an
equilibrium, an important fact which all doctors, teachers and
instructors at school should continually bear in mind.

VALUE OF AMBIDEXTEROUS TRAINING.

Here, too, I would impress upon them also the great value of
ambidexterous teaching and training for children. Such a system
of scientific education in the care and culture of the body as I am
describing naturally demands, as an bssential feature to obtain
perfect physical and mental balance, the equal education of the
muscles of both sides of the body. If this were not so, it would not
only be impossible to obtain perfect physical balance, but it would
also, as I show later, still further aggravate the disturbance of
balance between brain and body that is already an inevitable result
Men the Empire may well be proud of, all trained by the Author’s methods.

267
 G. R. Dann G. R. Dann

Some more types. There is absolutely no reason why every man should not have such a
development as this at the age of manhood by carrying out these methods as described.

268
 269

of our present methods of education. In very few schools, for

instance, are the children educated and trained to use even both
hands alone with equal facility.
In the methods of physical education and training which I
propose, the children must be trained to develop the muscles not only
of both hands and arms in equal balance, but every muscle of both
sides of the body, for in no other way is it possible ever to arrive at
what I call perfect physical and organic balance such as is absolutely
necessary if we are to make the body so powerfully resistant to
disease as to be disease-immune.
To further support this, I am a strong advocate of ambidex¬
terous education in every way, and I see no reason whatever why
this method of teaching should not be introduced conjunctively with
my proposed national scheme of physical and hygienic education.
There is no reason why any and every child should not be taught to
write, say, equally as well with the left as with the right hand, and
to do many other things with both hands, with equal facility. The
average child is just as awkward when it begins to write with the
right hand as with the left, and, indeed, it seems ridiculous not to
train them to use both as there is no extra trouble or cost, while it
would help to maintain better mental and muscular balance which,
I contend, is necessary for perfect health and freedom from disease.
Nature, after all, gives us two arms, two legs, two eyes, two
ears, two kidneys, and two lungs, so that if we lost one the other
would still be left us as compensation. A wise Creator has placed
nothing in the body without its specific object, and we have two arms
so that we should be able to use either if the other became injured
or destroyed. Yet how few to-day could use the left hand and arm
if, say, they were unfortunate enough to lose the right.

ITS EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN.

Think how much better off thousands of soldiers who have lost
arms in the war would be to-day if they had only been taught in
childhood and throughout life to use their left hand and arm, as
easily, as naturally and as skilfully as their right. What an
advantage, too, they would have had over a less educated opponent
in actual conflict. In everyday life, again, diseases such as “ writer’s
cramp ” or kC telegraphist’s ” or “ typist’s cramp,” due to overwork
of the right hand, would never exist if all were taught to use with
equal facility both hands.
Every child should be taught at school to use the two hands
 \

From the Banks of the Zuyder Zee.

Even in Holland these methods of physical development are winning many followers, and
this is a fine type of the young Dutchmen they are producing.

270
 271

equally well—write, work and play with the left as well as with the
right. Such training would be excellent to teach the child all-round
mental and muscular co-ordination in balance and would be
especially beneficial in the case of either mentally or physically
defective children. I have seen wonderful specimens of work
produced by children so trained. In scientific physical education
such as I am describing this use and exercise of the muscles of both
sides of the body in perfect balance is absolutely necessary to obtain
the best results. Afterwards, children should be taught to play
games equally well with the limbs of both sides. The value of such
muscular education and training on brain and mind can scarcely
be over-emphasised.
It is known now that all the voluntary muscles of the body are
under the influence and control of certain areas in the brain known
as motor areas, and the nerve communications between these motor
areas and muscles merge into, meet and cross one another at the
point where the spinal column and brain meet. Thus the muscles
on the left-hand side are influenced and controlled by motor areas
in the right lobe of the brain, and vice-versa. As these areas of
the brain can, in turn, be reached and developed through the move¬
ment of the muscles on the opposite side of the body, it will readily
be seen how the all-round and two-sided training and development
of the body will also develop, strengthen and balance the brain
power in its various manifestations.

MUSCLES THAT EXERCISE BRAIN AND NERVE.

Of the influence of muscular movement on the mental and

nervous system Dr. Sir James Crichton Browne speaks strongly and
with the voice of authority. He argues from the fact that “ the
stimulus to muscular contraction is conveyed by motor nerves, the
stimulus in the case of voluntary movement, originating in a certain
region of the brain, called the motor area, whose business it is to
preside over muscular movement, and from the fact that the
muscular movement stimulates sensory nerves, which convey the
impression made upon them to other centres in the brain. The
exercise of the muscles means, consequently, the exercise of nerves,
of nerve-centres also, and of fart of the brain itself.
“ The training bv which a child acquires the ability to perform
certain movements with rapidity, regularity, energy and precision,
is a training not of muscles only but of nerve-centres also, of the
T
 272

nerve-centres set apart to reign over these special muscles. The

actions which stimulate the growth and development of certain
muscles stimulate also the growth and development of certain
associated parts of the nervous system. Just as a muscle or group
of muscles will show weakness and also wasting if the movements,
for the performance of which they are designed are not practised, so
also will the associated nerve-centres fail to develop or waste—
atrophy—for want of exercise of their corresponding muscles.”
The human body may be likened to a great travelling workshop,
moved about and operated entirely by the employment of many
voluntary and involuntary muscles, which, in turn, receive their
commands direct from the brain or through the sympathetic nervous
system, according to whether the muscles needed at the moment are
voluntary or involuntary. But, as demonstrated elsewhere, balanced
movement of the voluntary muscles and the cells composing them
also causes the movement and development of the involuntary muscles
and their component cells and of the brain cells directing them,
while it also caused a greater flow of better oxygenated blood to the
latter and the better elimination of waste, so that not only a better
developed body but also a better developed and more receptive brain
will be the result of harmonised physical movements when
scientifically carried out in any educational institution.

PHYSICAL AND MUSCULAR MORALITY.

And, just as all the elements of the soil are brought into being
in the crops and the fruit so all the physical qualities of man are
the feeders of his intellectual and even his spiritual and moral life.
All education, in short, should begin with the physical and muscular
part of the body, wliidh is the sole support and source of supplies of
that rare trinity of Spirit, Mind, and Matter ivhich we call Man.
For the brain into which copious supplies are brought daily by rich,
red and well-aerated blood through movement—the movement,
purity and richness of which again, are all dependent on muscular
power—is bound to be better nourished, healthier, stronger, clearer
and more receptive than the brain that rests unsteadily upon a body
neglected, ill-cared for, or undeveloped. Through the physical body
all that is noblest in man can be reached, and the body instead of
being despised or humiliated by those men aspiring to saintliness of
character, should be respected and reverenced by all as a true fount
of spiritual, mental and moral inspiration.
Physical decadence or physical degeneracy will be almost
 J. C. Hagkmann.
Front view of a well-developed youth, the sound-mind-in-the-sound-body type that
is produced by scientific physical movement, and not the bar-lounging, cigarette
whiffing youth which swell the army of C3 unfits.
273
 J. C. Hagemann.
Back view of the same youth as on preceding page.

274
 275

invariably accompanied by mental and moral deterioration, for as

Herbert Spencer well said, “ we must never forget that there is such
a thing as physical morality.” Nature demands, both physically
and mentally, that you must go forward or backward, upward or
downward. There is no possibility of remaining stationary, for all
life is movement, depends on movement, and movement is a necessity
of life. Physical development means moving upwards, physical
deterioration means moving down.
Scientific physical development means physical and mental
balance, and perfect physical and mental balance is mankind's best
policy of insurance against disease, degeneracy, vice, insanity and
crime. The influence of muscle on brain, mind and nerve is more
fully dealt with in my next chapter.
 276

CHAPTER XIV.

ftluscle, Mind and Nerve.

The relationship of muscle and nerve and mind is a subject into

which it is necessary to enter if we are to have a true appreciation of
the importance of muscular movement in schooling and disciplining
the mental and nervous as well as the muscular man. Much has
been said and written of late concerning the effect of mind on
matter, of the curious influence mental and nervous phenomena often
exert upon the physical organism, as if the mind and the nervous
system were something apart and distinct from the purely physical
man. But it is too apt to be overlooked that what we call mental
force and nervous energy are merely the expression and functioning
of material and physical things, and that the brain and the nerves, of
which mental and nervous force are only manifestations, are them¬
selves things of tissue and blood very much like the muscles and
other parts of the body in many ways. In other words, the physical
brain and nervous system, while, perhaps, of a higher type and
quality than muscle, and possessing distinct and peculiar properties
and powers, exclusively their own, have yet much in common with
the rest of the organism.
In other words, the manifestations and workings of the nervous
system and the brain, wonderful and still mysterious as they are,
are not things that transcend human understanding and defy human
research, elusive as they admittedly have been so far, but things,
rather, having a common physical and material origin and means of
subsistence, things/, too, that can and have been developed by use,
and that will deteriorate through abuse or disuse, and things which
must ultimately yield up their as yet unrevealed secrets and mys¬
teries to the eternal inquisitiveness of scientific research. Indeed,
the worship of the mind as something transcendant above and
bevond the merely physical body has been one of the greatest of
human errors, and an idolatry for which humanity has paid a
great price.
 277

INFLUENCE OF MATTER ON MIND.

Though there have been and are exceptions to the general rule,
it will be conceded that the brain and nervous system lodged in a
healthy body are more likely to thrive and flourish than a brain and
nervous system located in a body physically debased, debilitated, or
diseased. For just as it is the sap within the tree that gives the
leaves and the flowers their rich verdure and colour, so it is the
vital force generated within the physical body that gives the brain
and nervous system their freshness, flexibility and tone. On the
other hand, a body robbed of some of its vital energy by a sluggish
or torpid liver, will throw a pall of desolation over the clearest and
strongest brain until the normal functional movement of that large
bodily organ is restored.
Indigestion, as we have seen in the case of even so great an
intellect as Carlyle, will tinge the mind with the sable hue of
melancholy, set the nerves a-quiver like aspen leaves, and give to
utterance a bitterness and an acidity that will make the most bril¬
liant dyspeptic a very Ishmaelite among his fellows. The body,
meant to be the temple of the soul, can, if allowed to deteriorate and
decay, become instead the tomb of the spirit.
It was a distorted perspective that led man, in days gone by,
to humiliate his physical body by irritating it with “hair shirts,"
and other devices designed to glorify the Creator by assaults upon
His handiwork. The body was given to each and all of us, by the
Creator of all things, not to despise, neglect, abuse or humiliate, but
to know, honour, respect and even reverence. Asceticism can never
be a substitute for athleticism, for muscular activity in one form or
another is as necessary for the culture of spirit, mind and nerve as
it is for the development of muscle and the healthy functioning of
the humbler but not less vital organs upon whose well-being all the
higher attributes of man are dependent.

NERVES BECOME REBELLIOUS.

The very word nervous, as we use it to-dav, has a meaning

very much perverted from that originally intended. In the original
it meant strong in nerve. As understood at present, it generally
indicates a condition in which the nerves are weak, irritable and
beyond control. The fact is that the gradual adaptation of man to
a civilised environment, through the ages that separates us from
primitive man, and which has introduced so many new factors into
 278

human life, has robbed the nerves of their pristine vigour because
modern conditions of life and modern educational methods have
shorn man of his nerves as well as his muscular grandeur. Primi¬
tive man knew not neurasthenia or nervous disorders, because his
nerves were kept in subjection and well sustained by his life of
incessant and general physical activity from childhood. To-day,
we are educated from childhood to other habits of life, in which the
muscular system receives the scantiest consideration or attention,
and the result is that too many have become slaves of their nerves
rather than their masters. Our whole training and habits of life
have reacted injuriously upon the nerves—the most sensitive of all
human things—and they have become sullen, rebellious, uncon¬
trolled, and, in many cases, uncontrollable.
Each nerve-cell, like every other cell of the body, is a living
thing, and depends for its existence and maintenance upon physical
movement. Even if its power of movement be limited to that
change of form which takes place by nutrition and excretion, such
movement is essential to its very being. But we cannot voluntarily
command a nerve to move and give it exercise as we can command a
voluntary muscle to contract, and so we can only increase the move¬
ment of the nerve-cells indirectly, bringing to them, as a result,
greater supplies of food and air, and securing for them the free and
continuous ejection and elimination of their waste matter.

“ EXERCISING ” THE NERVES.

This, I say, we can only do through the use and movement in

balance of all, or nearly all, the voluntary muscles that are, or should
be, under our control. Every time we consciously, and by an effort
of our own will, move a voluntary muscle we also move certain nerve-
cells and certain cells of the brain. It is not too much, therefore,
to say that all muscular exercise and education is, to some extent,
also mental and nervous exercise and education. Indeed, because
of this, it is only through the movement of a great number of volun¬
tary muscles that we can reach, exercise and develop certain cells
of the brain and nervous system, viz., the cells of those centres in
the brain that give the orders for these muscles to be set in motion,
and those cells employed in the transmission of those orders and in
arousing the muscles into action.
Though we speak of the nervous system as being beyond the
power of human volition, this is only partially true. By “ willing ”
a muscle to move, for instance, we do, to a certain extent, exercise
Diagram showing the muscular system of the back (left) and the wonderful
nervous system that links up every part of the human organism with every
other part.
Diagram showing the nervous system, front and side view.

280
 281

also control over the nerves that link that muscle with the brain. If
we cannot thus command a muscle to move at will, it is evidence that
there is something wrong either in the ganglion cell or in the nerve-
cells and nerve-fibres that form the lines of communication between
brain and muscles, or weakness and atrophy of the muscle itself. If
it be only degeneration or weakness of brain or nerve tissue, and
there is no actual lesion or destruction of the tissue, the repeated
effort of will to move a particular muscle will gradually restore
strength and tone to the deteriorated brain or nerve-cell as well as to
the muscle. This, surely, is both drill and discipline for the mind,
the will and the nervous system just as much as physical training
for the muscle.
This close relationship between the nervous and the muscular
systems is evidenced in many ways. The disturbance of the nervous
system often reveals itself in a host of muscular movements that are
tardily, stumblingly, or, perhaps, too rapidly performed. Often,
indeed, the power of inhibition is so feeble in such cases that it gives
rise to what are called “ motor habits/’ such as fumbling with a
button, twirling one’s moustache or watch-chain, tremors and
twitchings and other little individual muscular movements that are
done without conscious effort. How easily may such people pass to
a stage amounting almost to mental and nervous collapse if the
nerve-centres are not re-educated through the agency of the volun¬
tary muscular system.

WHAT IS NERVE TENSION ?

In the imbecile, again, the utter lack of control over nerves and
muscles is to be seen in his abject limplessness and diminution of
all muscular power. His arms droop, his legs drag along, often his
head falls weakly towards his shoulders, and his chin drops.
Through training the voluntary muscles of his bodv that are
associated with certain directing cells of his brain—which in his
case are too weak to direct and control—we can develop and
strengthen these brain cells and thus teach him not onlv to control
his muscles, but to develop and strengthen the brain and nerve-cells
directing the movement of these muscles.
The cells of the nervous system that link up these muscles and
brain cells are developed in association, and in this way he can often
be taught. to regain the lost power over brain, nerves and muscles.
From this extreme case it can be safelv argued that the degrees of
muscular and mental power are relatively in proportion, and
 282

through the balanced movement of the voluntary muscles we can

also develop, strengthen, and literally reconstruct associated brain
and nerve cells.
Just to what extent modern man can be said to possess such
direct control over his nerves as he possesses over his muscles is a
nice point for argumentation which I prefer to leave to students of
minute physiology and psychology. Over the nerves that regulate
the vital functions it is a wise provision of the Creator that removes
them beyond our direct control, though we certainly can influence
these functions by the physical condition in which we maintain the
nerves. Nervous disturbance will cause a simulation of heart
disease, and disordered nerves will disorganise the whole establish¬
ment of the body. As the nervous system is the dynamo in which is
generated the vital energy necessary for the functioning of the
organism, it is very evident that to keep the nervous system well-
nourished, well-oxygenated and free from the accumulations of
waste and poisonous matter is to bring it under better control and to
improve the functioning of the organs dependent upon it.

UNABLE TO RELAX TENSED NERVES.

But, as I have shown, it is only through the balanced use of all

the voluntary muscles of the body that we can keep all the cells of
the body, including all the nerve cells, in this healthy and tractable
physical state by bringing to them the movement that ensures life,
and it is through our neglect of such movement in present-day life
that our nerves have become intractable, undisciplined, ill-nourished,
causing a condition of general anarchy in every organ and system,
and disturbing, to some degree, all the functions of life. Naturally,
the brain cells are directly or sympathetically affected, and a vicious
circle is established in which all the organs and cells, instead of
operating harmoniously together, become engaged in a bitter inter¬
necine strife. There can be no control over nervous expenditure or
income in such a body, and this is the condition of the neurasthenic,
as I have more fully described and explained in my chapter on
Neurasthenia.”
Nerve-tissue, according to recognised physiologists, does not
possess the property of contractility like muscle. Yet it possesses
something very much akin, something which even yet has eluded
precise identification. A nerve can become tense just as a muscle
can become contracted to a degree of pain, and probably the familiar
 283

nervous headache is the result of this over-tension through mental

and nervous overwork and overstrain. As man has for centuries
been living by his brain and nerves rather than his muscles, and as
his brain and nervous system have been taxed to a far greater degree
than his muscular system for centuries, with the result that the
nerve-cells have been kept, and are being kept, in a high state of
conscious or sub-conscious tension without any compensation, and
have become hypersensitive, we have arrived at the age of neuras¬
thenia. To-day, many men and women, to use figurative language,
have nerves so over-tensed that they are like elastic that has lost its
tj

elasticity, or, in other words, they have lost their power of relaxa¬
tion. The neurasthenic cannot obtain this relaxation of the nerves,
strive as he will, and can only regain this power of relaxa¬
tion through learning how to completely relax the muscles of the
body.
CONSCIOUS AND SUB-CONSCIOUS RELAXATION.

Only by regaining complete control over the voluntary muscles

can man regain the power to relax his nerves at will, the power that
man had suh-consciously in the days when physical activity was his
only means of living, and this one protection against his enemies.
To-day the majority of people have to learn how to do consciously
what primitive man did automatically or sub-consciously as the
result of his active physical life. Let me make the difference between
conscious and sub-conscious relaxation of the nerves clear by a couple
of simple illustrations. Supposing that you have some great trouble
hanging over you, the greater is the mental and nervous strain you
have to combat through the excessive and long-continued over-tension
of the nerve-cells. Your mind and nerves are wrought up, as we
say, to a great tension. Finally, one day the good news comes to you
that all danger has passed away, and the tension begins to depart at
once, because the brain and nerve-cells relax sub-consciouslv as a
result of all trouble and danger having passed away, and this re¬
laxation is in equal degree to the degree of over-tension. That is
what I mean by sub-conscious relaxation.

HOW TO RELAX OVER-TIRED NERVES.

Now take another case. You receive bad news of some kind
that comes as a terrible shock to you. A friend, say, in whom you
placed every confidence has betrayed you. A faithful servant has
 284

proved false and caused you heavy financial loss. The shock causes
the nerves unconsciously to become so tensed that there may be
even a temporary suspense of vital functions. You may collapse
or faint. On recovery, however, by one great effort of your own will
you determine to forget the betrayer and the betrayal, to thrust the
incident from your mind, and to forget or laugh at the whole affair.
Again, the nerve-cells relax, but this time consciously at the
direction and dictation of your own mind and will, and not through
circumstances bevond your control. This is what I mean bv
conscious relaxation, but few fully possess this power to-day.
To be able to relax the nerves consciously in this way requires
a method of training that will literally re-educate the nerve-centres,
for just as most people have, to a great degree, lost their power of
full muscular control, so they have lost all command of their nerves.
The nervous system is a wonderful, a delicate, a complex and
intricate machine which we must teach people from childhood to
understand, regulate, direct and care for. When they can do this,
they will learn how to modify the expenditure of nervous energy
and prevent the waste of nervous power, and it is because they lack
this self-control that so many spend nervous energy faster than they
can make it, which is the chief cause of neurasthenia and the many
nervous disorders so prevalent.
The method that I so strenuously advocate, which I alone
advocated nearly thirty years ago, and which I have since then been
continually advocating all over the world, will teach us to regain
this comparatively lost mastery of both our nerves and muscles.
When one has this perfect self-masterv over bodv, mind and nerves it
will react on every act of life and every phase of the conduct of life.
It will give one greater efficiencv, greater directing power and
authority over others, greater self-confidence and self-control, and
make one feel better, kinder and more tolerant to others. For self-
knowledge leads to self-resDpot and self-reject implies respect of
others and respect and veneration for our Creator.

WHEN MEN KNEW NOT ” NERVES.”

Without such self-mastery of one’s own body, mind and nerves,
on the other hand, the child will be handicapped through life, and
lacking self-control will lose all self-respect, respect for others
and even respect for its Creator. Its salvation will probably be the
exception and not the rule, and it will be exposed to risks, tempta¬
tions and disasters that it might otherwise escape or avoid.
 Photographer, Fred de Lair, Bombay,
India’s Splendid Example.

Nothing was more gratifying to the Author than the reception he received and the enthusiasm
his teachings aroused in India. This is not the type whom Macaulay described as “ weak
even to effeminacy,” and his fine physical proportions are the result of practice in the
methods advocated by the Author. Such a man, it will be admitted, is more likely to escape
the ravages of the Indian climate than a physical weakling.
285
Stalwarts who owe these well-developed muscles and bodies and strong nerves to
careful training and development along the lines described by the Author.
2,SC>
 287

With scientific physical education and reconstruction, giving

the physical precedence over the mental, beginning in early child¬
hood, and its influence persisting through adult life, may we not
hope with certainty to be able yet to give any and every individual
the complete freedom from what is called “ nerves ” or “ nervous¬
ness ” our ancestors had in the dim and distant past, when man
knew not “ nerves ” because his nervous system was established on a
sound and stable physical basis and operated so smoothly and so
efficiently as to be free from all discomforts or pain.
The re-education of the nerves through the muscles can, how¬
ever, not be achieved by physical exercise that is not carried out in
an absolute scientific way (in the little time that can be devoted to
it to-day), and exercise that is sub-consciously performed, or which
is carried out without mental concentration on the muscle or muscles
moved, can have little or no educational, disciplinary or therapeutic
value under modern conditions of life, because sufficient time cannot
be given to it to exercise all the muscles as required.

NERVE-TENSION AND INSOMNIA.

Even where physical training of some kind or other is at present

practised in our schools, the movements are only performed in a
sub-conscious and certainly unscientific way without having any
influence for good on the mental and nervous system, or for obtain¬
ing bodily balance everywhere, for movements to benefit brain and
nervous system and to lead to better control and co-ordination must
be performed with complete concentration of mind on the muscles
moved with the thoughts fixed firmly on the movement and the
specific end in view, and with the maximum of physical effort, for
without full effort, mentally and phvsically, there cannot be full and
complete contraction. Only by such a method will those who have
lost their nerve-power learn to relax the nerve-cells, obtain the
mastery of nerves and muscles, and break down the habit of sub¬
conscious tension of the nerve-cells, when not actually in use, a
habit which, in some, persists even when asleep, and which often
causes people to wake up more tired than when they lay down,
because their nerve-cells are kept in a condition of constant tension,
consciously or sub-consciously, until they grow over-tensed through
all kinds of worrying thoughts and disturbing dreams just as the
muscles over which we have control would stiffen in an arm if the
biceps were held in a continuous state of flexion.
To tell them to “ make their mind a blank is no doubt well-
meaning advice, but that is just the very thing they cannot do, except
u
 288

after patient practice. The mind—the apex and crown of the

nervous system—has got beyond their control. They are
restless, “ fidgety,” impulsive, while there is a continuous leakage
of nervous energy through the incessant tension of the nerves,
until, to quote Victor Hugo’s words, in some extreme cases, it
“ tumbles down in veritable avalanches.”
m

THE SERENITY OF THE NERVES.

In such cases it is possible to reach all the nerve-centres through

the balanced movement of the voluntary muscles, to re-educate them,
and gradually to regain that control over both muscles and nerves
which enables a person to enjoy complete relaxation, and to be able,
at a command of the will, to shut out every thought from the mind.
It was this power of complete sdlf-control and the ability
to relax completely at will that enabled and enables men like
Wellington and Napoleon, Foch and Haig to snatch a few minutes’
sleep at any moment, even in times of the utmost crisis, and enables
the great leaders of all nations to support mental and nervous strain
and to be supreme master over circumstances and conditions that
would overthrow weaker men. The serenity and self-control of
all such men is in marked contrast to the incessant and often aimless
restlessness that characterises so many men and women of a neuras¬
thenic disposition to-day.

MUSCULAR WORK AND MENTAL TRAINING.

The child at school should be taught to regard its physical body

as its spiritual dwelling-place. It should be shown how to keep its
bodily house in order, it should be initiated into the wonders of its
system of ventilation, its sanitation, its healthy installation and
everything that is provided by the Creator for its comfort and
well-being. It should be taught to take such a pride in its own
body that it would be practically impossible for anything so foul as
disease even to cross its threshold.
The value of such a system of scientific physical education and
reconstruction and culture as I suggest to the mind must be assessed
by the fact that every muscular act, however trivial, requires the
action also of brains and nerves to produce it. Even the hammering
in of a nail calls into play mental effort, or the blow would either
miss its object altogether or strike it clumsily. Every act of physical
movement implies, too, resistance and the breaking down of resist-
 289

ance and, therefore, it necessitates an effort of will-power to over¬

come the resistance. Thus in the simplest physical action we find
the two valuable faculties of concentration and will-power being
exercised and consequently developed. If, in such simple acts these
higher faculties are employed and strengthened, how easy is it to
realise the value of schooling the youthful physical body in such a
way that every voluntary muscle of the body will be called upon
and made able to do its special service in that body, and perfect
balance also be obtained between the physical and the mental and
nervous life of every individual. This important subject, however,
I leave to my next chapter.
 290

CHAPTER XV.

Perfect Physical and Mental Balance.

The attainment of perfect physical, mental and nervous balance

ought to be the goal of any system of education for the children, if we
are to erect a sound mental and moral as well as a physically strong
structure. For, as Canon Kingsley said years ago, “ wherever you
have a population generally weakly, stunted or scrofulous, you will
find in them a corresponding type of brain which cannot be trusted
to do good work.”

SLUM MINDS AND SLUM BODIES.

Quite recently* too, The Times truly pointed out that “ if we

cannot make the generation now in the schools healthy, the slum-
mind will not disappear,” and the slum-mind will always and
inevitably lead to the slum body under any circumstances or condi¬
tions of life. The writer also added that to secure the abolition of
the slum body we must secure “ the periodical medical examination
of all children, the following up of all serious cases, the adequate
nourishing and cleaning of all mal-nourished and verminous
children, the use of organised physical exercises for all children, and
the abolition of evil employment of children for profit. At a com¬
paratively small cost we can do all these things for those who need
it. We have never tried to do these things except in a sporadic
fashion.”
Any system of education that does not make the mental training
of the child subordinate, at least at first, to the physical, and does
not lead to balance and proportionate mental and physical power
stands condemned already. Such education in the past has done
much harm.
Where there is a lack of balance between the ohvsical and the
mental man two things are likely to occur. The purely physical man
may overbalance the mental, or vice versa. In the one case we would
have what George R Sims has humorously described as a race of
 291

“ robust nobodies," in the other, a breed of homuncles with brains

out of all proportion to their bodies.
The splendid physical and mental balance so admirably
exemplified in our own “ Grand Old Man," the late Mr. Gladstone,
in Mr. Lloyd George, in M. Clemenceau, that splendidly virile type
of Frenchman, in President Wilson, ex-president Roosevelt, and
many living statesmen and public men, ought to be the type towards
which all our education must aim. If such men had been physically
educated and trained from childhood in the manner I describe in
this book, their splendid gifts and talents might even have been
exploited to greater advantage still, and their great life-work done
with less anxiety and effort, for they would have had a still better
physique to support their strong and active brains and to bring
out the verv best that was in them.
%j

BALANCING THE NATIONAL ENGINE.

What I want to see established in every educational institution,

is a system of mental and physical education so harmonious that it
will give us neither “ robust nobodies " nor “ intellectual pigmies," a
system not only more in accord with the ideal training of the youth
of ancient Greece but even above and beyond it, as we might naturally
expect to find possible to-day considering our tremendous progress
in every branch of knowledge and science since those days.
I contend that it is possible for every country to have such a system,
that it is vital to the future of any nation to have it, and that unless
a country in the near future adopts such a system that country will,
and must, “ go under " as the weakling in a fight or the illiterate in
a Civil Service examination.
Engineers know that the balancing of an engine is their most
difficult task, and the most vital to obtain 100 per cent, efficiency, and
yet they are able to see and handle all the parts of that engine and
take them to pieces if necessary. But those upon whom devolves
the task of balancing all the parts, visible and invisible, tangible and
intangible, of the wonderful living human engine have a much more
difficult and infinitely more responsible work to perform, a work,
indeed, not merely of national but of universal importance.
Great skill, great knowledge and great experience will be
necessary on the part of those who aim at producing the perfect
phvsical and mental balance of the human organism. It is not
a duty lightlv to be undertaken or imposed, but the reward of those
upon whom it devolves and who attain success in its performance
21)2
Photo of a well-known man who seeks to hide his identity, but who has no need to be
ashamed of the splendid physique which he has built up according to advice and instructions
supplied by the Author.
\
 293

will be exceeding great, and it is in this internal scientific research

of the human body itself that I hope to see millions spent in the near
future that are now being spent and have been spent for years in
other and less profitable fields.
A perfectly balanced bodily system, mentally and physically,
implies the harmonious development and symmetrical equality of
every part of the bod}^ and the brain and of every cell of both. Mind
and muscle must be in complete co-ordination as in a business firm
where the employees, directors and employer or employers work
together in efficient harmony.

TEAM WORK IN THE BODY.

There would then be no confliction of interests, no unfriendly

rivalries in the human body thus schooled and developed, but a body
in which there was harmonious “ team work ” of all the organs,
systems and cells. The voluntary and the involuntary muscles would
work together for the bodily commonweal, and while the voluntary
muscles would be in subjection to the authority of the brain, mental
prosperity would not, however, be sought to the detriment of the
“ labouring classes ” (the muscular cells) of the bodv. Organs and
muscles, functions and nerves and senses will all, in the scientifically
balanced body, have the nicest relationship to each other according
to the duties they are individually called upon to perform.
The attainment of this perfect bodily and mental balance is, of
course, an ideal, but I see absolutely no logical reason why it should
not be attained, in the case of any child ushered into the world under
favourable and obtainable conditions of birth.
Who, among us, has not been acquainted with young students
whose mental studies have been prosecuted with such utter disregard
of the physical body that supports the brain that they have broken
down, mentally or physically, or both, under this unfair division of
labour. It is thus that neurasthenics, the hysterical, and even the
insane are often manufactured in the school, the college, the study
and the class-room, and I have myself known a senior wrangler who
was for ever hovering on that shadowy borderland that dimly
separates the sane from the insane because of a body neglected, ill-
treated and not developed in balance commensurate with his hyper -
developed brain.
How many “ broken columns ” stand erected in cemeteries every¬
where throughout the world, monuments sacred to youths cut off
before they had scarcely tasted of the sweets of life, hurled to an
 294

early death through lack of that muscular and organic balance

without which the brain becomes little better than a vampire, sucking
the life-blood from the body it inhabits until the exhausted body at
last fails to support either itself or its dependant brain any longer.

BRAIN CELLS WELL HOUSED.

I do not, of course, claim that balanced physical movement will

develop all the cells of the brain—as mental exercise and practice
only can develop the muscular action of all the brain—but that it will
certainly provide all the cells of the brain with better living condi¬
tions, with better nourishment, while the cells in the motor area con¬
trolling the muscular movement will directly be developed in power
by their use and exercise. In short, balanced physical movement
enables all the brain cells to live in a hygienic and sanitary dwelling,
and to do their work under the most favourable conditions possible,
certainly under conditions that are lacking in a brain deprived of
necessary supplies, or congested through the accumulation of waste
products arising from mental overwork and insufficiency of physical
movement.
Dr. Sir James Crichton Browne, M.D., instances the case of a
student or person engaged on sedentary and mental work who, when
his brain becomes tired and confused, takes a gentle walk up and
down his room until the exercise restores mental power. Now, why
does the student’s brain weaken and become confused ? Because he
has been using up brain power faster than it can be replaced, and the
brain cells, through their activity, have caused the accumulation of
waste matter. The blood is contaminated and the brain becomes
congested, in consequence, because the blood is too impure and moves
too slowly either to cleanse the brain of this waste matter, or to bring
up fresh supplies in sufficient quantity to nourish and sustain it in
its work.
Nature instinctively prompts the student to physical movement,
in the form of a gentle walk, and soon the heart begins to pump the
blood faster, and the waste matter is swept out of brain and body,
while greater supplies of nourishment are also brought to the organ
of mind, and it immediately reasserts its power through this
reinvigoration brought about by the movement of the student’s
muscles.
Now, if a gentle walk, carried out involuntarily, will benefit the
brain, as Dr. Sir James Crichton Browne admits it does, even to this
slight extent, it is easy to realise how much more mentally efficient
 295

would such a student be if his brain and body were developed in

perfect balance as I show they can be by the perfect and balanced
movement of all his voluntarv muscles.

TRAGEDIES OF GENIUS.

There can, indeed, be no sound, sane and stable mentality that

is not based on a perfectly balanced physical and organic foundation,
and the mental can only be, to a very considerable degree, the mirror
of the physical. Genius may flame for a time in a weak or even a
deformed body, but it burns out quickly, as we have seen in the
ill-starred, erratic and short-lived careers of so many men of brilliant
mental parts.
Many of the greatest authors found their best writing-desk in
bed, because they found it difficult, if not impossible, to continue
writing while sitting or standing erect, because the great heart
muscle was not strong enough or too undeveloped to pump the blood
up to the brain with sufficient vigour, when standing in the erect
position. The great specialist, Sir Lauder Brunton, declared that
he often felt it impossible to do literary work after an exhausting
day, unless by writing in a semi-recumbent position, so permitting
a better flow of blood to the brain. How much more brilliantly might
many great men have shone if they had been developed from boyhood
in perfect physical and mental balance. The life tragedies of a
Keats, a Coleridge, a De Quincey, and hundreds of other “ intellec¬
tuals ” of the past might have been averted, had their youthful bodies
and brains been cultivated and developed in absolute balance, for in
them the mental and physical were in such dissonance as to compel
mental instability and morbidity.
Their minds were delicate and susceptible exotics which
flourished luxuriantly and brilliantly for a brief period but in an
unnatural and quickly degenerative environment and atmosphere.
Such unbalanced genius is almost inevitably neurasthenic, often
neurotic, and in most cases where the mental so predominates over
the physical, it is, indeed, too often true that “ great wits to madness
nearly are allied.”
Indeed, it may be said that most representatives of what a
French writer has well called the real enfants terrible of the world—
these flashing meteors and “ shooting stars ” of the intellectual firma¬
ment—have been neuropathic to an extreme degree, because some
-cells have been over-developed and others under-nourished, through
the neglected balanced movement of that physical body which is the
 296

commissariat of the brain. It may be said of many of them that

they only accomplished their great work in spite of their weak
bodies, their ill-nourished nervous systems and their utter dispro¬
portion of mental and physical development by habitual resource to
artificial aids and stimulants, which w^ouid explain the popular but
erroneous idea that a disorderly or disordered life was essential to
inspiration.

A “ CONSTITUTION FULL OF HARMONY.”

In many cases, too, their very work has actually reflected their
morbid physical state Rousseau’s dissipation of his vital energy in
youth is freely admitted in his “Confessions.” Musset and
Baudelaire and Flaubert were only of “ the better class ” of
degenerates, and their works were tinged with thoughts, fancies and
forebodings that could only exist in a person whose mental powers
were hyper-developed and out of balance with his physical powers.
Contrast such men with robuster types of genius like the elder,
Dumas, who lived the open-air and enjoyed healthy physical
exercise; of Balzaac, “who lived like a monk when at work,” and
had an athlete’s constitution; of Victor Hugo, whose physical and
psychical constitution was “ full of strength and harmony.” Dumas
pere lived to 67, Victor Hugo to 82, and Michelet, the historian, who,
in spite of a delicate constitution, kept his health “ very even ” by
regulating his physical life, reached the age of 74.
These men had a high courage because they did not neglect or
despise the physical body supporting their mightv brains. They
had bodies, as it were, attuned to their brains, with a high tonicity
of muscles, a strong blood circulation, a more abundant power of
assimilation, secretion and elimination, immense reserves of vitality,
and, consequently, superior functional activity that made them feel
capable of overcoming almost any obstacle. So developed and pro¬
portioned a body will not tolerate disease, for, like the hardy and
high-spirited Norman warrior of old, it will refuse to entertain even
the thought of non-existence, will shut its portals against Disease
and even defy Death itself.

BODIES WITH PAMPERED BRAINS.

The utter lack of self-control and self-masterv displayed by

many men of genius and by the insane in some abnormality or
eccentricity, is the result of the lack of physical balance, or, at least,
of harmonious balance between body and brain, and is due most
 297

frequently to the excessive concentration of thought on one fixed

idea or in one particular direction, with the result that certain
cerebral cells are nourished, developed and strengthened at the
expense of even more vital physical cells. In other words, the brain
becomes in them the pampered and spoiled child of the body.
Certain cells of the brain not being employed or kept actively in use
become weaker and weaker until they are a ready prey for disease,
while the cells of the body itself, upon the labours of which the brain
is dependent for nourishment, air and all the essentials of life, are
themselves deprived of these vital supplies through lack of use and
movement, and so we find a brain altogether too strong and active
for the physical body is not equally developed in balance.
Cells that are starved or poorly nourished sooner or later
“ down tools,’' and the blood itself becomes thin and pale. This
impoverished blood, too, lacking even the necessary supplies to feed
and support the cells of the brain, is not pumped vigorously enough
to distribute even these diminished supplies fairly to every brain
cell equally, because the heart muscle, through lack of sufficient
movement, becomes too weak to do its work efficiently, causing
cerebral anaemia, and so the physical and mental man is still further
unbalanced. The frailty of so many men of genius, physical, moral,
and spiritual, can often be traced to the too exclusive schooling and
developing of certain mental and nervous cells out of all proportion
to the other cellular inhabitants of the body.
Gifted with such a powerful mental machine as man is, it was,
perhaps, not unnatural in a comparatively unscientific age, that
every care should be lavished by man upon that organ, which has
justly been called “ the real incarnation of the soul,” until its cells
waxed and grew prosperous at the expense of what have long and
wrongly been regarded as the “ lower orders ” of the bodily cell
population, those very cells, unfortunately, noon the health, strength,
number and efficiency of which depends entirely bodily and mental
well-being, just as Society in the last analysis depends upon its
individual workers. In these circumstances, it is not to be wondered
at that the mental “ sceptre and throne often come tumbling down ”
after a brief and often riotous existence.

THE BAROMETER OF THE BRAIN.

The age-long mistake of attempting to split the human body

into mental, moral, spiritual, and physical chambers, and the foolish
belief that the culture of the spiritual and the moral in man demand
Back view showing what is possible by these methods, especially if carried out
from childhood. Almost an ideally balanced body.
298
 299

the mortification and the humiliation of the body they inhabit, are
false conceptions, that have been exploded by comparatively recent
progress in the science of mind. When we know, as we now do, that
a man’s conscious actions (for every conscious human act, right or
wrong, good or evil, is only the translation and manifestation of a
thought previously existent in the material cells of the brain) are
determined and directed largely by the mere pressure of the blood in
the cerebral arteries, that the force of this blood pressure, to a great
extent, regulates all his thoughts, ideas, passions, impulses and
emotions (as Professor Maurice de Fleury has demonstrated), and
through them his acts and through repetition of these thoughts and
acts his habits, that the force of the cerebral blood pressure, again,
can be modified by physical movement, and that all human physical
movement is performed by the muscular system, is it not at once over¬
whelmingly apparent that through the muscular man we can direct,
regulate and control the mental, the moral and the spiritual man.
A system of scientific bodily reconstruction such as I am
attempting to define and describe, must begin by recognising the
unification of the body (also the unification of disease), and the
absolute dependence of mental health and moral rectitude upon
physical causes and activities. In science, truth alone can reign
supreme, and science to-day boldly admits and proclaims that much
of all that is moral or immoral in man, including passion and its
control, is the result of measurable and discernible physical
conditions.
THE MUSIC OF THE MUSCLES.

The active carrying out of certain specific and harmonised

physical movements, moderately and progressively, can be so guided
and directed as to develop all the natural resources of energy in the
individual, and undoubtedly influence the moral as well as the mental
constitution of an individual and of the people as a whole in process
of time. The rhvthmic bodily harmony of health which evidences the
smooth and perfect co-ordination of mind and muscle, of organ and
function, of sense and nerve, is but the sweet music of the muscles
brought forth bv the touch of a master hand, exquisitely sensitive
and in sympathetic affinity with the divine instrument at its
disposal in the wonderful fabric of the body.
Where there is no actual organic disease or lesion of the brain,
a diseased or degenerate mental tendency or condition may be
corrected, prevented and cured bv scientific physical training that
restores balance to the joint mental and physical relationship. This
 300

can be achieved, as I have personally proved in the treatment and

cure of mentally defectives, by educating the neurotic and the
neurasthenic to acquire gradual control over each and all of the
voluntary muscles by carefully selected, rightly directed, balanced
and progressive physical movements.
By this means the power of mental concentration and will-power,
with greater self-mastery and control, are both developed, two of the
faculties in which the neurasthenic, the neuropathic and the insane
are lacking, because of their want of mental equipoise and physical
and mental co-ordination.
The majority of mental and nervous troubles—with the excep¬
tions already indicated—have a history of overwork (consciously or
unconsciously) of mal-nutrition, and over-expenditure of nervous
energy. Certain cells, as 1 have shown, are forced to work at over
pressure, while others are starved and undeveloped through lack of
movement and disuse (because supplies are unevenly consumed, and
there is, therefore, over-development of some cells, while other cells
are neglected and undeveloped or become so weak through lack of use
and movement that they become simply paupers in a badly balanced
body and brain. Inevitably such an unbalanced state must end in
bodily and mental anarchy.

STRENGTH COMES FROM WITHIN.

Until some such a system of scientific physical education and

reconstruction as that indicated in this book is adopted by those
responsible for the education of the rising generation, other methods
of grappling with the problem of rescuing child-life and building up
healthy and disease immune adolescents and adults can, at the best,
be but partially successful. All must begin with the physical educa¬
tion of the body itself, through it making the brain stronger and
more receptive. Well-intended and helpful as all such valuable
movements are they overlook the radical and real source of evil, a
weak, ill-developed body and stunted brain lacking the balance and
co-ordination of vigorous health which should make it the conqueror
and not the victim of Disease.
To-day it is recognised on every hand that to prevent disease
rather than cure it is the duty of our doctors, but the majority of
medical men are seeking for preventives of disease without the body
that are only to be found within. A balanced and developed
human body will thrive even in an unhygienic environment, but the
healthiest environment will never make the weak child strong if its
 301

body is robbed of the physical and mental balance that is necessary

for the vigorous functional activity which is the only guarantee of
robust life and constitution. Strength of mind and body can only
come from within by self-knowledge, self-respect, self-development
and self-control.
It is evident, therefore, that such scientific physical education
from childhood, as I advocate, must make one feel better, think better,
work better, look better and be better in every way, because life is
movement, and balanced strength through balanced movement alone
will enable the body and brain to defy weakness and disease within
and the deadly microbes ever ready to attack us from without. With
the theory of the microbe—that “ unseen, small, million-murdering
enemy—I propose to deal in my next chapter.
 302

CHAPTER XVI.

Man’s Most Deadly Foe.

The microbe or bacillus of disease may well be called man’s most

deadly foe. It lurks for him everywhere, in the air he breathes, in
the food he eats, in the beverages he drinks, in the clothes he wears,
and subtly steals its way even into the most innermost parts of his
body.
To recognise and know the enemy, however, to be able to trace
his history, his habits, his methods and tactics, to discover his
weak points and to attack him there, is to defeat him, always provided
the body is strong enough within itself in every part. It was not
until the bacillus of tuberculosis was discovered and identified that
we could grapple with that disease even so successfully as we have
done. The discovery of the tubercle bacillus, however, has not
prevented and will not prevent consumption, for to prevent con¬
sumption we must make the human body itself physically too strong
and resistant to the tubercle bacillus for the latter to overcome it,
and not rest content even with the destruction of the bacillus of
consumption.
DISEASE SHUNS THE STRONG.

Now, I have shown that the body is only as strong as its weakest
individual cell, and that the only way to have a sufficient and an
efficient army of healthy and resistant cells—the body’s first and
last line of defence—is to keep every individual living cell of the
bodv fit and all in perfectly balanced strength in all its parts and
systems. Such a bodv is not onlv more likelv to resist and repel
disease in cases of attack, but is, indeed, much less liable to attack,
for iust as the thief is more likelv to select the weak, the infirm and
the old for his predatorv prowess rather than the prize-fighter or
athlete, so disease prefers to attack the weak or the unfit.
Whilst admitting the wonderful triumphs of laboratory work
and bacteriology in modern times, I sometimes am inclined to think
 303

that even to-day our medical and scientific men are almost as prone
to a species of “ germ mania ” as they were in the 17th century,
when the Dutch investigator Leeuwenhoek first discovered by means
of his somewhat primitive microscope the existence of what he called
“ animalcules,” but what we know to-day as microbes.
The greatest triumphs of bacteriology have been in the realm of
infectious and contagious disease, and admittedly science has done
much here to secure humanity’s comparative immunity from various
forms of disease that once were rife to the extreme of epidemics.
In this way science has already done a great deal to help mankind to
advance in its onward march towards that diseaseless world which,
I contend, is no Utopian dream, but a by no means very remote
possibility. Just as leprosy, dysentery and Asiatic cholera are now,
to all intents and purposes, non-existent in civilised communities,
so I hope to see every modern form of serious and deadly disease
disappear from the earth, as it must assuredly do sooner or later if
we apply scientific methods to the breeding and perfecting of the
human being as thoroughly and as persistently as we do in other
directions to-day.

ROUNDING UP HEALTH CRIMINALS.

And just here let me explain that when I use the expression
kk a diseaseless world,” I mean that it is possible to have a world in
which the conditions both within and without the body will not
permit, tolerate or foster disease, and that our immunity from
disease shall depend upon our approximation to these conditions.
Christianity supplies us ^with the laws necessary to prevent or
repress crime and vice, but though Christianity has done a great
deal to reduce the criminality and viciousness of the world it has
never quite suppressed or eliminated them, because there are still
those who ignore and violate those laws. So though, as I contend,
a national system of health education and bodily reconstruction as
outlined here, supported by medical science and medical research, can
and must ultimately give us these conditions, within and without
the human body, necessary to rid the world of disease, it is possible
to suppose that there will always exist a species of health-criminal
and irresponsible that will ignore or challenge those conditions.
Even these, however, in course of time will gradually diminish
and probably disappear, for the new environment and the stringent
application of the law of “ the survival of the fittest ” will cause
x
 304

Nature to condemn them as unfit to survive, while those who continue

to defy the laws of life and health will be treated as pariahs and
outcasts. In other words, the sick man will rightly be regarded and
treated much as we would treat a leper in our midst to-day, with
mingled pity, horror and aversion.
However, this is a digression.

MICROBES AS YET U N DISCOVERED.

Though the bacteriologists have done a great service to mankind

in tracing the bacilli of many diseases to their lair, so long as man
must live under the artificial conditions of modern civilisation such
bacilli will still continue to live, increase and flourish, and new
microbes reveal themselves, just as other vermin still defy all the
efforts of man to stamp them out under certain conditions, so that
if ive are to achieve the prevention rather than the cure of disease
we must seek to make the body itself strong enough within to defy
and conquer the most disease-inviting environment and every
microbe of disease.
The most that bacteriology, with all its admitted triumphs,
has so far been able to achieve for the sick and the diseased is to kill
or sterilise disease germs or to counteract the poisons and ravages of
these bacilli in the body. That, however, does not and cannot
increase the bodily resistant power in the least. As I cannot state
too often, the body itself must be made and kept so healthy and
strong and so perfectly balanced in all its cells from childhood to
the grave that it will be able to defy and defeat every microbe of
every form of microbic disease—even microbes as vet undiscovered
or unrecognised—and so prevent microbic disease altogether.
The introduction of sera and anti-toxins into an infected or
susceptible body often fails even to sterilise the bacilli of disease,
but only increases the immunity of the body from their evil influence
by increasing its tolerance to them just as the bodv can be made
tolerant to opium or morphia. Thus, in the case of small-pox, the
vaccinationists endeavour to prevent that fearful disease by
11 acclimatising,” as it were, the body to it, introducing what is, after
all, only a milder form of the disease. In other words, their only
hope and prospect of success lies in educating the body to withstand
small-pox by innoculating it with cow-pox, just as the body can be
habituated to large doses of the same poison by taking smaller doses.
Moreover, vaccination often introduces other microbic diseases by
blood poisoning, including syphilis.
 305

80,000 NEW CASES OF SYPHILIS ANNUALLY.

it is worthy of notice that, notwithstanding the most heralded

discoveries of Professor Ehrlich and his disciples in recent years,
the terrible white scourge, syphilis, is increasing at an alarming
rate, and that there are something like 80,000 new cases every year
in the British Isles alone.
I may add, too, that it is now freely admitted that the much-
advertised 606 treatment for the plague of syphilis is only palliative,
and is itself accompanied by grave dangers to health. A famous
French medical expert, M. Rallopean, says :—“ Salversan is not
without serious drawbacks. In the first place, its efficacy is far
from being absolute. In the second place, the remedy is not harm¬
less when administered, for one has seen, up to the present, a large
number of cases of death admittedly due to its actionA
“ This remedy,” says Dr. Marshall, of the British Skin Hospital,
“ appears to be liable to cause severe toxic effects, sometimes ending
fatally. No doubt many of the deaths after Salvarsan were due to
faulty technique and like causes, but a certain number are difficult
to explain except by arsenical poisoning/’
It is, again, here evident that the best that this much-boomed
“ remedy ” for syphilis can accomplish is only to introduce another
poison into the system. It has not been established that it even
makes a victim of syphilis immune from further attacks, even if it
does succeed in effecting what is called a cure. Yet it is stated on
high authority that among the causes of death syphilis comes next
to tuberculosis, while it is also a powerful and predisposing cause to
consumption. The progress of syphilis depends entirely on the
patient’s own resistant power, and doctors know one person may
have a very severe attack, another a milder form, and yet another
escape altogether after contact with the same diseased person.
I am not going to be drawn into any controversy as to the moral
aspect of the question, although my sympathies are entirely with
those who advocate the most stringent laws to suppress all conditions
that tend to foster venereal disease in any community, but I wish to
show that from a purely physiological point of view the upbuilding
of a body strong and balanced in every part is the surest and best
preventive measure that society can take in this direction for the
ultimate eradication of this terrible disease.
Physically, however, I contend that it is the strength within—
the life-blood in the body itself, and the innate muscular strength
and fitness of each individual cell (which has, in the majority of
Two youths who would find little difficulty in passing the most severe army medical
tests after following out the methods of physical teaching here laid down.

306
 307

people to-day, been greatly diminished through lack of balanced

physical activity, and this inborn in most of us through generations
of ancestors), that is the best security against the entrance into the
system and the progress of this mind-and-body-distroying disease.
The lack of a liberal hygienic education among the people is no
doubt, to some extent, also partly responsible for the awful and
increasing ravages of syphilis, and I hope the time will soon arrive
when the essential knowledge to the protection of each person’s own
body against the seeds of this and other microbic diseases will be as
general as is our present common familiarity with the letters of the
alphabet or the rudiments of simple arithmetic. The object should
be to 'prevent syphilis altogether rather than to await its presence
and development before grappling with it.
The killing and sterilising of the bacilli of parasitic disease—
that is, disease caused by bacteria which only thrive on a living host
—is, I repeat, only possible in a body where the life movement or
vitality is already sufficient, and the fighting cells and working cells
present in sufficient number and balanced strength to ensure victory.
This is why the doctors say that even in the last great fight between
life and death “ everything depends on the patient’s vitality.”

MUSCLES OF RESPIRATION, CIRCULATION, AND DIGESTION.

Now the first great source of vitality is air, and movement—the

circulation of the blood—is essential to bring the life-giving oxygen
of the air to every individual cell of the body, because this oxygen is
carried on and distributed by the blood-stream which is kept moving
continuously only by muscular movement; the beating of the heart
and the contraction of the arteries. In the same way, nutrition,
the other great source of vitality, is largely dependent on muscular
movement—the movement of the muscular walls of the stomach—
and the more vigorous and active every little living cell of the body
is the better the body is oxygenated and nourished, and the greater,
therefore, must be its store of vitality. So also the elimination of
waste and poisonous matter that depletes a body of its vitality
is accelerated bv physical movement and greater circulation.
This brings me back to my first argument that if less attention
were devoted to the germs that attack man and more first to the
fundamental factor, the living cell, we should be travelling on a
safer, speedier, and more reliable route towards the eradication and
elimination of human disease.
 i
308

After all the learned explanations of the way of the microbe

and the best methods of encompassing its extermination, why, may
we not ask, does the bacillus of disease successfully attack one man
and not another ? Why is it able to successfully attack anyone at
all ? The answer is that one patient succumbs to the disease because
the life in the blood is not sufficient—i.e., all the fighting cells in the
blood have not sufficient muscular health and vigour—to resist and
conquer the enemy. One man dies because his bodily fighting cells
or some of them are too weak to fight the bacilli of disease, or unable,
at least, to fight them successfully. Another lives, but only after a
terrific struggle between his very weak army of cell-soldiers and the
invading disease germs, which have temporarily vanquished him
because the fighting cells of the bodily army were unable to defeat
them at the first onset.
The man whose vitality is strong to overflowing, whose cells are
all equally strong and developed in perfect balance, is not attacked,
or, if attacked, may not even feel the least symptom or discomfort.
Why ? Because, the cell-army of the blood and the fighting capacity
of the bodily cells are sufficient to ward off the disease germs or kill
them as soon as they enter the body.

THE “LIFE GUARDS” OF THE BODY.

The resistant power which, as Dr. Sir George Newman says, is

“ the first line of defence ” in the body, depends upon the number and
well-being both of the fighting cells in the blood and of all the cells
of the body upon which they are dependent. The fighting cells are
roused into movement and activity in two ways (1) through the move¬
ment of the voluntary muscles by one’s own will and direction, as I
have explained, and (2) involuntarily, when disease attacks the body.
In the latter case, all the fighting cells rush immediately to the spot
or spots attacked with continuous reinforcements to resist and kill
the enemy, and it is this mobilisation and combat of the fighting
cells that causes such discomforts of disease as the rise of tempera¬
ture, the quickening of the heart’s action and, sometime^, local
inflammations. The doctor can see how the battle is going as the
temperature rises or falls or the pulse goes faster or slower,
according to what we call the “ vitality,” or resistant power of the
patient.
There is also another way in which the cells are sometimes
aroused, viz., by some strong emotion, sudden shock, violent passion,
etc., but this is psychical rather than physical. The great point I
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Young Fijian who takes a pride in his physical body, and who has brought it
to a high state of physical excellence by these methods.

‘510
 311

wish to impress upon the reader is the fact that the better balanced
the body, the greater the number of bodily cells and the stronger and
more developed they are in relationship to one another—for the
lighting cells are dependent on the working cells for the continua¬
tion and transport of their supplies—the greater the resistant power
to any and every form of disease. The lighting cells, in short, are
the “lifeguards" of the body, with a great army of workers to
support them, and upon the fitness individually and collectively of
all these cells the safety of the body against disease microbes and
disease of every kind depends.
Among my followers and patients in the East, where yellow
fever, sleeping sickness, cholera, small-pox and infectious or con¬
tagious diseases are rife, there have been many whose balanced
physical fitness, due to the natural methods as I am now advocating,
has kept them immune in the midst of the most fearful epidemics,
and many more who have “ won through ” only after a spirited fight
with these awful enemies of man. Had they been weak, physically
unfit, and lacking in vitality they would undoubtedly have
succumbed. This splendid immunity from, or triumphant victory
over, disease shows the value of scientific physical education, even
in a comparatively late period of life. How much more valuable
will it be when it becomes a compulsory and essential feature of our
elementary educational system for the young.

HOW TO PREVENT MICROBIC DISEASE.

It is because the natural methods advocated here replace and

keep on replacing weak and feeble and disease-inviting cells by more
and better cells which, in turn, breed still better and stronger cells,
with greater muscular activity and greater resistant power, that
the germs of disease cannot successfully attack and conquer a body
so disciplined, and so full of fighting and resistant power with which
to oppose the enemy. Microbic disease in man can only be prevented
by developing this great cell-community of the body, encouraging the
multiplication of the cells, and bringing to each and every cell within
the body copious supplies of vitalising oxygen and nutriment, while,
at the same time helping the skin, the lungs, the liver, the kidneys
and the intestines to eject from the system all waste and poisonous
products, whether of bacterial origin or self-generated by daily
bodily wear and tear. Only such a body as this, supported by all the
protective measures of modern medical science and by the most
 312

drastic legislation, will be able to win the victory over these venereal
and microbic diseases which bequeath such a morbid heritage to
humanity to-day.
;; Surely, Mr. Sandow, though, you do not contend that any
method or methods of bodily reconstruction and body-culture can
hope to eliminate such highly infectious and inherited disease as
tuberculosis, syphilis, cancer, etc? 55 That statement, put to me
recently by a well-known public man, brought from me this reply :—

THE BOGEY OF HEREDITY.

“ In the first place, I am doubtful if there is any such thing as

inherited disease. A child may, of course, be born with a weakness
tending towards disease, because weakness of the frame and consti¬
tution has been inherited, and the conditions of modern civilisation
and education at present only tend to tolerate and even aggravate
that weakness.
“ If both parents and child were placed and kept under State
and medical supervision and guidance from the first, much of the
so-called hereditary disease of to-day would be prevented from
developing. As it is, the child grows up weakly, for neither parents
nor child have the knowledge necessary to safeguard it, until, at
last disease strikes the weakest spot and only then is the doctor
called in
Heredity has been made a bogey to affright many people, but
it is the transmission of physical weakness that is the real threat
to the children, and the children’s children. A scientific system of
physical reconstruction through balanced physical movement will
gradually tend to the reduction and elimination of this inherited
weakness in children by giving them parents with well-formed, well-
organised, and well-developed bodies. A child cannot choose its
ancestry, so we must yhelp to choose for it. We can help, too, by
taking the child early in life and arresting any tendency to disease
that physical weakness implies. For instance, by strengthening the
spinal muscles and the muscles of the shoulders and all trunk muscles
in a child, one or both of whose parents were consumptive, and by
developing its chest and lungs and increasing its lung capacity, we
would be able to check and arrest the progress of that disease in the
lung cells of the child. So, too, bv preventing the development of
phthisis in the child, itself a sexual being and capable of reproduc¬
tion at a later age, we would do much to prevent the tendency to a
 313

similar weakness in its offspring, and thus gradually eliminate con¬

sumption from the family and finally from the human race.
My contention is that every mother should be under State
medical supervision and guidance, and he instructed by the doctor,
with the family history to guide him, as to the best steps to take to
safeguard her child’s life. Later, at school, the child itself should
be kept under constant medical supervision, as I have fully described
elsewhere, and have its whole body evenly developed and perfectly
balanced to make it strongly resistant to disease, especially in its
weaker parts which have less power of resistance, and which are,
therefore, most likely to succumb. If this were done, very much of
the so-called hereditary disease too familiar to-day would cease
to be.
INTERNAL CLEANLINESS NECESSARY.

To save the children, it will be necessary to inculcate a sense

of reverence for that body of which to-day most people, even in
adulthood, know so little, and to teach them to keep it clean, both
within and without. Cleanliness of the outward body is already
made obligatory in many schools, colleges, and educational institu¬
tions, but it is even more important to teach the children—the man
and woman of the future—to keep the inside of their bodies also
clean by that healthy and scientific physical movement which is the
first law of life, a law which, unfortunately, is too often forgotten,
neglected or evaded in these days because there is no authority to
enforce it.
When once the necessity of this interior cleanliness and sanita¬
tion of the bodily dwelling is firmly implanted in the youthful mind,
and the occupant learns to take as great a pride in it as the good
housewife does in the brightness and sweetness of the home in which
she reigns, a great step forward will have been taken towards the
prevention and elimination of all disease, infectious or otherwise.
Habits ingrained in early youth grow stronger with the years,
and it is lust as easy to implant good habits as to allow bad ones to
be formed. Most forms of vice arise from evil habits that have
become in time almost an obsession. Habits of health and virtue
can also be sown early if proper steps he taken, and these, too, will
partake in later life of the nature of an obsession too strong to be
easilv supplanted by other habits of an ill or evil tendency. A bodv
schooled, trained and disciolined to a dailv habit of health-care will
not lightly entertain, much less tolerate thoughts or actions to its
own undoing.
 314

OUR HERITAGE OF HEALTH.

Just as we can see the effects of a soldier’s drill even in old age
-—it is generally easy to distinguish the trained soldier from others
of about similar age by his erect carriage and bearing even in later
years—so the building up of a strongly resistant body in youth wil]
remain apparent even in later life, and such a man will certainly be
less liable to disease then, even if he discontinues exercise, than a
person whose body has never been so disciplined. The early
scientific physical re-education and reconstruction of which I speak
would build up a body too strong to be overcome by any germs of
disease, which, after all, can only hope to triumph in a body that
has already been made too weak or unbalanced through ignorance,
neglect or ill-treatment, to resist it successfully.
Apart from the fact that a body well-developed, with a mind
well-cultured in proportion, is little likely to fall a prey to infectious
disease germs of any kind, it is also better able, if the disease does
gain a footing therein, to repel it and to conquer it more quickly than
r body not so developed. Thus one man will recover in a few days,
another may take months or even years, and another, weaker still,
will never recover but die a sudden or a lingering death.

EQUALITY OF HEALTH OPPORTUNITY.

I do not, for one instant, mean to argue that such methods as I

advocate will give us a sort of health-socialism, in which there will
be no rich or poor and no grades or ranks, for there will, at least
for some time yet, be some with a heritage of health from birth
greater than that of others not so happily circumstanced. Physical
re-education, which means the reconstruction of the whole organism,
however, in so far as it does tend to a levelling of the national health,
will be a levelling-up rather than a levelling-down process, and in
time we must obtain if not a physical equality an approximation to
physical and health equality. At least, we can give all equal
opportunities for health after birth.
To an almost incredible degree, it is true that microbic disease
of every kind can be prevented by scrupulous internal and external
cleanliness, and the upbuilding of clean, strong and healthy cellular
tissue. Such methods of health education and culture as I advocate
will, as I have already said, teach people from childhood to cleanse
and purify the interior of the body as well as the exterior. Scientific
physical movement will improve the circulation of the blood, and
 ;315

increase the ejection of the waste and refuse matter from the system.
By inducing perspiration and opening every pore of the system it
also leads to the greater purification and aeration of the blood (for
each pore of the body is also a little lung taking in oxygen as well as
discharging bodily waste matter), and also reduces the eliminatory
work thrown upon the intestines, kidneys, liver and lungs.
All this means internal cleanliness as well as external, for many
a man and woman to-day who prides himself or herself on his or her
personal cleanliness, carries an unclean interior beneath a well-
cleansed and pleasing exterior. The free opening of the pores
would lead to the greater aeration of the blood, and its consequent
purification, a fact which cannot be too clearly borne in mind when
we remember that “ the blood is the life,1' and that through the blood
health or disease manifests itself. This, in turn, means that every
living cell of the body receives greater supplies of oxygen and is,
consequently, made stronger, more productive, more strong and
healthy within itself to resist disease and all the conditions that
are favourable to disease, either from within the body itself or from
without.
The body that is scientifically trained and physically balanced
has an ever-vigilant army of attendants to protect it. and promptly
administer the coup de grace, or the “ knock-out blow,” to all these
minute emissaries of disease called microbes or germs. Weaker
bodies similarly attacked are often only “ beaten on points,’1 to use
another boxing phrase, after a long and trying fight, while there are
bodies so weak and run down and so conscious of the fact, that they
lose their courage and are beaten without even a show of defence.
Microbic diseases only win their showy victories over the weak and
the physically unbalanced, as all medical men of prominence now
know and admit. To be strong to resist and conquer one form of
disease, is to resist and conquer all, and if we can conquer disease
we can prevent it, as I show in my next chapter which, I hope, will
especially appeal to medical men.
 Photographer, Lafayette, London.
M. Dhunjibhoy Bomanji, of Bombay.

This gentleman suffered severely from the terrible disease of elephantiasis, but to-day,
thanks to the methods of physical reconstruction and cellular evolution described by the
Author, he is one of the heartiest, strongest and most perfect of men, physically, in the
whole of India. Of high birth and ancient lineage, it would be impossible anywhere to
find one more worthy of both those fine and oft misused terms, man and gentleman. A
son of the Empire whom it is proud to claim, and who honours it by his unwavering loyalty
and distinguished services.
316
 317

CHAPTER XVII.

Medical Facts for Medical Men about

Medicine and Disease.

Medical men now agree that much disease is preventible and that
what they designate “ preventive medicine ” is the medical study of
the future, though, as I point out later, the word prevention is
scarcely the right word to use, as we cannot prevent the existence
of disease germs or the weakness from birth that may be within
tending towards disease. All we can do is to prevent disease from
being victorious in its war against humanity by making man superior
both to disease germs and to innate weakness.

PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE.

The preventive aspect of such a scheme of physical reconstruc¬

tion and regeneration as I now advocate must, in the present attitude
of medical science, be its most attractive feature to medical men
and medical students. But, in the meantime, there is a great work
being accomplished by very similar methods for the relief and cure
of existent disease both in the children and in adults—what I may
call physical therapeutics or curative physical culture, though, after
all, it matters little what name we employ so long as we employ the
right methods.
The medical student of the future must thoroughly understand
three things before he is qualified and certified to practise as a real
Minister of Health. Firstly, he must understand the nature of
disease, its history, occasions and causes. Secondly, he must under¬
stand the diagnosis, treatment, relief and cure of disease. Thirdly
—and this will be the most important of all branches of medical
knowledge and practice in the very near future—he must know the
best, and indeed, the only method of prevention against disease, viz.,
the development of a body perfectly balanced in every part and itself
too resistant to become diseased in its own cells or to succumb to
disease from without.
In this chapter the Author appeals especially to medical men, and argues;
that the prevention and eradication of disease can only be achieved by methods
such as he describes. The figure in the top left hand above shows a type of
the undeveloped body that is liable to succumb to disease in contrast with the-
well-built and strongly resistant bodies of the other two youths.
318
 319

Until he understands all about disease, and what we call

“ diseases,” he cannot naturally be expected to cure them. To know
how to cure them should teach him ultimately howT to prevent them.
After a little while, he will be able to do without the second of these
qualifications, for through knowing all about disease, its treatment
and cure, he will know the steps to take to prevent it, and what can
be prevented should never need to be cured.

THE SCIENCE AND ART OF LIFE.

Medical men and medical students will be familiar with the

wonderful report on k' Medical Education,” presented by Sir George
Newman in 1918, to which I have already made reference. Com¬
menting upon this report, a writer in The Times Educational
Supplement said “ From the summary of these views which we
publish to-day it will be seen that his main object is to establish the
harmony existing between all the branches of medical work, more
especially between preventive and curative medicine. Preventive
medicine is based upon a knowledge of the origins of disease : disease
is most curable when it begins to manifest itself.
“ The student must, therefore, be a man of wide general culture
with the ability to grasp the relation of his future calling to the
body politic, and also the bearing of each branch of his calling on
the other branches. He must see medicine whole and must frame
his mind to regard it, as a process, an evolution, a sequence. Loss
of function rather than departure from standard form is the modern
definition of disease; disease thus assumes a secondary place in the
doctor’s mind giving way to the primarv idea of health Medicine
is no longer an occult art, ]t has become the science of the art
of life.” —“ "——
However, before we attain to our ideal of a diseaseless world
much existent disease will have to be combated or, as we say,
“ cured,” though why should we “ cure ” disease? It is our place to
kill disease by making the body so strong in every part that no cell
or cells will be so weak as to become diseased itself or to be the victim
of any microbic disease from without.
This applies alike to children and adults, and the knowledge of
the means that will cure or prevent disease in the children will be
equally effective in the adult. The best method of “ curing ” disease,
therefore, in both cases wfill be to employ the best means, and I
contend that the method described in these pages, which will make
Y
 320

the body in every part so strong as to defeat disease is the only real
and permanent method of “ curing ” disease, because life is move¬
ment and it is through lack of balanced movement that we have
physically fallen from grace. Only by literally re-creating a new
body or part of a body in such a manner as I have described, can we
eliminate and prevent disease altogether in an individual.

THE RE-CREATION OF THE BODY.

Drugs only cause de-struction without construction. They

have no creative or constructive power in themselves. No drug can
have any effect on a body incapable itself of movement. The rational
and scientific physical methods which I advocate not only assist the
natural metabolistic changes in the body, improving both destructive
and constructive metabolism, but they ensure that continually new
and better cells are being born in a diseased body taking the place of
the weak, the old and the diseased cells, so that the sufferer in time
becomes, as it were, a new being free from disease. I have explained
this elsewhere in greater detail. It has been said that the body is
thus like a knife with an old handle supplied with new blades as the
older ones wear thin and frail and too infirm for their purpose.
Will any medical man tell me if he knows of a single drug or
medicine or of any combination of drugs or medicines that will
increase healthy muscular flesh in this way ? Can he tell me of any
drugs or medicines that can give an added fraction of vitality to a
sick person ? Is there anything that will make a weak cell strong
but movement? Will even the best of food do it if there is not
physical movement to transform it into a suitable condition to be
absorbed by the various parts of the body ?
Medicine is simply a blackmailer in the body of a sick man
levying toll on such little vitality as is left. It will irritate an organ
or even a muscle into action by poisoning the nerve centres just as a
galvanic battery can make the muscles of a dead frog twitch through
stimulation. It will soothe or benumb a nerve, or, in some cases,
supply the chemicals that diseased cells cannot themselves obtain.
If anything, indeed, it retards nutrition and provokes malnutrition
by increasing the toxins already existent in a weak and diseased
body. Besides, the basis of many medicines, and especially patent
medicines (which are taken indiscriminately and without medical
prescription), are poisonous drugs of a most deleterious character in
themselves and would suffice to cause death if given or taken in
larger quantities. Medicine is not merely innocuous, it may even
321
Medical men watching pupil of the Author demonstrating the value of physical movements carried out on strictly
scientific lines. The incident took place in Brisbane, and the Author’s tour through Australia awakened the utmost
enthusiasm, not only among medical men, but among the youth of the country, with great benefit to many.
The Author gives a demonstration in person afterwards, and answered questions put to him by the doctors.
 323

be injurious, and I hope will soon be as obsolete as the old-fashioned

practice of cupping.
Doctors themselves—at least the more advanced thinkers among
them—know and admit that, with very few exceptions, medicine,
like the x in algebra, largely symbolises an unknown quantity, and
that its administration is mainly for its psychical rather than for its
physiological value. I could quote hundreds of professors and dis¬
tinguished doctors who support me in this view, but I only give a
few.

DOOM OF THE MEDICI ME-MAN.

The famous French physiologist, Majendie, speaking before his

medical class, said :—
“ Gentlemen, I will tell you what I did when I was head
physician at the Hotel Dieu. Some three or four thousand patients
passed through my hands every week. I divided the patients into
two classes. To one I gave the usual medicine without having the
least idea why or wherefore. To the others I gave bread pills and
coloured water, and occasionally, gentlemen, I created a third
division to whom I gave nothing whatever. All the third class got
well. There was but little mortality amongst those who received the
bread pills and coloured water, but the mortality was greatest among
those who were carefully drugged according to the dispensary.”
Our own distinguished Sir James Paget declared that “ every
dose of medicine given to a patient is a blind experiment,” and this
also to an audience of young medical gentlemen.
Sir James Johnson, the brilliant editor of the Medico
Chirurgical Review, said :—“ I firmly believe that if there were not
an apothecary, druggist, or drug on the face of the earth, there
would be less sickness and less mortality than now prevail.”
It is not “ medical men ” but “ medicine men ” who stand in the
way of reform and progress.
From the great Sydenham and even before down to Osier, similar
utterances have come from famous physicians themselves. The
remedy for disease, as every doctor recognises, is in the body itself
and not in any medicine or drug. As one medical man put it,
“ Nature cures and the doctor takes the fee,” but even Nature cannot
cure unless the most favourable conditions are supplied for the
operation of Nature’s healing power, and those conditions can only
be supplied by the restoration of that balanced movement the lack
of which has led to the present prevalence of disease.
The testimony I have just quoted is not the testimony of the
ignorant or the prejudiced, and speaks louder than any words of
mine.
What I may call balanced or harmonised movement or physical
therapeutics is, as I have said, just as effective in the case of adults
as it is in children, except, of course, that it may achieve its results
more easily and more quickly in children than in grown-ups, because
the older one gets the slower the cells are to increase and multiply.
The principle, however, holds good at all ages, and, indeed, I contend
that the old need physical movement applied scientifically even more
than the young, so as to keep the cells of the body more young, more
muscular and more reproductive.
To cite only one case, an old gentleman of 82 made the following
improvement:—Chest 4 inches, upper arm 3 inches, forearm 2
inches, thigh 3 inches, calf 2 inches, with an increased chest expan¬
sion of 3 inches. The increase of bulk measurement was, of course,
entirely due to the fact that more cells and better cells, with increas¬
ing muscular power and reproductiveness, were built up by
harmonised physical movement applied, as they always ought to be,
in a strictly scientific way/and this increase could only be obtained
by getting perfect internal balance at the same time. The value of
this in the final elimination and prevention of disease (which, after
all, only means diseased cells, or cells weak towards disease), and their
replacement by more and better cells, will be at once apparent to any
medical man or student, and even to a lay reader of ordinary
intelligence.

SELF-EXERCISING AND SELF-DRUGGING.

I venture to prophesy that in the very near future the doctor

will require to know less of medicine as he learns more of the
meaning and value of physical balance and still more of the human
body itself. He will be a doctor of exercise rather than a doctor of
medicine. He will prescribe necessary exercises as carefully as he
prescribes medicine to-day.
What medicine man would turn to a sick man and tell him
vaguely to take medicine—to go into a druggist’s shop and take any
or every medicine there. Yet thousands upon thousands of doctors
to-day still tell their patients to take exercise in this off-hand wav.
A man might just as easilv kill or injure himself in this way as by
taking medicine when and how as he himself felt disposed.
For instance, fancy telling a neurasthenic vaguelv to “ take
exercise,” or “ have a round on the golf links ” as is, unfortunately,
still done too often by medical men. Here is a man suffering from a
 325

physical condition induced by the continued over-expenditure of

nervous energy and who, acting on medical advice, is quite likely to
spend prodigally still more and more energy on golf or some other
form of outdoor sport, instead of trying to save and bank new
nervous energy every day. That way he will overdraw his account
at the Bank of Health too heavily possibly with a fatal result. (See
chapter on Neurasthenia later in this book.)
You might as well send him to a chemist for nux vomica without
indicating the dose and times of taking. So with physical move¬
ment. If it is to be prescribed, administered and applied in a satis¬
factory way it must be given even more carefully and just as scienti¬
fically as medicine. The exact movements and number of movements
must be prescribed after the most painstaking and accurate diagnosis
of the patient’s age and all individual conditions and requirements.
To assure this, it would, of course, be best for everv student to be
compelled to take up a course of practical physical therapeutics in
his own person first, to qualify physically himself, before prescribing
physical movements for others. It would, indeed, seem strange for a
narrow-chested, physically undeveloped doctor to prescribe a
“ medicine ” to others that he so visibly needed himself, and it only
shows how credulous must be the sick public of to-day when it expects
health from a bottle prescribed by a man, weak-looking and probably
diseased himself, who has not even learnt, with all his knowledge of
medicine, how to make and keep his own body healthv.
As Dr. Hubert Higgins, M.R.C.S., says in his book on “ Humani-
culture,” “As long as physicians are not conspicuous in attaining
and maintaining more than average health themselves, it is legiti¬
mate to say that among the blind the one-eyed man is king, and to
hope that the day is not far distant when none must necessarily be
blind or even one-eyed.” The spectacle of a medical man, bearing
in his own person unmistakable evidence of weakness and disease,
as we often see to-day, prescribing medicine to another well seems to
me as ridiculous as the tipster one so often meets on a racecourse
with wonderful “ information ” regarding “ a certain winner ” that
one would think he would naturally seek first to benefit by himself.
Under the new system nothing of this paradoxical nature would
be possible, for the doctor would have gone through a course of
ph vsical education in his own body—would have “taken his own
medicine ” as the saying is—and would himself be the best and most
convin.eing evidence of what he preached. His own body would be
well developed and perfectly balanced physicallv. It would
symbolise in its external appearance his very profession, the power
 326

to confer health and strength on others. How much more confidence

would any suffering man or woman put in a medical adviser of this
stamp than in a physician who himself looked weak or ill, or even in
a serious state of disease as we so often see to-day.

EXERCISE SHOULD BE PRESCRIBED LIKE MEDICINE.

Every student should be taught the prescription of what I call

balanced physical movement. The muscles within voluntary control
and their movements are known, and the student should learn to
know the therapeutic effect of each movement or set of movements,
the scientific and best method of carrying them out, how to diagnose
and to prescribe physical movement with accuracy to any part of the
body according to a patient’s age, sex, condition and other individual
considerations, how the movements should be blended, varied, and
graduated to meet the patient’s changing condition—everything, in
fact, about the scientific prescription and application of harmonised
physical movements for the treatment, cure and future prevention of
disease both in children and adults.
All that I have written here may seem strange and startling to
the medical man steeped in tradition, but is a fact, an absolute and
proved fact. For disease and all weakness towards disease can be
cured and even prevented by the upbuilding of a balanced and
strongly resistant body. This is no mere and unsupported ipse
dixit on my part, nor mere theorising or speculation. Indeed there
is surely sufficient evidence of its truth to convince the most sceptical
in the splendid array of photographs that accompany this book.
Some of them are real “ living pictures,” and one could not imagine
these people easily succumbing to any disease. Many of the
originals were weakly and undeveloped when they first commenced
treatment, and their photographs show what wonderful improve¬
ment was wrought in them.

WONDERFUL RESULTS ACHIEVED.

Jlist here, T might say that I do not sav it would be impossible

for any of these to become diseased again if they persistently
neglected the balanced physical movement always essential to
healthy life, although muscle, once made, remains to some extent.
But under all circumstances I do argue that they would be less liable
to disease than those who have neglected phvsical movement all their
lives, and never at any time possessed a well-balanced organism and
constitution. It is always possible even for the strongest, by neglect
 327

•or carelessness, to get diseased or in that physical condition which

makes them liable to disease. Those, however, who have acquired
bodily balance by such methods as I describe, seldom discontinue the
practice, but come to regard it as essential to health and comfort as
the washing of their face or their daily bath.
Some of these were guided by post, some by my books, and some
personally. Some required only enough daily physical movement to
keep them in normal health and resistant to disease. Some required
a better physique and general physical development, and naturally
derived also a considerable accession of robust health at the same
time. Some had physical defects or deformities that made life
unhappy or threatened serious disease, and had their physical
deformities smoothed away. A great many had some 'illness or
disease that needed specific physical treatment, and many were
sent to me by well-known medical men.
The worst cases were, of course, those who only came to me after
they had been chasing a will-o’-the-wisp of health through all the
swamps and marshes of chemistry until they had nearly wrought
their own destruction; they were all ages and both sexes, from
children of two years to old men and women of 80 and over. They
represented every grade of society and every type of humanity.
Nothing but methods such as I am now advocating here as a national
system of physical reconstruction for all was employed, and the
remarkable record of success which has been achieved has been
vouched for by no less critical and conscientious a periodical as Mr.
Labouchere’s world-famous organ of exposure, Truth.
The result of a Special Commissioner’s investigations caused a
tremendous sensation at the time, not only in England, but all over
the world. It was one of the most amazing health reports ever
issued by any newspaper. Here are a few extracts from it:—
“ So far as actual disease is concerned, the Sandow system of curative
physical culture is employed at the Institute in four principal groups of
illnesses. They are :—
“ (1) Weakness and diseases of the chest and lungs.
“ (2) Digestive and kidney troubles.
“ (3) Illnesses arising from failure in some function of the nervous
system.
“ (4) Skeletal deformities, as, for instance, curvative of the spine.
“ Taking (the figures) for one day I find the cases may be
grouped under the following heads :—
Per cent.
“ Cases of Dyspepsia in its many forms .. .. .. 44
,, Nervous disorders, insomnia, etc. . . .. .. 16
,, Gout, rheumatism .. .. .. . . .. 4
 Dr. Mouat Biggs,
who personally determined to test the value of these methods of carrying out
physical movements, and who to-day agrees that the method of body-culture is the
only way of building up a body in such balanced strength as to resist and defeat
disease. Though he did not begin until nearly 50, the results are apparent in his.
exceptionally fine physique.
328
 329
Per cent.
“ Cases of Paralysis .. .. .. .. .. .. 3
,, Heart affections .. .. .. .. .. 5
,, Chest and lung complaints .. .. .. .. 10
„ Various and other complaints .. .. .. 5
,, no special illness, but treated for reduction of obesity
or for general physical improvement .. .. 13
“ Such figures go to show that the Sandow treatment is applicable and applied
to a large number of serious cases.
“ I learned that ultimately, of all the cases treated over the latest period for
which figures were available, the treatment had only failed entirely in less than on£
per cent, of cases. Satisfactory improvement, therefore, was produced in ovee
99 per cent, of cases, and the treatment had completely achieved the object for which ir
was undertaken in no fewer than 94 per cent, of cases'

NATURAL LAWS OF MATHEMATICAL EXACTITUDE.

If I have been more successful than others it is simply because

of the unique knowledge I have acquired during thirty odd years of
devoted study to this subject exclusively, of my experiments on my
own body, and of my experience in this natural treatment of
thousands of others. The movements that I employ are as old as
Adam himself, and as natural, except that they are now consciously
carried on with a distinct object. My “ system ” is based on an
accurate diagnosis of each individual case—perhaps the most
difficult matter of all—enabling me to select and apply the correct
movements to suit that case only, first to the particular part or parts
immediately affected and simultaneously or consecutively in the
building up and balancing of every organ, muscle, nerve, bone,
system and every individual cell of the body, movements varied and
gradually increased as the patient progresses.
This is a result that can never be achieved without special study,
experience and by well-balanced physical movements applied not in
any half-hearted or haphazard way, but in a scientific manner as
mathematically exact as to quantity and quality as if subject to a
mechanical or mathematical law.
The great aim of the doctor should always be to obtain both
external and internal physical balance, the balancing of the mental
and muscular, especially in the child, the balancing of organ and
muscle and function, and the ideal is, of course, the establishment
of a perfect cellular balance in every part of the body of each part
with every other part, and the nice adjustment of the body to its
environment.
But the greatest care must, above everything else, be exercised
to regulate the selection and prescription of all physical movement
 330

according to the condition of the heart, and always to make certain

that the movements will strengthen the pupil or patient’s heart
action. Even persons with weak and functionally defective hearts
can have their hearts made strong by scientific physical movement if
this precaution is observed, and I even contend that except where
there is serious structural disease it is possible to rebuild a new and
stronger heart by accelerating and improving cellular change as you
can the rest of the body, so that heart troubles would practically
cease to exist, especially if we began, as I suggest, with the children.

CO-PARTNERSHIP OF DOCTOR AND PATIENT.

Doctors will, of course, understand that much depends upon

the hearty co-partnership of the patient, for if this is lacking
nothing can prove successful. At the same time it is not to be
expected that if a patient waits until heart disease or consumption
or any deadly disease has become so far advanced that death may
occur at any moment, a cure is possible, though it is really wonderful
what can be achieved with patience on the part of patient and doctor.
Unfortunately, many patients do not know that they have heart
trouble and will not be made to realise that the treatment can only
be employed gradually and slowly as the heart permits. Hence
they grow discontented, and perhaps may give up in consequence
and feel that it is no good simply because it does not produce some
speedy and magical effect upon them. When sufferers learn to
understand this, much better results will be obtained.
Both curatively and preventively, there is a great field for
future medical study in this department of physical therapeutics.
By beginning early with the children and teaching them to live
healthfully, the curative aspect of the question will gradually grow
of less and less importance until no disease remains to be cured.
Coroner’s inquests and post-mortem examinations will only be
necessary after accidents or self-inflicted injuries, for knifeless anti-
mortems will have taught us how to live, to live healthfully and to
live happily.
It will naturally be somewhat difficult for conservative
physicians of the old school to adjust themselves readily to this
tremendous change in the whole medical outlook, although the
younger generation will most certainly welcome it, for already there
is a healthy and ever-increasing resentment in the new medical
school against pharmacology, the more advanced thinkers agreeing
 331

that medicine and drugs, if not actually innocuous, have at least

very circumscribed limitations.

NATION LOOKING TO THE DOCTORS.

It is to the rising generation of medical men, therefore, and the

medical students present and future, to whom we must look chiefly
for support in such a system as I propose, although I have no doubt
that many of the great leaders of the profession to-day will be
entirely with me in this matter. Should there, however, be evidence
of any concerted movement against such a system of physical educa¬
tion and reconstruction for the children of the nation, I would still
persist in my own unrelaxed advocacy of it.
It is my sincere and earnest hope, however, that the medical
profession will see the wisdom of these measures against disease and
of thus ensuring the health, happiness and efficiency of the people,
measures, indeed, that will depend mainly for their success upon the
generous and unanimous support of the medical men of the world
The great number and wonderful variety of diseases, even of an
obstinate character that have defied medical, or rather, medicinal
treatment and which have proved readily amenable to treatment
by scientific physical movements will surprise everyone who has not
had an opportunity of stiffing the subject, or whose experience
has been confined altogether to orthodox treatment which must,
under such a regime as I suggest, in a few years from now have
become obsolete and unnecessary.
Indeed, all that I say here will be new to doctors whose study
has been devoted to the influence and effect of medicine on the body
and not the effect and possibilities of physical movement both as a
preventive and a cure for disease, especiallv its power to improve
cellular structure and function and through it organic function,
which is Nature’s way of curing and preventing disease.
This is a subject of the utmost interest, not only to medical men
but to every man and woman, and I have dealt with it more fullv in
a later chapter of this book where anvone specially interested in
the curative aspect of the question will find a mass of useful and
helpful information, especially with regard to the natural treatment
of nervous and functional disorders, bv methods and means which
bring new life and vigour to every cell in equal and harmonious
proportion.
Under the new svstem it will be the individual patient who
requires treatment rather than the disease. An engineer carefully
 332

ascertains just what strain materials and constructions meant to

bear weights can stand, and never imposes tasks to the point of
breaking strain. So we should do with the individual before
prescribing physical movement.
By the methods I advocate we can not only replace, but even
improve upon, the natural movements that kept man healthy in
primitive life, and bring about the regeneration—at least in a
physical sense—of the whole people.

PHYSICAL AMD SVIEMTAL EVOLUTION.

I was talking this over with a friend recently when he remarked,

“ But, Mr. Sandow, you know we can’t all be Sandows.” Certainly,
as men are to-day, the physical deterioration being greater in some
than in others through ancestry, one will be able to develop greater
muscular power and all-round organic strength and balance than
another, because he starts, as it were, less severely handicapped by
the condition of the body he already possesses and, bv the physical
family and medical history of his forebears.
When, however, we adopt a national and rational system of
physical education and training on really scientific lines, and educate
the children almost from the dawn of their life to habits of balanced
physical movement, healthy living, and self-respect for the bodies
they possess, each generation will become stronger and healthier,
so that in a few generations the handicaps at present dividing
humanity will not be so severe, the physical differences in children
and adults not so great and, starting with equal opportunities, all
will be able to attain at least to their maximum standard of physical
perfection, and that complete bodily balance, internally and exter¬
nally, that prevents the invasion or intrusion of disease or cells
becoming diseased in themselves.
There is, of course, a limit to physical perfection and develop¬
ment, and those who make the greatest progress in the shortest time
will then stand still while others make up the leeway, though there
will never be absolute equality among all. The men and women of
the future under such a system as I advocate may be so physically
perfect that even I myself, recognised as the strongest of men in
modern times, might be regarded almost as a weak man in com¬
parison with the greatly improved type of the future.
While for a time tire doctor will, of course, have to exercise the
utmost care in diagnosis and prescription according to the individual
needs of each child, it must be evident that after such a system has
 333

been in vogue for any length of time, the physical standard of the
race and condition ol the people from birth will be so much improved
that this may no longer be absolutely necessary though it will always,
perhaps, be advisable as a precautionary measure.

FLOUTED BY A MICROBE,

In our present physical condition, however, no physical move¬

ments should ever be prescribed for remedial or curative purposes
except after careful diagnosis by a qualified medical man, and to
suit the individual child or adult. Physical movements from books
or charts of a general character are only for those who are physically
and organicallv sound.
To the doctor more and more in the future the State and the
people must look for the health of the nation. Even while I am
writing this chapter the worst epidemic in influenza the world has
ever known is raging, doctors are being kept busy night and day, and
the public press is clamouring for more and more medical men and a
Board of Health. It is evident, therefore, that the physician must
play a still more prominent part in the whole national life than he
has ever done in the past, but I ask medical men candidly if it is
flattering to their profession in the twentieth centurv to find disease
still flourishing more vigorously than ever even after all their studies,
all their research, all their experimentation and all their experience.
Does it not argue something wrong radically in the system of
grappling with an enemy that seems to grow more powerful after
each reported defeat! The triumph of Lister, of Koch, of Pasteur,
of Ehrlich, and of dozens of other great bacteriologists, surgeons and
physicians shrink into small measures when a grinning microbe of
influenza prostrates the people of the world, kills its millions, and
defies the united efforts of the world’s physicians to stamp it out.
The world has stood too long on the defensive against disease.
The time has now arrived for a great offensive. We must no longer
leave the initiative to disease and be content to parry its blows. We
must fight it with a new weapon. Imagination must be added to the
medical armoury, and the doctor must seek to anticipate, to circum¬
vent and to prevent its onslaughts, or to render them abortive if
attempted. Disease must be killed in the womb of humanity. It
must be a still-born child.
Humanity must never give birth to such an offspring alive with
all its vicious possibilities. To prevent the birth of disease in the
human body is infinitely better, safer and cheaper than to seek to
destroy it afterwards. Fortunately, the whole medical profession
 334

is fast awakening to this fact, and is devoting itself more and more
to preventive measures, none of which, however, I contend, can
succeed until we begin by making the human body itself too powerful
everywhere and too resistant to be vanquished by disease in any
shape or form.
In my next chapter I bring before my readers some remarkable
statements by distinguished members of the medical profession as to
the present and future medical attitude towards disease, and its
prevention rather than its cure. Many of them I have collected
from out of the way sources and will come as a surprise both to
medical men and students, and even more so to my lay readers. All
of them are indicative of a complete revolution in the new medical
attitude towards disease. In many directions it is evident that
medical science is looking for something that will really prevent
disease, but looking .in wrong quarters. When they turn their
attention and study, as I have done, to the power and possibilities
of physical reconstruction by natural methods, to build up a body
in balanced strength, they will find what they are looking for every¬
where else in vain
 335

CHAPTER XVIII.

The “ No-Medicine ” Medical Man of the

Future.

I hope my readers will excuse me for beginning this chapter on an

unavoidably personal note, but I assure them I only intrude my
personal experience in the hope that it may help to enforce my argu¬
ment and consolidate my position, and I am confident that medical
men not only in England but throughout the world will be interested
in what I have to say here.
I think I may claim, without undue egotism, to be a fairly
strong man—indeed, of more than average strength. Also I do
claim, whether egotistically or not, to be a very healthv one. Indeed,
according to my own argument, I could not be the former unless I
were the latter. How did I make myself so healthv and so strong,
for I was of delicate constitution in early youth. Simply in the
manner I am now advocating in the public interest, by developing
my whole bodily organism in perfect balance by the simple methods
I have already described. What I could do personally there is no
reason why others cannot do also.

REFUTING A POPULAR DELUSION.

Some time ago I was desirous, for the sake of my wife and
family, of insuring my life. Now, there was the common but
erroneous impression that because I was “ a strong man,” as the
phrase goes, I could not be healthy and sound. I must, some argued,
have an overstrained heart and other infirmities caused by perform¬
ing my feats of strength.
Well, I was medically examined by the Norwich Union Insur¬
ance Co.’s medical representative, and what was the result? Not
only was I medically passed and accepted by the Company as a first-
class life, and insured for £20,000, but I was accepted at a reduced
rate of premium, because, as a letter I received from the general
manager said, “ my directors have decided to act upon the very
exceptionally excellent medical examination you have passed.”
z
 336

Now my sole reason for bringing in this incident here is because

it points a moral which I desire to emphasise. If I may say it
without offence, the tradition of the medical profession has been to
pay too much attention to the study of the body diseased and too
little to ascertaining how to make and keep it healthy and free from
disease, though I am glad to see a great trend at present towards the
more desirable goal of preventing disease rather than curing it when
once established. I have travelled all over the world in response to
invitations to show my own physique and to lecture on physical
culture, yet no doctor has ever voluntarily asked to examine me,
because probably his traditional education and training had schooled
him to exhibit curiosity only towards a diseased body, and not
towards the discovery of my secret of developing and maintaining
for more than half a century a perfectly healthy one.
And, remember, I have not only made myself healthy and
strong, after having been born of weak constitution, but I have
made thousands of others healthy and strong also. Had I com¬
plained of a cough, or of a pain in the region of my heart, I have
no doubt that any of the many medical men whom I have met in
many parts of the world would have gladly produced his stethoscope
and examined my lungs or heart and given me the most excellent
advice.
SECRET OF A DISEASE-FREE BODY.
I mention this to show that even a more than usually strong
man with no sign of disease of any kind did not arouse sufficient
curiosity in any of these medical men to make them anxious to ascer¬
tain the cause of that health and strength or how I maintained it
through life. Yet I had travelled in many countries and had lived in
climates very sympathetic to disease of the most infectious and
most virulent character. If I could do this and have done this,
surely the medical profession might well have sought to know the
why and the wherefore of my immunity, and to understand why
others could not be made similarly immune by similar methods.
It has all along been my contention that the causation of disease
is lack of balance in the bodv or between the body and its environ¬
ment, and though we may help the body by ameliorating the condi¬
tions of its environment, the more logical method is surely to adapt
or adjust the body to its environment, or rather, to make it not the
creature and slave of its environment but, as it should be, its
conaueror and master.
If, as is now generally admitted, lack of balance between the
 337

individual and his environment is the chief factor in degeneration

and disease, then, surely, if we can make man the master of his
environment—as I have myself proved we can do—we are nearer
the solution of this problem than we can ever attain by laboratory
research (valuable as it undoubtedly is to this end), clinical studies
and reports, and all the other methods now devoted to the study of
existent disease, rather than to the study of its prevention in a
structure so perfect in form, substance and organism as the human
body, and its ultimate elimination and eradication of disease from
the human race.

WEAKNESS OF MEDICAL METHODS.

The average practitioner only sees his patient when disease has
actually triumphed over the patient’s body. His “ clinical notes ”
are made when the patient is already in a state of disease, and made
from information supplied by a patient not only unskilled in the
keen observation necessary to be of value, but even ignorant of the
everyday working processes of his own body. Can the unskilled
observations of such a man, already in the abnormal condition of
disease, enable the doctor to be accurate in his deductions and con¬
clusions as to the true cause and origin of the ailment.
Is a man stretched on the rack of disease and ignorant, even in
health, of what is going on within his own body from day to day,
to be able to give information that would explain the true reason
why he had been defeated in the battle of life, or to help the doctor
in making an accurate diagnosis. This has been too long the modern
method, and shows how weak is our defensive armour against the
intrusion of disease even now after centuries of medical research
and experiment.
Indeed, as an American writer had put it in a typicallv quaint
and humorous way, “ the patient is too probably just sufficiently
* cured ’ to enable him to have another ‘ round ’ with his environment,
to be defeated again and again, to be patched up, till finally he dies
and gives up the struggle, the end of which was assured from the
start.”
My scheme of things, on the other hand, would be to have every
individual consult his doctor periodically, just as a business man
calls in an accountant to check and examine his books from time to
time, thus taking steps to safeguard himself against failure, rather
than looking round for advice when failure has come to him. Every
individual from childhood should be taught to obtain and maintain
 338

a health-balance, to study his health expenditure, balance or over¬

draft, as the case may be, and to have his health accounts “ audited ”
at least annually by a qualified medical man. The doctor of the
future might, indeed, more aptly be called a Physical or Health
Auditor, and people will consult him as business men to-day consult
their accountants to avoid financial disaster.

POPULARISING HEALTH KNOWLEDGE.

Even the most humble individual should be watched over as

constantly and as carefully as Royalty is to-day. For, as every
doctor knows, Royalty is wonderfully free from disease, and usually
lives to a ripe old age because of this constant medical vigilance
and supervision. For children at school, indeed, I would have such
a health-audit by skilled medical men made compulsory, so that
health-care and health-culture would become a habit with them in
later life, while the doctor in future, would be paid for the preven¬
tion of disease than for its cure.
The record of the medical profession is a noble one and it has
achieved marvels of good, considering its limitations and handicaps,
its lack of State support, its opportunities of securing sufficient
data, and the disinclination of the older type of medical men for
what one of the medical profession’s most distinguished representa¬
tives called “ the vulgarisation of knowledge.” Just as medical men
themselves in earlier ages were thwarted by the religious orders who
sought to restrict the healing art, as it was known in those days, to
their own priestly craft, and who even accused Hippocrates of
robbing the temples of their prescriptions, so to-day the average
layman is permitted to know little or nothing of his own body, and
anatomy, physiology and hygiene are too often regarded by medical
men as subjects to be dealt with only in “ chained books ” exclusively
reserved and preserved for the benefits of something like a monastic
order of medicine.
The attitude of too many medical men to-day is, indeed, not at
all unlike that of the clergy who, in other days, sought to keep the
people ignorant lest they should lose their own power and influence
over the people. The spread of education, however, has not
jeopardised ministers of the Church in the least, and we have at the
same time a world better enlightened, more truly religious and more
intelligent. In the old days, merchants had to entrust the clergy
with all their business transactions, and so the lavrnan was never
entirely master of his own worldly affairs, just as in health matters
 339

to-day, he is not master of his own health capital owing to lack of

health knowledge, that ought to be in his possession from youth.

HEALTH A SOCIAL DUTY.

The medical profession would itself benefit in many ways if it

were so, and much disease would be prevented that now flourishes
through ignorance and tardiness on the part of the individual. A
patient with some knowledge of his own body and its myriad
activities would, naturally, consult his doctor earlier and oftener,
for he would observe early departures from health more quickly, and
in this way would materially assist in preventing disease. Lawyers
say that they are more often consulted by clients who know a little
law than by those ignorant or suspicious of the law. The same
would hold good between medical men and their patients, with the
popularisation of knowledge essential to the health of the people.
The schoolmaster, however, is abroad and the walls of what may
be called medical monasticism or occultism, like the walls of the city
of Jericho, will soon crumble and fall before the uplifted voice of the
people, unless medical men themselves perceive the trend of the
times, and open the gates of their own free will. That they will
choose the latter course I feel confident, for after all, the co-operation
of an intelligent subject is far more likely to lead to successful results
and greater rewards than the present empiricism that robs the
physician of most valuable information, and too often degrades the
noblest of all professions in the eyes of an educated and observant
public.
Besides, health and disease are matters that do not merely
affect the individual and the doctor, but are matters affecting the
whole community. If the individual, whose body and brain are
often his only capital in life, is reduced in economic value by disease,
the loss is not only his but falls directly or indirectlv upon society.
Tt is, then, the business and the duty of societv to see that all disease
is prevented, cured or alleviated, and, if possible (as I contend it is)
eliminated altogether.
As showing the changing view of medical opinion—the result
mainly of the appalling reports of the physical condition of the
people in war-time and of the medical examination of school
children—I may here refer to a leading article that appeared some
little time ago in The Lancet, describing what was trulv called a
new orientation of outlook with regard to existing medical teach¬
ing.” A distinguished physician and professor were quoted as
240
Demonstration and Lecture given by the Author at Sydney to a large and interested group ot medical men
in 1902, when the Author travelled round the world to encourage the spirit of self-culture of the physical body,
:3md to combat the physical deterioration which was even then menacing the people everywhere.
 341

expressing the views of the General Medical Council that “ the whole
conduct of life from the point of view of national efficiency must he
the objective of a new system of medical education on preventive
lines.” That in itself is a noteworthy utterance coming from such
a quarter. It was a statement endorsed, too, by no less an authority
than Professor G. Elliott Smith, while the same prominent journal
of medical opinion quotes an equally remarkable statement of a
similar nature by Dr. J. S. Haldane.

NEW STUDY FOR MEDICAL STUDENTS,

The medical man of the future is the medical student of

to-day, and I am most anxious that the present and future medical
student will fully realise his relationship to the public in the new
era when we shall prevent disease altogether and not permit it
to exist in individuals made and kept too healthy to become diseased.
To quote from a Times review of Sir George Newman’s now famous
Report on “ Medical Education,” already referred to, “ the view that
the general practitioner must be ready to discharge the work of a
preventer of disease admits of no question. The general practi¬
tioner is the man who sees disease in its beginnings, he it is who
makes the early diagnosis, he it is who can apply treatment at a
moment when treatment is likely to be of value.
“ His position grows more, not less, important to the whole State;
his education is a vital matter. He must be taught that there is no
cult in preventive medicine any more than in curative medicine.
He is the foundation upon which both prevention and cure are
builded. As a student he must, therefore, he taught that the least
of 'his functions is the attempt to cure established, disease, the
greatest policy of preventing the onset and establishment of disease.”
Speaking before the Edinburgh Pathological Club, Dr. Haldane
drew a striking picture of what he called the vis directrix of the
healthy body as opposed to the vis medicatrix of the sick one, and
this physician pointed out that “ disease is but the breakdown of
regulation at one point or another,” or, as I call it, lack of balance.
If we can prevent this “ breakdown of regulation ” we can prevent
disease, and it is my contention that only through the voluntary
muscles over which we have been given control we can do so. And it is
towards the prevention of disease that all medical teaching is now
trending, for we are at least beginning to realise that health, after
all, is cheaper than disease.
This is one of the points that I have sought and am seeking ta
 342

emphasise, and I contend that health can only be secured for all by
developing the body in balanced cellular strength everywhere.

THE VIEWS OF SOME MEDICAL MEN.

Opinions, of course, still differ as to how disease can be pre¬

vented, and I have gathered together here some varied suggestions
from distinguished medical men and Officers of Health. In a most
interesting paper which was reported in the Edinburgh Medical
Journal, Dr. John Robertson, Medical Officer of Health for Birming¬
ham, opened a striking debate on Preventive Medicine—a conjunc¬
tion of words somewhat opposed to one another and indicative of the
traditional medical mind. In that paper he said :—“ There is no
group of men who have the opportunities of the general medical
practitioner for dealing with individuals who require advice on the
methods of prevention of the spread of disease.”
“ As a matter of fact, there are very few diseases in regard to
which preventive measures cannot effectively be taken. In my
opinion, there is at present a vast field of work almost untouched in
the domain of the prevention of disease. It cannot be too often
impressed upon the profession that the 'prevention of disease is more
important than the cure of it, and this ought to be impressed also on
the medical student.” Professor Stockman, in reply, said, the
relative use of drugs and other agencies does not, I think, come into
this discussion. Personally, I teach physical therapeutics.
Even more remarkable in the expressions of opinion it elicited
was the debate on a paper by Professor Hunter Stewart, of the
University of Edinburgh. Dr. Leslie Mackenzie, a distinguished
Scottish physician, said that “ the normal attitude of the medical
man is primarily clinical. Not only that, his clinical insight is
limited to cases of gross disease. The medical inspection of school
children has helped'the practitioner into a greater insight into pre¬
ventive medicine.” And under such a system as I advocate tins
insight and experience will be greatly increased and extended. I
may quote other medical men in brief to save space .
Dr. QUy—“ They should get the idea fairly implanted in
their mind that their highest aim ought to be the prevention of
disease.”
“ The prominent ideas should be the prevention of disease,
the maintenance of the adult in good health, and the important
 343

'position that the student, as the future practitioner, will be

called to occupy in relation to these ideals.”
Dr. Leslie Mackenzie—“ In view of the development in the
Army, one cannot forget that during the next four or five years
the importance of the question of physical education and
remedial massage and gymnastics—in fact, the whole of physical
methods as applied to health—will be vastly enhanced.”

In fact, the medical man of the future will be, or I hope will be,
as far advanced from the practitioner of to-day as the present-day
physician is ahead of the medicine man or witch-doctor of the
savage.
Professor Lorrain Smith—“ There are very few diseases in
regard to which preventive measures cannot effectively be
taken.”
Dr. Robertson—“ The question of physical culture is
emphasised by the conditions in the Army. This also might
well be taught as a part of preventive medicine. In America,
it is considered such an important subject that several Univer¬
sities have appointed professors of physical culture, who are
doing magnificent work in this direction.” Again he said : “ If
chairs of preventive medicine were established, duodenal ulcer,
gastric ulcer, colitis and many other diseases could be tackled
with advantage.”
If old methods of physical culture came in for such commen¬
dation, what may we not expect from a scientific method such as I
describe here.

Dr. Traquair—“ The loss of time and wages due to preven-

tible affections of the eve is enormous. If the general practi¬
tioner regarded prevention seriously the public would in time do
so also. In connection with diseases of the eye. I suppose there
are about 30,000 blind people in the United Kingdom, half of
whom owe their blindness to preventable causes.”
Dr. Gibbs—“ It is a clinical fact that we can, if we wish,
prevent dental diseases, and it could be taught to the student in
one lecture. Dental caries and pyorrhoea alveolaris are the
two commonest diseases of western civilised life, and the most
easily prevented. The child can grow up with no dental caries;
the adult can keep his teeth to old age. I have been preaching
 344

this for the last fifteen years, but the ignorance of the general
practitioner undoes practically everything that many of us
keenly interested in preventive medicine in this direction are
trying to do”

These are only a few of some hundreds of similar medical

opinions which have been expressed of late, and show only too plainly
that the future medical practitioner will stand in a very different
relationship to his patient than the old. It is evident, however, that
the great objective of the medical profession will be that complete
prevention of disease which is proverbially better than cure, and that
physical methods of reconstructing the body and scientific physical
education will be vital factors in helping medical men to reach that
objective.

HOW CAN DISEASE BE PREVENTED.

While it is very satisfactory to note this changed attitude of

the medical profession of recent years and to find a representative
professional journal like The Medical Press declaring that “ it is but
yesterday that we were all for finding cures, to-day we seek above all
things to cultivate prevention,” yet I am still inclined to wonder if
medical men even yet are approaching this tremendous problem in a
really scientific and radical way.
What is this “ preventive medicine ” of which they speak ? How
can we “prevent” disease? Medicine that, after thousands of
years, has failed to cure disease can scarcely be expected ever to
prevent it. The only real preventive measure, I repeat, that can
ever achieve success is to 7nake man himself so strong within that his
body contains not a single weak cell that can become diseased itself,
and is strong enough to conquer and crush every microbe of disease
that attacks it, and to obtain perfect cellular balance everywhere and
equilibrium between the body and its environment.
You cannot do this by throwing out “ fenders ” around a weak
and disease-tempting body. You cannot do it bv giving such a body
“ escorts ” and “ body guards ” in the form of drugs and medicines,
for the moment these are taken away from it it is an easier victim
than ever before to disease. You can onlv defy and conauer disease
by making the body innately so strong and so impregnably protected
in its own muscular armour-plate that disease will always and ever
attack it in vain.
 345

RESEARCH WITHIN THE BODY ITSELF.

The new curriculum of the medical student will have more to

do with the study of strength and health rather than the study of
medicine and disease, and will save the money that is at present
being spent on research in laboratories and foreign lands instead of
within the body itself. Even after over 30 years of practically
exclusive study in this subject I can say truly that, as the great
Newton said modestly of his new discoveries, “ i have merely picked
a few pebbles on the sea-shore of knowledge,” and long after I am
gone, this great work of investigation will, I hope, be continued by
others, with the facts that I have set down in this book as nuclei.
We must, to again quote Dr. Haldane’s words, “ seek to discover the
vis directrix of the healthy body rather than the vis medicatrix or
self-healing power of a diseased one,” the power, that is, to assist
Nature in regulating and directing at every moment the activity of
the healthy body.
There is much yet to be studied and learnt in the direction of
balancing the living, human engine and making it so healthy, strong
and stable that it will be made practically immune from disease from
childhood to old age. This is a great vision surelv, and one the
realisation of which would compensate for every sacrifice and all the
cost. If “ disease,” to again quote the distinguished physician above
mentioned, “ is the breakdown of regulation at one point or another,”
it ought surely to be possible for medical men, with all our modern
scientific knowledge and experience, to secure the restoration of that
regulation to all the functions and activities of the body.
This will not, however, be attained in a day. It means more
and more concentrated study of the living body, of the relation of
cell to structure and function, of harmonious balance between organ
and function and muscle, of mental and muscular co-ordination, of
the nature and relationship of the various species of bodilv cells, in
fact, all forms of study and scientific thought which can help us to
produce a perfectly balanced, healthy, harmonious and strong human
engine. When we have solved the problem of balancing everv organ,
muscle, nerve, bone, yes, even every tiny drop of blood, both as
to quality and distribution, and every microscopic cell, we shall have
found the true and only secret of health and strength for all from
childhood to the grave.
Surgery has done more, perhaps, to defeat disease than
medicine, yet even surgerv can never avail to eradicate disease from
humanity or to prevent it. Surgeons may, of course, prevent an
 346

organ from becoming diseased, just as they may “ cure ” a diseased

organ by cutting it out of the body, for disease cannot either attack
or defeat the non-existent. If the organ is healthy there is no reason
for its excision. If it is diseased, would it not be far better to
re-create and reconstruct a new and healthy organ in its place, as I
maintain we can do. by supplying it with younger, stronger and
more vigorous cells, or improving its cellular constituents in health
and strength rather than by removing an organ altogether or depriv¬
ing the system of its services.

NOTHING IN THE BODY WITHOUT A PURPOSE.

We do not uproot and destroy a garden because it contains

weeds, and there should be no need for the destruction and removal
even of a diseased organ if it were dealt with in time as, of course,
it would be under such a system as I advocate. In fact, the condi¬
tion, even in a minor degree, could never arise. It is nothing but
flat blasphemy to say that there is a single useless organ in the body,
or that any organ is present there without a distinct purpose and
duty, though surgeons sometimes speak of dispensable organs. The
human body was not built with hands, and whatever even construc¬
tive surgery or medicine has accomplished, no doctor or surgeon has
ever been able to make by hand a living man. As I have shown in
another chapter, however, it is possible by assisting great natural
laws to reconstruct a new and better body in whole or in any part,
and that can only be done by the use, as I have explained, of the
muscles under our own direction to rebuild progressively improving
and stronger cells free of any weakness that tends to disease, and
powerful enough to kill any microbes of disease that attack them.
To be able thus to prescribe muscular movement, in perfect
balance, either for the cure or prevention of disease, is a study really
worthy of a great profession, for it implies, above everything else,
the study of man—a far greater study than either the study of
medicines or disease. Doctors should even now be preparing them¬
selves for the great work of national physical reconstruction that lies
before them by studying this vast subject with all its ramifications
and possibilities, present or remote, and by availing themselves of
such knowledge and experience as we already possess. Their great
object should be to learn how to train the body to health and strength
from early childhood and not to wait until the body becomes diseased
as it present, for as a great Scottish physician has said, “ the student
of to-day when he becomes physician is too often called upon to deal
Another Lecture-Demonstration betore members ot the Medical Society of Victoria at Melbourne, illustrating
the influence of physical movement on physiology. Actual demonstrations of scientific physical movement were
given by a pupil of the Author, and the event aroused great enthusiasm in Australia.
 348

with an altogether new physiology from that which he studied.”

To know and understand the laws that keep the body so healthy
and strong as to be literally disease-proof and to apply them will
accomplish even greater miracles than helping a sick man to rise
from his bed and walk.
All disease really begins in the body itself, and is not so
much to be attributable to microbes, unhygienic environment and
external conditions generally |as to a physique and constitution
impaired, as the inevitable result of our modern and enervating
civilisation and lack of balanced movement, until its power of resist¬
ance to disease has been greatly diminished and, in some case, has
disappeared altogether. Health, too, like disease, comes from
within and never from without the body itself.

MILLIONS SPENT ON MICROBES.

The microbe hunters of to-day can run their quarry to earth and
kill microbes until they are tired, but they will never eradicate
disease in this way any more than we could hope to exterminate a
nest of wasps by killing stray specimens here and there. The weak
body attracts the microbe while the strong one repels it, and even if
it does find a lodgment in the latter the body will not tolerate is
presence long, but will quickly kill or sterilise it. Our main object,
then, should be to prevent the physical and especially the muscular
and organic deterioration which alone enables disease to exist and
flourish in the body, or healthy cells to deteriorate and become
diseased, rather than to waste more millions of money and the best
professional brains on tracking microbes to their lair. For, even if
we keep on killing microbes, there will always be new and as yet
unknown microbes of other sorts to take their place so long as we
neglect the physical defences of the body itself or leave any “ weak
spots ” in the bodily lines of defence at which enemy germs can
break through.
The real enemy is not disease or disease germs but the physical
deterioration that permits disease. This deterioration through
centuries of ever-diminishing balanced physical activity, is bad
enough already, but it is and will continue to be progressive if some
such method of individual physical re-education and reconstruction
as I advocate is not begun immediately—NOW. As Dr. J. Wallace
Clarke says :—“ Preventive measures to be effective must be con¬
ducted on individual lines and cannot begin too soon. Inoculation
 349

cannot transform a weakling and turn him into a robust citizen;

there is no magical power which can transform the feeble, whose
vital energy has been impregnated at its inception.'1
As we grow weaker and weaker still, which we are doing and
will continue to do so long as we neglect the balanced physical move¬
ment of the human body that Nature intended us to maintain, old
diseases will take a more virulent form and new diseases will appear
and develop. On the other hand, as Sir George Newman says :—
“ Hygiene is the great medical subject of the future. As it advances
the importance of the clinical subjects will decline; as it increases
they must decrease/'

BODIES THAT WELCOME MICROBES.

Influenza seemed never so virulent or so deadly as in war-time,

say the medical men. Why ? Because, owing to the fearful strain
of war conditions, vitality, physique, constitution and innate resis¬
tant power to disease were lower than ever before. The disease of
to-day is not, as some medical men proclaim, a new type or a more
severe and deadly type, but possibly, as one doctor asserts, the old
microbe accompanied by a more vicious companion. It will, how¬
ever, most likely be established yet that it is but the same microbe
meeting a weaker human opposition and more favourable reception
that was responsible for its greater ravages. The shock
was greater in proportion to the greater physical deteriora¬
tion and weakness of the attacked, and if we allow this
physical deterioration to continue increasing at even the same
rate of progress as during the last fifty years, we shall find still newer
and as yet unrecognised diseases triumphing over man, while even
diseases like influenza will wreck as much human havoc as did
cholera, typhus, or small-pox in other days, because of the further
lowered resistant power of the individual. On the other hand, if
through the voluntary muscles we make the individual stronger in
himself with a perfectly balanced physique and organism, even the
most virulent diseases will be little more deadly than influenza in its
mildest form.
Writing on the ravages of influenza in war-time, the Weekly
Dispatch had a very sensible leader at the time which I cannot
refrain from quoting in part :—
“ What/' asks the writer, “ after the experience of the past few
weeks, are we to expect if other and perhaps more deadly infectious
 350

diseases invade this country? Medical science and organisation

may have successfully kept from our shores the deadly enteric and
typhus fevers, the cholera, and the plague, which are the usual
heritage of war; we may hug ourselves with the belief that these
diseases will be none of ours, and that for once history will fail to
repeat itself, but medical science is not yet able to close every avenue
through which the germs of infectious disease can reach us.
“ Besides, however good may be our supplies of food, four years
of war strain of anxiety, and of strenuous effort, often for seven days
of the week of striving in hundreds of thousands of cases to do two or
three persons’ work, have undermined the power of resistance to
disease, and the sooner the State public health recognise these facts
the better.
“ It should remember that the pick of the physical strength
of the nation is in the Army or Navy, that the work of the nation
outside munition and other factories producing war material is being
carried on by 4 crocks/ by old men and by young boys, girls and
women, all of whom are forcing their nerve power in the effort to
carry on.
“ The next autumn and winter will be the most trying we have
ever known, even if the war ends this year. (This article appeared
in 1918.) The drain of man-power goes on steadily—it must go on,
if we are to win the war. And if the civilian population is to stand
the strain it must be as physically fit as war conditions allow it to be.
The physical fitness of the people is a matter of supreme importance
of the State at all times, and never more so than now. It is the
business of the Health Department of the Government to watch over
and protect that fitness.
“ The grip of influenza which laid millions low and caused the
deaths of thousands—indeed the medical correspondent of ‘The
Times 5 estimated the mortality alone from influenza in 12 weeks to
be at least 6,000,000—was, it may be safely said, due to impaired
physical strength; but the lesson it taught seems to have gone
unheededT
It must not continue to be unheeded, however, for those who
neglect to profit must go under.
Man at the beginning of things was created and intended to be
master of his environment and master of himself. He was, however,
a physical rather than a mental being, and his education was of
necessity physical rather than mental. To-day, we have changed all
that and we are paying the full penalty. It is our bounden duty to
get back to first principles, and to make the child, to use Spencer’s
famous phrase, “ a healthy animal ” before all things else.

WANTED, HEALTHY CHILDREN.

When we have given the children a sound physical foundation

and taught them how to keep the body in health and free from
disease, it will be time enough to attend to the cultivation of the
higher regions of the brain and soul. Health before all must be our
motto for the future, for again to quote Spencer, it is true that even
yet “ there are few who seem to understand that there exists in the
world what may be called physical morality.” He was right, for
morality, just like health, is mainly dependent upon and determined
by physical condition. After securing this basic physical fitness, all
the hygienic and preventive measures modern science can devise may
be called into requisition as auxiliary services for the maintenance
and preservation of bodily efficiency against disease, vice and crime
in all their forms. Even in the present generation we can do much
in the way I have indicated to banish disease and prevent its recur¬
rence, while, after a single generation, half the auxiliary movements
now put forward for the prevention and removal of disease will be
quite unnecessary for the reasons I have fully put forward.
I might suggest that healthy children will constitute the best
insurance policy that any nation can have. “ Wanted, healthy
children,'’ should be the watchword of the medical profession and
nothing should be left undone to see that every child, rich and poor
alike, is watched over most vigilantly until it reaches years of dis¬
cretion, so that it may not be handicapped by disease or infirmity
that is unavoidable, and should be given an early insight into the
laws that govern its own bodily architecture and construction, not
likely to be easily lost or forgotten in adult life. The children of
to-day are the parents of the future, and when we ensure that the
children of the future will have healthy parents, and make every
child’s prospect of success in life equally hopeful, which must be the
result of such physical education as I suggest, we can rely upon it
that the world will soon learn to be so jealous of Hygiea, as to prevent
Disease from even wooing her.
And we shall not, in the biting irony of Mr. John Galsworthy,
be in the position of an owner who enters a donkev for the Derby and
expects it to hold its own against racehorses bred and trained to the
 352

highest standard of equine perfection, from a long line of equally

high-bred and physically perfected ancestors. The child of the
poorest must start with a body and mind as fit for the struggle as the
child of the plutocrat.

Miss Loraine Sandow.

A charming snapshot of the Author’s youngest daughter,
who is proud of her fine physique, and who is as keen
an enthusiast on health and fitness as the Author himself.
 353

CHAPTER XIX.

The Joy of a Healthy Life.

Life without health is merely, at best, human vegetation. Only the

healthy know what it is to live.
Health, like wealth, is an expression of comparison. What
would be but a servant’s tip to one man would seem undreamt-of
wealth to a pauper, and between the pauper and the millionaire there
are many degrees of richness and poverty. There are health
millionaires and health paupers also, with many gradations between.
Not to be ill does not imply the possession of perfect health.
Health is positive, not negative. Civilisation has so “ acclimatised ”
many people to weakness and deviations from the health maximum
that they only think they are well and healthy because they are not
actually ailing or ill. They have acquired, after centuries of civili¬
sation, an acquiescence with or tolerance to certain conditions which
blinds them to their real position. Many, indeed, have been so
long familiar with sickness, suffering and disease as to take a morbid
pride in its companionship. It is this false spirit of contentment
that robs them of the ambition towards that perfect physical and
mental health which alone can bring to them the real fulness of
what the French joi de vivre, the sheer joy in living that thrills the
bird upon the wing or the young colt that frolics in the field.

THE “STRAPHANGERS” OF LIFE.

Never once having experienced the exultant sense of perfect

physical fitness they can scarcely be said to miss what they have
never known or understood. Lacking all the qualities that make the
healthy man advance to success and enable him to seize every oppor ¬
tunity for advancement, they are only “ straphangers ” on the journey
of life, while others fill the cosy corners and comfortable seats. They
never sit down at the banquet-table of Health, but, Dives-like, are
content with the crumbs that are left, or, like the tame pigeons of
large cities, flutter round the corn-bag of the feeding horse to snatch
the few oats that it carelessly scatters around out of its own
 354

superfluity. Such existence is nut Life, and the streets of every

large city to-day are full of such people, that class which Dr. Sir
B. W. Richardson described as the “ morituri,” or which is popularly
described as being “ more dead than alive.”
I was reading recently some reminiscences of the prize-fighter,
“ Charlie ” Mitchell, and I could not fail to be attracted by one of his
appositely shrewd remarks on the monetary value of fitness and
health.
“ Nearly all the millionaires I had met,” he says, describing his
New York experiences, “ and I met many, had started life on a nickel,
and had won wealth there in quick order by their brain force. I
at once began to measure those successful men and find out wherein
lay the secret of their success, and I came to the conclusion that the
two words ‘ industry ’ and ‘ enterprise 5 covered the whole bill. They
were workers, though, who always kept themselves fit for any
opening that came their way, and when their chances came they
jumped in and, won. It didn't matter what their ‘ graft ’ was, it was
all the same—mining men, railway magnates, horse-owners, stock
exchange manipulators, political bosses—the fit man won and the
others went under. It was the tactics of the ring carried into the
hives of industry.”

RICHER THAN MIDAS.

True, the accumulation of Wealth is not the real mission of

Health—indeed, many of these very rich men have sacrificed their
health in attaining that very objective—but health brings far greater
wealth than money, and purchases what the gold of Midas could not
buy. It means good digestion and every good that good digestion
brings. It sets the blood swinging and surging through every blood-
channel of the body. It brings the colour to the cheeks and lips and
the sparkle to the eye. It gives the erect carriage, the firm yet elastic
tread, and the courage that only springs from confidence.
It ensures sound sleep better than all the bromides and sleeping
draughts known to doctor or pharmicist. The healthy man awakes
with a song in his lips and goes whistling to his day’s work, for he
feels himself the master of his fate and not its slave. Courage,
confidence, nerve, cheeriness, are stamped on his every act of life.
Before such a man, fear, melancholy, despair and disease shrink
timorously away. Such a man may well “ bestride the world like a
Colossus,” while the poor in health and even the bourgeois of health
feel abashed and humiliated in his presence.
 Nor is it, as so many may imagine, any drudging or “ hard
labour tor such a man to take care of his body any more than it is
a drudgery say, for the drunkard to get drunk. Each schools him¬
self by repeated thought and act to one fixed idea of happiness, and
only in thus thinking and acting finds the form of pleasure which
satisfies him.

SOULS IN SLUM TENEMENTS.

But what a difference in the mental, moral and physical state of

the two. The drunkard lives in a false, fleeting and delusive happi¬
ness which is followed by a very real and increasing depression and
remorse, until the unnatural appetite is appeased once more. He is
the victim of an obsession, a moral pervert, and finds happiness
nowhere but in the dramshop. The man who has made the physical
upkeep of his body his daily habit would miss the physical exercising
of his body, which he regards as essential to his pleasure and comfort
as the daily washing of his face, just as much as the drunkard would
miss his favourite tipple.
He has, as reward, a thousand happinesses that the other has
not. His eyes are wide open to the joys of life and living that ever
unfold like a panorama before him. His mental and moral senses
are keen-edged and unblunted. He sees things clearly and sees them
whole. His pleasures are followed by no reaction or remorse. He
is in harmony with Nature, in attunement with the Divine.* He is
not fear-haunted, worried, depressed or downcast, for he is one who
truly lives as God meant man to live. His food tastes better, the air
seems lighter, the flowers smell sweeter, his brain works quicker, he
knows and feels the joy, the zest, and “ the wild glad lust of living
as no one else can.
Such a man works better, and is better in every way than a
person with a body as uncared for as a slum tenement. The slum
body will have the slum mind, and we should always especially
remember this when the children are under consideration.
Lack of physical activity will turn even a bodily palace into a
slum dwelling for mind and soul. Through lack of movement the
muscles become feeble and flabby, the body suffers in various organs
and functions, the brain is insufficiently nourished through lack of
air and exercise, waste and poisonous products are uneliminated
from the system and cause what is called auto-toxication, a species
of intoxication little different from that provided by alcohol. These
356
An Artistic Pose.
Group of Belfast enthusiasts who have secured themselves against weakness and disease by
the methods of physical reconstruction described in these pages.
 357

waste products accumulate and ferment because there is a lack of

balance between the processes of waste and repair that are ever going
on in the body.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE, SELF-REVERENCE, SELF-CONTROL.

The cells that should do the work of elimination become weak

or too few in number through lack of that balanced movement of the
voluntary muscles which means life and health to every cell of the
body. Some become diseased and die through lack of nutrition and
sufficient physical movement, others, in the same way, become feeble
and unfit, many continue to live in that state of existence in which
the tide of life never reaches its flood but is ever on the ebb.
People of this type, unfortunately, are too common, because the
conveniences and comforts of civilisation have made so manv mere
•/

lotus-eaters in a world that demands physical activity and effort as

the price of Health. So long as children are allowed to grow up into
men and women without that self-knowledge which alone leads life
to self-reverence and self-control, so long as their minds are
developed at the expense of their bodies, so long as they are taught
to conform to an unhygienic environment rather than to adjust the
body into balance with its environment, or by education to make, as it
were, their own environment, just so long will we have the weak, the
degenerate and the diseased.
We want men and women who have the strength and the courage
to be nonconformists to conditions and circumstances that rob them
of their most valuable asset in life, physical health and fitness. A
system of education for the people that justifies itself by its results
is demanded, an education that will not point to the way to physical
deterioration, degeneracy and disease. That is the true, natural,
and only way to breed healthy and happy men in every sense of those
often abused words. It will do more to raise the standard of
humanity than all the other creeds, hlogies and doctrines ever incul¬
cated into the young.
Just as the body is only the multiplication of the individual
cell, so the State is only the multiplication of the individualy
and the State that does not do everything to improve the physical
as well as the mental efficiency of every individual Child must and
will fall in the battles of brain and body that will take place for
commercial supremacy, long after the guns have ceased to thunder
and the bayonets and the sword have been beaten into ploughshares
and pruning hooks.
 slPS

Disciplined and developed bodies like these are possible to all if the
advice given in this book is put into practice. There is no reason
why every man should not possess such a body, strong healthy, and
disease-defying.
oi>8
 FEEBLE BODIES AND DEFECTIVE BRAINS.

Every individual—the children above all—must learn to know

and appreciate what the joy of life is, how to attain it and the best
methods of attaining it. When perfect health becomes the normal
in our individual and natural life, no one will be content with less,
just as to-day no one really cares to be poor. There will and must, of
course, always be degrees of health as of wealth, but each individual
will he able to attain to his highest possible standard or, if necessary,
will be compelled by law to do so after reaching an age of personal
responsibility. Those, however, who once experience the full joy of
a balanced and healthv life will be little likely to become spendthrifts
of it afterwards, if only for the sake of preserving to themselves the
many pleasures it brings.
Adults, after all, are “ but children of a larger growth,”
and what applies to the child equally applies to the
kk grown-up,” so far, at least, as the application of the first
Law of Life to the body goes. And it is not only the body
that benefits, but the mind also reaps the harvest of Health. Mind,
after all, is largely the mirror of the body, and one cannot expect
even the best mental machine to work perfectly and easily on an ill-
balanced physical structure. Faulty elimination of waste products
that rise up to cloud, depress and irritate the mind are responsible
for much of the bad temper, the vicious impulses, the immoral
tendencies, and even the crime which exists in the world to-day.
That a feeble body is also an inevitable cause of a feeble mind is
now recognised by all the great alienists and specialists on mental
diseases, and I hope to see the day when the State will take as much
care of the physically defective as they do at present of the feeble¬
minded and the mentally defective. Were there no feeble-bodied in
our midst there would probably be no feeble-minded, for I contend
that mental failure in the great majority of instances may be ulti¬
mately traced to the condition of the physical body.

KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG.

The mind is but “ the upper storey ” of the bodily building, and
it can only be made secure by strengthening and establishing the
physical “ storeys ” below on a strong, deep and sure foundation.
As the wrell-known authority on mental and nervous diseases, Dr.
 360

David F. Lincoln, truly says, “ the first storey of the educational

fabric is built of and by muscular activities.”
Tissue is the material of which every part of the body is made,
and tissue, as I have explained already, is composed of cells that live,
die and have their being just as you or I must do. Scientific physical
movement makes these living cells of the bodily tissue more fertile,
and as each old and decayed cell dies off, newer, younger ,and livelier
cells in abundance take their place. The cellular birth-rate, in fact,
is greater than the cellular death-rate, and just as a good birth-rate
is a nation’s best guarantee of prosperity for the future, so this
improving birth-rate of the cells ensures a healthy, strong and happy
corporeal body.
These recruits to the cell-population of the body being young
and active themselves communicate their own feeling of youthfulness
to the body they habit. This explains why harmonised physical
movement makes a person possess that bubbling sense of youth w'hich
reveals itself in brighter spirits, increased mental activity, a light¬
ness and a gaiety that soar above all those clouds of depression and
dejection that harass the weak, the ill and the unfit. It makes you
feel as if new life had been infused into your body, as, indeed, it
literally has been, by the introduction of new and youthful cells,
better oxygenated and nourished than the old because more active.
It gives you a sense of oneness with all Nature, a feeling of goodness,
of happiness, of benignant toleration to everything alive, because it
puts you in touch with the Infinite and leads you sub-consciously
through Nature up to Nature’s God.

PERFECT HEALTH CASTETH OUT FEAR.

There is an old saying that “ the nearer you get to Nature the
nearer you get to God,” and if you put your faith in the Creator Who
made and meant you to be healthy and happy, and obey Him by
living the life of movement which He intended you to live, you will
experience a sheer joy in being that nothing on earth can surpass,
for you will, as it were, enter a little Heaven of your own on earth.
To be healthy is to be happy, for health is the pivot upon which
practically every moment of your life turns. Well may such sing :
“ How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ,
All for the head and the soul and the senses for ever in joy.”
Knowing no fear—for perfect health like perfect love casteth
out fear—the healthy and the strong remain free from illness and
disease where others succumb. For fear—in itself the sub-conscious
 361

recognition of physical weakness and incapacity—is a prolific parent

of many diseases. Where Disease kills its thousands, Fear kills its
tens of thousands. The weak in body are weak in the will that
endures to victory, and fear will kill a host of the weak-willed, while
a strong and stubborn will “ endureth to the end,v and defies not only
Disease but even Death itself.

THE REAL “ ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

It is my life-long ambition to see all men and women revelling in

the luxury of perfect health, to enable them to look through its rosy
lenses rather than through the green and sickly glasses of physical
weakness and poor health. It has been my pleasure to see thousands
transformed into new beings through the application of the methods
I advocate. If this can be done in the already diseased, in the weak,
the obese, the emaciated, even the deformed, what hopes can we not
hold out to the many who are not so grievously afflicted but who are
just “ below par/’ or temporarily “ run-down ” through living lives
lacking in the right kind of physical activity.
No fabled “ elixir of life 55 so regenerates and so rejuvenates as
this natural method of developing and extracting the wonderful
powers within the body itself to enable it to tower over all the disease-
inviting, disease-propagating and disease-engendering conditions
and environment of modern life.
Is it to be wondered at that I write and speak with enthusiasm
in such a cause! I know what scientific bodily culture and recon¬
struction have done for thousands and thousands of fully-grown men
and women. And what it can do and has done for those of set
habit, often with well-established defects of organisation, surely it
can and will do with even greater success when the body is young,
pliant and plastic in youth and childhood, as, indeed, I have proved
in my own and in thousands of other cases.

HEALTH ON THE THRONE.

When wre ourselves and those in authority realise that our very
conception of what elementary education means will have to be
revolutionised, and that the physical establishment of the children
should be the prelude to all mental education, when mind and nerve
and muscle come to be regarded as one compound organ, w7hen body
and brain are recognised to be a mutual co-partnership, the sceptre
shall be knocked from the hand of Disease, and Health wTill take its
right and legitimate place on the throne of Humanity.
 362

So long as we neglect the physical needs and demands of a body

that was made to live by movement, as we have too long done, we must
lay ourselves open to weakness and disease and to all the miseries
that inevitably accompany them. There are thousands upon
thousands of men and women to-day whose whole lives have been
shadowed by disease through a lack of balanced physical movement.
There are millions who, though they have never been ill, have never
known the real joy and zest of life through the same cause. Very
few, indeed, to-day, live out their full span of life, or die what can
really and truly be called a natural death. Such a death would be
as gradual and calm a progress as was growth in childhood. It
would be a peaceful decline towards the earth from which we sprang,
a graded declension of the physical body and mental faculties, a
mere falling asleep after the long and arduous journey of life.
Those who wish to know the real happiness that health alone
can bring, the sheer joy and lust of living that makes every minute
of your life dance with gladness, the vim, the vigour, and the
flexibility of mind and body that alone command success in a world of
strife, must live, as Nature and as the Creator intended them to live,
a life of natural and healthy and balanced physical movement.
 CHAPTER XX.

Temporary Aids and Auxiliaries.

Such a system as that which I have just outlined would be sufficient

in itself to give us the highest possible type of men and women,
both physically and mentally, either for times of peace or war, if we
were not unfortunately handicapped at the very beginning through
our present-day civilised and unhygienic conditions and environ¬
ment, lack of popular knowledge on health matters, and long years
of the neglect of bodily culture.
We have at present, however, to deal with children as they are,
and also with the parents of these children, who have not themselves
had the advantage of such an education as I advocate. One does
not expect flowers to bloom and thrive in mud or sand, and the child’s
environment must, for the present, also be improved as far as possible
by wise schemes to better the existing conditions of most children
and that of their parents also. For the time being, too, the education
of both parents and children must also be attended to, and it will
probably be necessary for some time yet to enforce certain conditions
and introduce additional statutory measures that will bridge over the
gap until our higher and healthier type arrives. This is, I am
afraid, inevitable, under present conditions, to hasten the speedier
advent of that better time. But the necessity for these
auxiliaries to our scheme will automatically pass away with the
upbuilding of healthier and hygienically better educated people, and,
indeed, the methods of early health and physical education, which I
now propose, will, if adapted, not very long tolerate conditions that
are prejudicial to the health and happiness of the commonweal.

DENTAL DECAYS AND MALNUTRITION.

For instance, the teeth of most civilised nations to-day have most
seriously deteriorated through lack of physical condition (inborn
through generations), and a similar want of knowledge of the laws
of bodily hygiene, without a full realisation of the dangers accruing.
At present, the teeth are not only too often diseased themselves but
 364

are also a prolific cause of disease. Statistics show that half the
school children to-day need dental treatment, and about 600,000 are
suffering from malnutrition, chiefly because of this. To prevent this
in the future, each school should have attached to it a dentist or
dental staff according to the number of pupils, or each district should
have a dental institute in a central position for the children to attend,
especially in a country where the teeth of the people are much more
neglected than in, say, America, a country where, by comparison with
the British Isles, very few persons, rich or poor, are compelled to have
recourse to false teeth in adult life through the care taken of their
own from childhood, although even in America statistics also show
a large percentage of cases of malnutrition in children are due to
faulty and diseased teeth.
Among the better classes in England the same thing holds good
to some extent, and it is evident that the poorer people suffer terribly
from this neglect of or indifference to, the teeth in infancy and youth.
Hence the prevalence of caries (decay), the decalcification of the
teeth by lactic acid, periostitis (inflammation of the membrane which
covers the roots of the teeth and lines their sockets), often followed
by alveolar abscesses and pyorrhoea (with a most pernicious influence
upon digestion and the nervous system), and the necessity later for
the removal of the teeth and their replacement by false ones.
Under such a system as I suggest it would be the duty of the
dentist to examine every child's teeth whenever necessary, and he
should make a dental examination of all the children’s teeth at least
once in every three months. It would, of course, be the teacher’s
duty every morning to see that the children’s teeth were cleaned as
well as their hands and faces before thev began their lessons, and it
is needless to say that these precautionary measures would do much
to prevent many diseases of the digestive and the nervous system,
for the teeth, it has truly been said, dig more graves than spades.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CLEANLINESS.

Equally necessary for some time is it to instil in the children the

lesson of strict cleanliness both of the internal body by means of
scientific physical movement and of the external body by other means.
Public baths should be centrally erected or attached to every school,
with fumigation arrangements to kill disease germs and vermin,
and the children should attend these baths at least once a week.
Afterwards, it should be the duty of the teachers to examine them
most carefully.
 The parents should be notified of filth or vermin, and on repeti¬
tion of the offence, should be held liable to the law. This would not
only help the child of careless or neglectful parents, but would often
save the children of others from contamination by infection and the
spreading of vermin. The homes of the children should also be
liable to legal inspection from time to time, and every landlord should
be compelled by law to provide each home with at least one bath-room,
while its sanitary arrangements should be most scrupulously
examined by competent sanitary officers.
All these measures would be steps towards the establishment and
maintenance of health, and they constitute a debt that every State
owes to its children, a debt that would be repaid with interest by the
raising of a sound national human stock, healthy, happy, strong and
practically free from the degeneracy that precedes, is associated
with, or follows disease.
It may be argued that if the poor are taught to be so careful
over bodily cleanliness, the Government or authorities or landlords
will have to add bath-rooms to the working-man’s dwellings. And
why should they not ? But I predict that if vim and self-respect
are once implanted in the people from their earliest years there will
be no need for the Government to do this. In time, I repeat, a people
so educated and trained will not only be able to pay for their own
bath-rooms, but their own homes, and will see to it that they have
them.
REGULATION OF MATRISVIONY AND PARENTHOOD.

Marriage is the threshold of parenthood, and marriage being

something more than a mere civil contract between two persons
should be more strictly regulated. Though we cannot breed men
and women as we do horses and dogs, we can at least do much to
ensure healthy parents and healthy offspring by making it impossible,
as they already do in certain States of America, for the insane, the
degenerate and habitual criminals to propagate their species. Many
doctors, indeed, urge the introduction of a medical marriage certi¬
ficate, but the establishment of really scientific physical education
and body culture in the schools would, I am sure, in a few genera¬
tions, make all such enactments unnecessary, for such a system would
lead to the certain elimination of these classes and these carriers or
spreaders of disease.
In Connecticut marriage is forbidden between a woman under
45 years of age and a man, either of whom is epileptic,
imbecile or feeble-minded. The penalty for infraction is
 366

three years’ penal servitude. In Pennsylvania a fine of

six months’ imprisonment or £100 fine, or both, can be
inflicted on persons beknowingly celebrating, procuring or
abetting the marriage of the insane or feeble-minded, or even of
one who has been insane in the past, except from accidental as dis¬
tinguished from natural causes, and a similar penalty for the
principals in such a marriage. I would like to see, for some time at
least, the propagation of disease by marriage made as sternly prohi¬
bitive as the propagation of insanity or imbecility.
And, in fairness to the married, I would make divorce legal and
possible to all where one of the parties has concealed vital facts such
as the pre-existence of insanity, syphilis or epilepsy. Even chronic
alcoholism amounting to inebriety, and a prolific source of mental
and bodily degeneracy, should be a bar to marriage or a just cause
for the annulment of marriage. But in time, as I sav, health educa¬
tion and the rebuilding of better physical bodies will, I hope and
believe, practically eliminate these forms of disease altogether, and
also many forms of vice arising from physical degeneracy.

THE MORBID BIRTHRIGHT OF THE POOR.

When the marriage ceremony has been performed the parents

at once enter into a new civic responsibility, and it should be the
object of the State to lighten that responsibility to the very utmost
of its power by education, for by so doing it would at least lessen
the morbid inheritance which is the only birthright of so many poor
children to-day. Every wife and potential mother should receive,
as she receives her marriage certificate, a book issued as a sort of
Government Blue Book, containing all that the future mother ought
to know concerning the sexual relationship, bodily hygiene, preg¬
nancy, nursing, and other vital matters.
So, too, when a child is registered, every mother should, at the
same time, receive a guide-book to motherhood, containing all the
information that can be gathered together that will help her in the
upbringing of her child or children, and warn her against all the
dangers that threaten child life to-day. Such a book should contain
full information as to the nature and symptoms of infantile diseases,
so that she could call in the doctor at the earliest possible moment
when necessary, and should deal most thoroughly with the whole
subject of infant feeding. (The subject of food and diet is more
fullv dealt with in my chapter on “ The Fuel of the Human Engine.”)
In this way alone, thousands of children’s lives that are now need-
 367

lessly sacrificed through ignorance would be saved and conserved to

the State.
At a time when children are so precious to the country, and when
the birth-rate has fallen to a startlingly low ebb, when even the
children who survive are often of the poorest physical quality, every¬
thing that can encourage men and women to have larger families
should be done, and everything possible to improve the physical
quality of the children when they are born. For, to again quote Sir
George Newman, “ it seems futile to attempt to reform education
apart from the physical condition of the child. It seems unreason¬
able to expect healthy citizenship if we continue to neglect the remedy
of the physical disabilities of childhood, and the prevention of their
cause.”
One hears of Malthusianism and much condemnation from
those with “ money in their purses ” of married women who refuse to
bear children, or from bachelor divines who forget apparently that
more than ever money has strictly limited purchasing powers, and
that the domestic chancellor of the working-man’s exchequer may
well ponder before adding even a single unit to the family. A higher
standard of wages will do more to stimulate population, at least
among the masses, than pulpit philippics to penurious parents,
which only irritate o people already too heavilv taxed.

TAXING THE PROLIFIC MOTHER.

As each additional child is added to a family, with the father’s

income remaining stationary or practically stationary, a severe tax
is placed on motherhood. With equal wages coming in, the woman
with only one child has an immense advantage over her neighbour
with three, or, perhaps five, and each addition to the latter handicaps
the more fertile mother and her child still further. It will be quite
easily seen that with five children in a family the same amount of
food will not go so far to nourish each of the five as where there is
only one child in a family. If a sixth be added, it means that either
it must go short of the rations or the food of the others reduced.
But the new child’s food should not be an added burden to the
parents, or even mean short rations for the others, as both or either
of these are equally bad for the State, and the State should, there¬
fore, support and encourage motherhood by securing to each child
at least one good nourishing meal a day, while small State pensions
might even be given for the encouragement of motherhood, and for
every child over the number of three a mother should be allowed a
BB
 368

grant. Many women at present prefer to sacrifice their own

maternal instincts rather than allow the living children they already
have to run the risk of going short to help the unborn and unlikely-
to-be-born children which the State so badly needs.
In the future there should be no excuse for either parental
ignorance, neglect, or ill-treatment of the children that are born,
and such should be made a statutory offence with stringent punitive
laws to support it.

A GOOD START IN LIFE.

To safeguard itself, the State should hold the parents respon¬

sible for the health, the maintenance and the morals of their
offspring, until a certain age has been reached, and the people, in
turn, should hold the State responsible for the commonweal of the
nation. Public sentiment can do much in this direction, and I
appeal with confidence to all right thinking men and women to
take their part in what is literally a great crusade on behalf of the
children, born, and as yet unborn.
Thus even before its birth a child would be, to some extent at
least, ensured on its entrance into the world of a reasonable chance
of life and a sound constitution, and during its pre-school days of
favourable prospects of growing up healthy and strong. Every
child, in short, would have a really good and fair start in life.
9

THE SAVING OF CHILD-LIFE.

When, too, we begin by educating the little girls to understand,

respect and develop their bodies to the highest possible degree, the
prospect of being a mother will no longer be looked forward to with
something akin to terror as it is to-day, and child-birth in the future
will be robbed of many of its present-day dangers, pain and subse¬
quent exhaustion due mainly to muscular deterioration brought about
gradually by the diminished necessity for physical activity and
muscular strength
To-day, child-birth is fraught with intense suffering because of
this muscular deterioration in women, and naturally many women
shirk the ordeal, much against the natural instinct of every woman
but against the best interests and greater necessities of the State.
The birth-rate has shrunk and is still shrinking more and more at
the very moment when the demand for children is more insistent than
ever, not only here, but in every country of the world. Even when
children are brought into the world, it is with such risk to the life
 Healthy Womanhood.
The best guarantee for the future of our national life. A naturally good
figure developed in symmetry by these methods to the betterment of health
and beauty.
369
370
The female form divine as it should and as it should not be. The picture in the left shows
the body lacking in development and contrasts very unfavourably with that in the right,
which is the result of body culture which is here described Woman holds the key of
the future in her hands, for her health and physical capacity largely determines the future
of the nation’s children,
 371

both of mother and child that something must be done to stop the
appalling and altogether unnecessary sacrifice of these precious
lives.
Women in a natural state did not suffer as the women of to-day
in child-labour, because their abdominal and groin muscles and ail
the internal muscles associated with the bearing and expulsion of
the child were naturally stronger through their physically active
daily life, and even the women of to-day who live in countries less
civilised do not suffer as women of our cities and towns do. Nor is
the birth of children accompanied with so much risk to both mother
and child.
WANTED, MORE MUSCULAR MOTHERS.

The woman of the past did not have to remain in bed for weeks
after the birth of her child through sheer physical weakness and
exhaustion, nor was she incapacitated from her duties for weeks
before. Birth was with her a natural function naturally performed,
because all the muscles engaged or affected were strong enough to
perform the function quickly and easily without overstrain or tear¬
ing. Midwives and all the accompaniments of modern child-birth
were unnecessary and unknown. Often, indeed, the child was born
while the mother was at work in the fields, with only a slight dis¬
turbance of her labours.
In those days they knew nothing of “ twilight sleep,55 for women
were muscularly strong naturally through their healthy and active
physical life, with bodies well developed and balanced, and the result
was that not only was child-birth easy and natural but healthier and
sturdier babies were born. Besides, the period of child-birth was
not so terrifying as to make her look forward with fear and anxiety
towards a recurrence of similar anguish. In fact, the event quickly
faded from her memory, and the dread of the pains of previous
child-birth did not then menace the birth-rate as it does to-day.
So that once again we see the importance of muscle and muscular
development even in this vital matter of child-birth to every nation.
To-day, women are so weak muscularly that they naturally shirk an
ordeal not only accompanied by the most fearful suffering, but which
leaves them for weeks sometimes for months, in a state of indescrib¬
able exhaustion, hovering often for davs, between life and death
just as if they had passed through what surgeons call a major
operation. Little wonder then, that statesmen, sociologists and
divines alike call in vain upon the women of the country for children
and yet more children. They will never get them either in the
 372

quantity or quality the country so much needs until women are

educated in the matter and physically re-educated in the scientific
way I describe from early girlhood, and also assisted in the other
ways I have suggested when and where necessary.

ADVICE TO PROSPECTIVE MOTHERS.

In the meantime, however, for the encouragement of motherhood

it is essential that we should do all we can to lighten the lot of the
mother-to-be, to assuage her pain, and to diminish, as far as
humanly possible, the strain, the pain and the exhaustion usually
associated with child-birth to-day, undoubtedly the result mainly of
physical and organic deterioration, together with funder-feeding,
large families, and often starvation for the mother herself which
might also mean starvation to the child in the womb.
Many ladies who were pupils of mine before their marriage,
and whose whole muscular and organic systems had been developed
by physical training to the highest degree and in the most admirable
balance, have since written to me telling me that they passed through
their confinement with comparatively little pain, and that their
babe was safely delivered with little exhaustion and no injury.
Others who had not this physical preparation before marriage, and
whose first child was delivered with much suffering and exhaustion,
subsequently found, after a course of physical education and body
culture that the next child was delivered with much less suffering or
exhaustion.
I have even found that it has made delivery less painful,
dangerous and exhausting, when special physical movements have
been carried out by women during, say, the first six months of
pregnancy, to develop and strengthen the groin and abdominal
muscles and all the muscles associated with the bearing of children,
and the act of repulsion. Even this temporary and partial physical
and muscular development has led to a great diminution of suffering
and made child-birth less exhausting and less dangerous to the life
of both mother and child.
Besides, children so brought into the world cannot fail to have
a better physical foundation from the very beginning of their little
lives than children born in intense maternal agony and overstrain
after months of pre-natal anxiety, which also must be most injurious
to the child when born. Every woman, indeed, who wishes to make
her delivery of a child less painful and less exhausting would benefit
 373

by such physical preparation, and should consult her medical man as

to this the moment she realises she is pregnant.
If even a temporary and partial physical training of the adult
such as this will afford so much relief, it is easy to realise that when
from girlhood all women are educated physically and have bodies
strong in perfectly balanced strength, through such educational
methods as I suggest, it will be as easy and natural for them to be
delivered of children as for women of primitive times. It will also
be apparent that one of the greatest obstacles to motherhood will
have been removed, and that the dread of child-birth, especially
after the birth of the first child, will no longer cause potential
mothers to cheat the country by illicit methods of its most precious
possession, the children who are the life-blood of a nation.

REAL TEMPERANCE REFORM.

The war has proved the greatest temperance reform crusade

ever known. Weaker alcoholic beverages, restriction of hours, and
the “ no treating ” order have undoubtedly weaned many a sot from
the public-house altogether. He has learnt not only to do without
but also the pleasure of doing without.
The old-style public-house, with its ever-open door and standing
counter, its “ confessional box ” partition behind whose swivel
windows unseen barmaids sold vicious decoctions at so much a glass
often to unseen customers, its free-and-easy atmosphere that made
intrusion from strangers no impertinence but rather invited it, and
the inevitable “ let’s have another one ” among friends and acquaint¬
ances that often induced a man to take half-a-dozen drinks where he
would have taken but one alone, could not but lead to excessive
drinking if not to drunkenness.
The dipsomaniac would take a furtive look round, dash in and
swallow a drink hastily, and the operation would be repeated many
times a day. Secret “ nipping ” went on all day, the very worst form
of alcoholism known to medical men and the most difficult to combat
was encouraged. Parents got drunk, or at least, slightly inebriated
inside, while children took occasional and furtive peeps into the
mysterious parental heaven whose portals they dare not cross. One
can easily imagine how indignantly many a high-spirited boy
resented this ostracism and how eagerly he awaited the time when
he, too, could follow in his father’s footsteps. Such a law, it seems
to me, is but an agent provocateur to any high-spirited boy.
The war, of course, improved matters considerably. The reduc-
These are not the type of men who found their way into the C 3 category, or
the rejected millions mourned by the Premier. They are men fully developed as
men should be, and by purely natural methods as here described.
374
 375

tion of alcoholic strength in all beverages, the curtailment of the

drinking hours, and the order against “ treating ” have all helped to
dissipate this atmosphere; but its restrictions have not been welcome,
because they savour of compulsion and prejudice the liberty of the
subject.
THE HOUSE OF THE PUBLIC.

There is room now for a new and better type of public-house, or,
rather, house of the public, in which we shall be able to have all
the benefits of curtailed hours and “ no treating ” orders without such
compulsion. The new public-house should have its bar out of sight
of the customer, with no young ladies acting as attractive magnets.
Instead of standing at a counter, each party would sit down at cosy
little tables in a semi-private state, into which the most pachyder¬
matous strangers would not dare to intrude without invitation or
permission.
A busy man or woman would hesitate before entering such an
establishment, and to sit down and call for refreshment unless he or
she really needed it or had leisure time to spare, and the furtive
visitors and secret drink snatchers would receive their quietus.
Children, too, would be able to remain with their parents, for the
new public-house would have plenty of good food and tea, coffee,
cocoa, and cake for either the little ones or for those who did not
desire alcoholic beverages.
The place need no longer be hidden from the view of onlookers
from outside, indeed, it would be all the better to have big, wide
windows admitting plenty of light, and enabling those inside to see
the passing world outside, and those outside to glance at the happy
folk within. In such a public-house it would easily be possible to
obtain all the benefits which war-time restrictions and curtailment
of hours have admittedly brought with them, but without offence or
any infringement of individual liberty. In the larger houses an
orchestra would dispense good music, and instead of the present
vicious and demoralising atmosphere the crowd would consist of
happy, smiling and healthy people seeking and obtaining rational,
innocent, and recreating refreshment and enjoyment.

THE NEW ERA OF INDUSTRY.

In the great upward movement that the new methods of physical

education and bodily culture will inaugurate, we must look to
employers of labour to plav a prominent part. Children, so well-
nurtured and educated on leaving the school behind, will have been
 376

taught habits of life and conduct too precious to be ruthlessly

sacrificed to greed or selfishness on the part of unscrupulous or even
thoughtless employers.
One hears too often the expression that there is no sentiment in
business. That is false and a false principle. There is a well of
sentiment in business relationships, and successful businesses are
built on sentiment. There is no motive power in the world, no
method of scientific efficiency, no “speeding up ” process that has
the driving force of sentiment, and it is the employer who enlists not
merely the service of his workpeople but their affection and loyalty
whose business will wax fat and prosper.

MORE MODEL EMPLOYERS NEEDED.

We know to-day how welfare work in large industrial and com¬

mercial establishments, both in America and in this country, has
rewarded employers with healthier, happier, more loyal and more
efficient work people, and indeed, many children have been heart-
glad to leave the old-fashioned school for the model factory, work¬
shop or business establishment with its medical care, its splendid
canteens, its magnificent playing centres, its baths, athletic arenas
and organisations, and all the accessories of the model modern place
of business.
Men like Lord Leverhulme and George Cadbury may well call
their great industrial centres at Port Sunlight and Bourneville by
the euphonious terms of “ a model village ” and “ a factory in a
garden.” The heart of John Ruskin or William Morris would have
pulsed with joy had they lived to see those ideal business and indus¬
trial colonies of modern life, and I am glad to say that the example
set by these employers is being copied all over England to-day.
We know how splendidly and carefully the health and other
vital interests of the munition workers were looked after during the
war, and the splendid results. Industrial poisoning was almost
completely erased from workshop risks, and this in one of the most
dangerous trades imaginable. The report of the Health of Muni¬
tion Workers' Committee ought to be made the Bible of Business,
and the basis for the conduct of every large and industrial and com¬
mercial establishment.
It is certainlv an illuminating document dealing with almost
every phase of the industrial problem, and shows what might be
accomplished by really scientific organisation under a real Ministry
of Health. It touches the subject of industrial efficiency and
 377

worker's welfare from nearly every point of view, and the only fault
I have to find with it is that the importance of physical training in
the sense I mean had not at that time been brought to the notice of
the medical authorities responsible, as then even better results
would have been undoubtedly attained.

PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY.

To some extent the business establishment ought to be a physical

“ continuation school,’' so as to prevent pupils who have left schools
for the workshop or office from forgetting all they had learnt and to
keep themselves in the best physical condition. It is, indeed, the
interest as well as the duty of employers to secure the highest physical
efficiency of the workers, and in many American houses an instructor
in physical culture is an important member of the staff, while, of
course, a doctor and nursing staff are always in attendance.
Employers must realise, if only for their own sake, that the
condition of the worker is reflected in his work, especially the
physical condition. Every house of business should devote at least
one hour a day to real physical education and culture on a scientific
basis—not mere recreation—for which time the workers would be
paid at their ordinary rate of remuneration. American employers
who have done so say it pays, and A merican employers are too s’hrewd
to pay workers merely for enjoying themselves. Baths and wash¬
houses should be erected, fitted, as the house advertisements say, with
every modern convenience so that an employee could leave off work as
clean and tidy as when he entered.
To save the worker’s clothes, also to keep them clean during
work, overalls or special suits should be provided. Thus we would
no longer see grimy and stained workmen leaving off work and
entering public conve}mnces often to the inconvenience of others and
to their own distress. There is no reason why any workman should
not quit work, and emerge from the premises as clean and immacu¬
late as the average City clerk.

THE WORKER MIRRORED IN HIS WORK.

This would all help the workers to maintain their self-respect,

and all this would also be reflected in their work. The workers
would naturally feel new ambitions stirred within them, and though
higher wages would naturally be demanded, the workers would be
found to be far more sober, 'regular in attendance and efficient in
 378

their work, so that the balance at the end of the year would be to the
credit of the employer.
A jpart altogether from profits, however, it is to our benefit to
evolve a higher and ever higher type of worker in the great com¬
mercial and industrial struggle that confronts us. And physical
health is the basis of good workmanship, the corner-stone of national
industrial efficiency.
As the British Medical Journal said in its review of the Report
to which I have referred “ Physical health is the basis, and its
physiological justification must be a correct understanding of the
part played by nutrition, by rest, by fatigue and general conditions
affecting health. This, because physical health is necessary to
mental well-being and is at the basis of moral and social develop¬
ment.
“ The matters dealt with in the Munition Workers’ Report con¬
cern the future as well as the present, and are among the root
problems of preventive medicine which has as its object the removal
of the occasion of disease and physical inefficiency, combined with
the husbanding of the physical resources of the worker, in such a
way and to such a degree that he can exert his free power
unhampered with benefit to himself and his countrymen.5’ In this
great work the employers can do the State some service and help us
f orward to the diseaseless era. The money lost to employers and to
workers annually by sickness and disease must represent millions
annually, and this huge deficit can be reduced to an imperceptible
minimum, if the whole community united in the great forward
movement, which, it is hoped, is now about to begin, and to inspire
which this book has been written. To live healthfully is to do work
more easily, do more and do it better, increase efficiency and earning
power, and to enjoy life as only those who are fit and healthy can.
 379

CHAPTER XXI.

The True Position of Sports and Pastimes.

Wherever you find English-speaking people in any part of the world

you find a colony of sportsmen. The playing fields of Eton have
done more than won a Waterloo. They have set a fashion to the
world, and games and sports essentially British in their origin are
not only played and participated in to-day by Britishers everywhere,
but by people of every nationality and country. Sport has become
the real international language of the world, and sportsmen form a
cosmopolis of their own.
A very great poet once had the rashness to speak disparagingly
of muddied oafs and flannelled fools,” and had to eat his words in
sackcloth and ashes. I must not follow in his footsteps even if I
would. Let me, therefore, at the outset, declare my unbounded
admiration for sports and games of every kind, and for those who
find in them the most natural and rational enjoyment offered to man.
Sport is the perpetuation of the eternal child in man. the adolescent
and adult expression of the instinct implanted in every healthy child
to evidence its health and vitality in physical and muscular activity
of some kind.
Unfortunately, to-day, it is only the select few who are either
physically fit or have time and means at their command, to revel in
this natural and physically active life as they ought to do. Civilisa¬
tion, with its unceasing demands upon the vitality of the people,
intervenes. We all live the strenuous life to-day, but it is not the
strenuous physical life of our forefathers, the hardworking, hard-
playing physical strenuousness that kept the blood quickly coursing
in their veins, braced their nerves and hardened their frames. To¬
day, it is the mentally strenuous life that the majority live, working
at office desks and in huge business establishments, where the
physical man is treated with indifference or even contempt until he
rebels and advertises his presence in well-known pains and dis¬
comforts.
This, of course, is the inevitable result of an early system of
education that has led most men and women into a sort of mental
 380

cul de sac, from which there has seemed so far but little hope of
escape. So we go on breeding a people more and more physically
decrepit and less and less fitted for indulgence in the vigorous and
muscle-testing sports, games and pastimes of our ancestors. The
antagonism of civilisation and muscular movement have wrought
unspeakable harm, and faulty educational methods have helped to
carry on the evil work that civilisation began.
To-day, our educationalists are trying to atone for the defects
and shortcomings of the past, and physical education of some sort
is now a part of the scholastic system in most of our schools, while
games, sports, pastimes and dancing are also receiving more time
and attention than ever they did before. But there is a lack of
scientific method even in the most modern schemes for the physical
education of children that will, I am afraid, produce results very
little better than before. The sense of proportion is absent. The
perspective is false. There is a disposition to place last things first
that betrays what Burns calls the “ ’prentice hand.”
Correct theory is the essential to successful practice, and it is
incorrect theory that permits a child to plunge into games and sports
that are usually of a severely testing character, as children are con¬
stituted in modern life, before they have had, as it were, the faults
of long generations of ancestors and civilisation safeguarded against
in their own little bodies. Physical education that will really
upbuild or rebuild the body of the average child as he or she is born
to-day ought to take precedence of all games and sports, and such
education and physical reconstruction is not to be effectively carried
out by the scanty or haphazard provision of a useless kind of physical
movements admingled with games, sports, dancing and pastimes of
various kinds. In fact, such methods are likely not only to per¬
petuate but even aggravate the conditions existent to-day in which
we find millions of spectators for hundreds of contestants in all our
games or sports.
Great athletes, like great poets, are made not born, but that is no
reason why the athletic potentialities within every child should not
be given every opportunity of development and expansion by provid¬
ing it with a sound physique and organism from the very threshold
of life—that is, by a system of physical education and reconstruction
on truly scientific lines from its earliest days. Such methods as I
have outlined in this book would, I contend, give us men and women
in later life who would not be content to play the role of mere
spectators in all our athletic games, but would be fit and fitted from
childhood to be active participants in them if they desired to do so.
 Such children would grow up with bodies having within them
the basic element that makes for success in every game, sport and
pastime, in which the determining factors are muscular power and
vital force. This is why I strive so eagerly to define the true position
of sports, games and pastimes in any system of physical education
that has the least claim to be called scientific. The scientific physical
culture of the body should be the first step in the preparation of
the physical body for the athletic sports and pastimes which, in
adolescent and adult life to-day, are, after all, the recreation only of
the fittest and strongest of the nation. In fact, it is the result of
that lack of such early physical preparatory work in the past that
provides us with the spectacle of thronged galleries watching others
at play instead of themselves being actual players and competitors,
because they are physically unfit just as so many also could only be
onlookers during the war instead of being able to defend home and
country for the same reason.
In the athletic, as well as in the military sense, the body must
be schooled patiently for feats that demand muscular power and
ability as their prime factor to success, because civilisation and long-
ingrained habits of physical inactivity have left the people with
bodies that cannot immediately be taxed in this wa;y. The average
young man, for instance, who wishes to take up pedestrianism or
football must first have special muscles prepared for those feats by
weeks or even months of training, and even then it is only the
strongest who can stand this training or who are able to take it up
safely. Many, on the other hand, damage and ruin their health for
life by attempting feats that would have been quite within their
power if they had been physically prepared for them from childhood
in the manner I am now advocating. As it is, probably not one man
in every hundred is able to participate in such strenuous field sports
to-day with safety and success or to stand the training necessary for
victory in them.
Even, however, if all were so physically sound that it would be
quite safe for them medically to join in these strenuous contests, a
man or woman would have to devote his or her life to them—to make
them their sole profession in life and devote all their time to a great
variety of them—to build up a body in anything approaching that
balanced strength which is essential to the successful warfare that
the body must wage war against disease. This, of course, is
impossible in modern times when there are so many other more
pressing demands upon the average person’s time and besides, none,
even then, would have either the strength of constitution or the
 382

money and time to spare to participate in the great number and

variety of sports and games that would build up such a body. For
this great mass of the people, therefore, the natural methods of
body-building, scientifically applied, which are indicated here,
provide a most admirable substitute, for with such methods at hand,
these men and women are able to carry out simple exercises that will
be as beneficial to their bodily health in ten minutes as would games
or sports and pastimes, in hours of sub-conscious physical activity.
After all, the main essential of all physical exercise is to build up a
body healthy, strong and disease-free, and if that is the criterion,
then I say that games and sports alone cannot do it under modern
conditions of existence. Only such natural methods of scientific
physical reconstruction as are described in this book can provide the
exercise which is one of the essential elements of health and strength
in a convenient, compressed and concentrated form compatible with
modern circumstances of life.
By all means let us have plenty of games and sports, but let us
have them in their true position from their physical and health value
as compared with methods of physical upbuilding from schooldays
that lay down a physical foundation for life, and build up muscle
and tissue and a healthy organism not for the mere performance of
any particular game or sport or athletic feat, but as the finest insur¬
ance policy in the world against physical deterioration and disease.
The training of the body for competitive sports and severely testing
games must of necessity be spasmodic and unbalanced in character,
and is something very different from a continuous and consistent
physical upbuilding of a body that is meant to keep it always and
under all conditions in the highest and most balanced strength, not
in one or more parts, but in each and every part, erecting, as it were,
a physical building with foundations sunk deep and each part or
parts in perfectly balanced strength to the whole, presenting rather
to all the forces that may strive to overthrow it a single front, with
no weak points anywhere and illimitable reserves and reinforcements
of muscular power and vital energy to resist and defeat them.
The very schooling that will build up a body in perfectly
balanced strength, with correct adjustment between contraction and
relaxation, between flexors and extensors and between mind and
muscle will make a man better fitted for boxing or cricketing or
any other sport or pastime than the spasmodic and unscientific
training of to-day, in which, by specialised training of certain
muscles, the bodily balance is apt to be more disturbed. Perfect
mental and muscular co-ordination is the secret of rapidity in action,
 Photographer, G. H. Cassill, Boston.

This is the type of athlete built all over in perfectly balanced muscular strength
which the methods of scientific physical reconstruction described here would give
us as models and examples for the encouragement of the whole nation.

CC
The Youth of the Nation as it should and would be if framed and developed along
the lines indicated.
 385

and the more muscular strength within balance to support it the

greater prospect of success or victory, all other things being equal.
The fact is that methods of physical training that make a man
slow are not scientific but the very reverse, because through not
exercising and developing opposing muscles in absolute balance they
do tend to make a man muscle-bound. Slowness in movement comes
from this lack of balance, because the extensors have not been trained
in equal balance with the flexors, relaxation is inferior to contrac¬
tion, and there is apt to be a consequent shortening and stiffening of
the tendons of one muscle or sets of muscles that destroys speed of
action.
Take boxing, for instance, I have shown how, by scientific tests,
my own blow was more rapid than that of even a professional boxer.
And it was not only more rapidly delivered, but the force behind it
was infinitely greater, because the cells of the muscles and brain
employed in act of striking were far superior in their development
and power to those of my friendly antagonist who was a trained
boxer, while there was better mental and muscular co-ordination.
Speed in action admittedly comes from the brain, or rather, from
perfect mental and muscular co-ordination, but even mental effort is
primarily dependent on physical conditions and upon the relation¬
ship of mental and physical cells. In other words, you cannot
develop the phvsical side by truly scientific means without increasing
mental aptness and efficiency and mental and muscular co-ordina¬
tion, for scientific exercise of the muscles always means also the
exercising and developing of brain and nerve cells.
The boxer so trained will not only have muscles able to hit at
their highest possible power, but will also possess the mental capacity
necessary to send out his blows with lightning-like rapidity, an
elasticity of brain, if I might so describe it, equal and proportionate
to the contractile and relaxing power of his muscular system. Such
a man would not only strike more rapidly and more powerfully than
another, but might very easily break an opponent’s arm, or seriously
injure some part of his body, because there would be infinitely more
and better-balanced muscular power and nerve-force behind his
blows.
But naturally such physical preparation would never teach him
the rules and craft of the game. That he must learn by practice and
to know all the rules and tricks and how to use them to the best
advantage. For, of course, in all games and sports, mental skill,
craft and cunning count perhaps as much as muscle, and what is
called generalship wins as often as much as muscular strength, speed
 386

and stamina. Natural aptitude is often also a determining factor,

for no matter how well we might qualify a man physically and
organically, by early and scientific physical education, he might
never become a first-class cricketer through lack of natural aptitude
for the game and for many other reasons. So, in pedestrianism,
more races, after all, are won by the brain than by the muscles of the
limbs engaged, for one man will be quicker to judge pace, to estimate
and seize chances, and to invent and use a thousand tricks and wiles
that may win where a really superior runner in point of speed or
stamina would lose. Physical and muscular strength and stamina,
however, are the basic factors in all such contests, and I contend
that the man whose body has been steadily upbuilt from childhood
by really scientific methods will always have a better physical
groundwork to build upon for success in all games, sports and
pastimes. Given two men with equal knowledge of the craft of the
game, and the strongest in balance must always prove the winner.
Too many to-day plunge into games and sports for which they
are physically unfit, and a few weeks or even months’ spasmodic and
partial training of the body is a poor substitute for scientific physical
culture of the body from childhood, when a youth or man will better
be prepared for the sterner training necessary for any particular
athletic feat or sport.
Just think what magnificent athletes any country will have
when its children are thus scientifically educated and physically
prepared for later life by Nature’s own methods. I say that by
these means we can breed athletes yet of a higher standard in every
way than any the world has yet seen. Our playing fields and athletic
arenas will then see gladiators greater than those of ancient Rome
and athletes superior even to those of once peerless Greece. Not
one man (or even woman) but everyone would have a body training
and built up scientifically to a degree of physical perfection and
beauty never known in history, and we would have nations scienti¬
fically prepared and fitted from childhood for the athletic arena just
as Germany has scientifically schooled its people even from their
school days to worship and wield the arms of warfare.
But what is, after all, far more important is the upbuilding of a
people sane in mind and sound in body, a people at least equal if not
superior to the splendid men and women of Greece’s palmiest days,
men and women healthy, happy, strong and free from disease, men
and women so educated from childhood that the culture, development
and care of their physical bodies would come as natural to them as
the matutinal wash or their daily meals, a people taught to delight
 387

and take a pride in physical power and prowess just as to-day they
bow down before mental strength and success at however costly a
physical price it may be temporarily obtained.
In bringing about such a consummation, games, sports and
pastimes can truly play a foremost part when seen in their true
perspective and relegated to their proper position in the physical
life of the people. In fact, the encouragement of these on a far
greater scale than ever before would be the best propaganda work on
behalf of the physical renaissance which is coming, and which is
necessary if, as a people, we are to avoid the physical deterioration
that has already enslaved us to disease and has brought us nearly to
the very verge of destruction.
As I have said elsewhere, children instinctively admire physical
strength and skill. Let that instinct be encouraged in every way,
not by turning them recklessly into the playing fields and athletic
grounds until their bodies are ripe and ready for such efforts, but by
instilling in the childish mind a sense of reverence for the physical
body, a knowledge of its needs and requirements, and the best
physical and hygienic education that human ingenuity can devise
and money can obtain.
Let us have athletic games and sports of every kind on the
greatest scale the world has ever seen, with rewards for the victors
such as were never offered before. The whole thought of the nation
would then be turned into new channels, and every child at school
would have a far higher physical ideal set before it than had even the
children of ancient Greece. Our athletes and leaders in every
branch of outdoor sport would become national heroes in a far higher
sense than they are to-day. Even professionalism would lose what
of stigma is associated with to-day. On the other hand, a man
would have to be a professor of each branch of sport to be able to
achieve victory, and his profession would become an honoured one
as it really ought to be.
Nothing that could help in every way to stimulate in the youth¬
ful mind the idea of physical health and beauty and of body culture
should be left undone. Olympic games ought to be held annually,
under the patronage of the King, on an unprecedented scale at which
the finest physical types of the nation would compete in every form
of outdoor and manly sport. These would form the great annual
struggles between the giants of the various sports from every part of
the country, who had previously won their right to appear in county
or local Olympics on a smaller scale, and it would be a good idea if
 388

special free seats were allocated for those children who could not
afford payment for admission to witness these games and contests.
The great value of all this would be to arouse and encourage and
foster ambition in the young, and even in adolescents and adults,
towards the development of their own physical bodies in strength
and beauty. It would divert the stream of popular favour and
admiration away from pursuits and studies that have proved subver¬
sive of the best interests of the nation. An ideal would be implanted
of a far loftier type than the mammon and mental worship which has
usurped its place in modern life.
Not everyone, of course, could hope to win the honours and
rewards of the athletic arena or in the realms of sport, but all would
be set a physical standard to strive upwards to from youth, and the
ambition to possess a body as beautiful and strong as the bodies of
these physical paragons could not fail to result in a general upraising
of the physical standard of the people.
This is just the goal to which the State, the educationalists and
the people themselves must turn their eyes, if the people are to be
rescued from the physical slough of despond into which they have
fallen, and re-established in the physical beauty and strength and
freedom from disease that they have sacrificed to the blind worship
of civilisation, ease, luxury and a mental education that has outrun
their physical capacity, based, too, on an insecure physical founda¬
tion. By these natural methods of physical movement, every man,
woman and child, even though he or she may not secure the laurels
of an Olympic hero, can, at least—and this without interference with
the daily life or the progress of our civilisation or serious encroach¬
ment upon their time—possess a body beautiful in its balanced
strength, as vigorous and disease-free as that of man in his pristine
prime, because in a few minutes they will be able to obtain a suffi¬
ciency of physical movement to compensate for the havoc wrought
by habits and methods of life through long ages of civilisation that
have slowly but surely deprived modern mankind of the prime
essential of life and health, the balanced physical movement which
alone will enable the human body to tower above the miasma of
physical deterioration and disease that is still creeping over our
heads. Back to Nature we cannot go as things are to-day, but we
can profit by her example, lessons and warning's, and this is the only-
way to do so, for these are the methods by which Nature maintained
primitive man in his very prime of physical strength, health, and
beauty.
389
The Author inspecting a charming and graceful display by little girls, who are being schooled in a way that is
likely to make them healthy, happy, and graceful women in later years.
 “ Standing with reluctant feet
Where the brook and river meet”—Longfellow.
Miss Loraine Sandow, the younger daughter of the Author, photographed at 15, an
almost perfect study in pose, poise and grace. An enthusiastic follower of the
methods described, with resulting grace of figure and healthy physical development.
 39]

CHAPTER XXII.

A Word to Parents and Guardians.

The most precious thing in the world is a child, especially in the

loving eyes of a parent. What father and mother do not but
experience the ecstatic thrill of creation in their children as keenly
as does the true artist, musician and poet in the children of their
creative brain. This perpetuation of themselves in their children
is the only idol before which civilised mankind may prostrate itself
without blasphemy. For the life of a child is something sacred to
every parent, something that awakens the instincts of true religion
implanted in every human breast, something that links weak and
erring man with the kingdom of Heaven and the angels.

THE GREAT PILGRIMAGE OF LIFE.

Every child is in the eyes of a parent more or less a dream-child.

It touches the imagination as nothing else can. It conjures up
visions by days and wonderful dreams by night. It is an inspiration
to inspire poetry in the most prosaic of men and women, a beacon
that flares up with the illumination of a thousand hopes. Father
and mother live again in their children, and look to them to live after
they are gone. In this respect, indeed, man is truly eternal, and
lives again and vet again in his children and their children’s children
to he until the end of time. The death of a child is not the death
of an individual, but the sacrifice of future generations.
From the moment a child is born the parents accept the burden
of a new responsibility to the child, to society and to themselves—but
above all to the little ones whose tiny foot are about to begin the great
pil grimage of life, whose eyes look out unseeing into the misty
future, and whose bodies and brains will yet be called upon to bear
strains heavier than any shouldered by humanity in times dead and
dying.
The “ new world ” into which we are about to enter will not be a
better world than the old one unless we make it better. In many
ways, indeed, it will be a harder one, and the men and women who
 392

must mould its destinies are in the cradles, the nurseries and the
schools to-day. Parents and guardians, themselves the victims of
centuries of civilised and disease-producing habits of life and of
educational methods that have sought to divorce brain and body and
treat them as two single parts of a human being, cannot but face the
prospect with anxiety and trepidation, and it is to come to their aid
and guidance that I am penning this chapter.
In their hands it is at once a power and a responsibility that
might well stagger a timid soul and overwhelm it with awe. I have
shown in the earlier part of my book what the State and the medical
profession may do to prepare the child for the battle of life and to
accoutre it with the only armour that carry it to victory over man¬
kind’s greatest enemy, disease. But whatever the State or the
educational authorities may or may not do—and I know from
painful past experience how quickly waves of enthusiasm arising
from national danger subside when the danger appears to be past—
it is to the fathers and mothers themselves that I make my most
powerful appeal.

OVER-DEVELOPED BRAINS ON UNFIT BODIES.

I know how truly anxious is every parent to send their children

out into the stern fray of life fully armed and accoutred at all points
and with every prospect of success. But I know also the handicap
that their own lack of knowledge and experience of vital points
impose on them, a handicap which has been often forced upon them
by wrong educational methods in their own youth or by the restric¬
tion and limitation of that knowledge of the human body and its
nee{ds for health and strength, both mental and physical, which is
vital and essential to the successful conduct of life, and which will
be still more necessary for the children of to-day and the future in
the strenuous days that lie before them.
How can parents, who are themselves deficient in their know¬
ledge of laws and principles without which no life, however zealously
guarded, is ever safe from the intrusion of disease, be expected to
school their children until such knowledge is brought within their
ken. How can the children of such parents be expected to thrive
under conditions of existence demanding higher standards of
physical and mental efficiency than ever, if they are not initiated
into things that are at present mysteries even to their parents.
I solemnly warn every parent to-day that their children will be
assuredly done grievous injury in either health of body or mind and
39: 5
394
 395

not improbably in both if methods of education are persisted in that

neglect the physical body, or, at least, will not develop it to its
fullest power and capacity, while the brain is being “ forced ” in a
sort of educational greenhouse. Their very first step to ensure the
safety, mentally and physically, of the children they love is to see
that the physical child is attended to in every way before its mind is
artificially hurried fomvard, like some delicate exotic, to fade and
wither at the first chill blast from a sterner clime.

THE PHYSICAL PATH TO MENTAL EFFICIENCY.

Here lies the danger—the same danger that I have thundered

against for years, the danger that can but still further perpetuate
weakness and disease in our midst, and rob millions of children from
the very threshold of life of that very outfit for the journey which
all parents are so anxious to provide. If they continue to believe
that they are doing their best for the children by developing un¬
naturally and unhealthfully an abnormal brain—whether for
making money, winning fame, or attaining some other high ambition
—upon a physical foundation not first prepared and built up to
sustain it, they are sending these little pilgrims along a lion-
infested path without the armour of defence necessary to protect
them. The way to health and strength from childhood, and even to
the highest mental efficiency, leads along the straight and narrow
path of physical fitness and strength, and not by tortuous mental
mazes and quagmires that may encompass the pilgrim’s destruction
ere he has rod far upon his journey.
Let every parent take that warning to heart as he or she prizes
his or her children. Misguided enthusiasm and love misapplied
may do as much harm as indifference or cold neglect. To the parent
who is seeking he very best that can be done to serve his or her child,
I emphasise and reiterate my warning for them to see to the physical
wants of its body and brain on the only deep and safe foundation.
How can this best be done ? The laying of the child’s physical
foundation must begin in the home. There are difficulties, of course,
at present, but with the spreading of education as I have suggested
earlier in this book, among both parents and children, these diffi¬
culties will quickly pass away. In the meantime, there are certain
steps that can he taken at once, and which, indeed, must be taken,
if parents are to shield their children from risks and dangers that
may very greatly be avoided. Indeed, these are essential steps if
disease is really to he prevented, and I feel confident that parents
 396

who read this book will not need much impressment from me when
they realise how much better will be the prospects and outlook of
their children by observing and studying what I say here in the light
of a long and very embracing experience.
A great advance will be made when every parent begins to teach
the child from the earliest possible moment to be proud of its
physical body, to delight in physical beauty, to turn its childish
thoughts into channels that would lead its mind in the direction of
physical health and well-being. The whole atmosphere of the home
should be one of health, and the child should be encouraged to grow
physically rather than to display a precocious mental skill and
ability.
HEALTH EDUCATION IN THE HOME.

In its most impressionable period of life, it would be easy to

give its habit of thought an orientation that would imperceptibly
instil in it hygienic desires and ambitions which would go far in
later life to protect it against weakening thoughts and tendencies
that lead towards unfitness and disease. To surround it with
picture books containing coloured pictures of handsome women and
brave, strong men, to inspire it from statues and photographs of
ancient and modern heroes and athletes, to tell it stories of the noble
men and women who inspired the great epics of Greece and Rome,
and to fix firmly in the child’s mind the fact that health is the begin¬
ning of all wealth, that the sane mind is the fruit and flower of the
sound body, that the brain that will endure and conquer in every
sphere of life is the brain that naturally followed in its rise and
development the upbuilding of a body physically prepared to support
and sustain it.
Children should be taught from early days to take a pride in the
whiteness and soundness of their teeth, to love cleanliness and
practice it both in their persons and surroundings, to shun every¬
thing calculated to antagonise the health and efficiency of body or
brain, to be proud of their muscles and healthy firm flesh, the colour
of their cheeks, their straight backs and erect carriage, their gait
and deportment, everything, in short, that bears evidence to a
physical body well-cared for, well-nourished and consciously
cultured in every possible way. Think how valuable would all this
be in preparing children for a life that will test them physically and
mentally in the future to the utmost.
The little ones should be encouraged to romp and play and
exercise their muscles in every way that Nature prompts. Their
 397

growth and development should be watched and noted by the family

physician, who would be able to advise parents and guardians, and
to see that the children were receiving a physical education and
upbringing at home that would fit and prepare them for the sterner
phase of life they would soon enter upon. At least once a year, too,
the family doctor should be invited to make a most careful physical
examination of the child and to report upon its progress, while he
should most certainly be consulted regularly from the very moment
its mental education begins.

HOW PARENTS MAY SAVE CHILDREN.

Parents themselves should never permit a false modesty, or more

pressing claims upon their time to prevent them from making a
personal examination of their 'children’s bodies, at least until a
certain age has been reached, nor to withhold from any child infor¬
mation that might be necessary for preserving it in the path of
health and happiness. The most vigilant watch and ward over the
physical body of the child in its early home life may often save a
father or mother after years of remorse, for slight defects and
deviations from the normal may be observed in time to prevent them
from developing into serious physical deformities or disease.
I write of this feelingly and with sympathy, for time and again
parents have come to me with tears in their eyes, horrified almost
beyond words to find some loved child afflicted with spinal curvature
or rounded shoulders or rickety limbs or some other physical defect
that might have been easily checked and never even have been allowed
to appear at all, if the parents had only done as I am now suggesting.
Many children, too, are often punished or wrongly blamed for some
mental deficiency that is really attributable to a physical cause, and
especially to the enforcement of mental education upon a brain that
is kept in a state of anaemia and ill-nutrition because the physical
body is not able to provide it with the supplies that are necessary for
its healthy functioning, and, indeed, the lack of which threaten its
integrity and diminish its receptive power.
Parents should always keep in mind the fact that the basis of all
education is the establishment of a sound, healthy and well-
functioned body, and that without it the brain of the most intelligent
child is simply “ a castle in the air,” deficient in support or sustain¬
ing power and liable to collapse even if the undeveloped body itself
does not first give way. To give any child a strong, stable and recep¬
tive mind, to make its way easy for the assimilation of knowledge,
398
 399

and to give it the prospect of winning wealth and prosperity in life

the surest and, indeed, the only method, is to begin with the education
and upbuilding of its physical body and the securing of the physio¬
logical foundation essentially for the highest product of mind as
well as body.
As long as possible the home influence should make its presence
felt, because so far as I can see, the educational authorities of to-day
find it difficult; if not impossible, to grasp the stern fact that the
physical education and progress of a child is of far greater import¬
ance than its mental, and that, at least, it must be conducted by as
scientific methods as mental education is to-day. I have read the
latest Annual Report issued by the Board of Education, and I must
confess I am not favourably impressed with the ideas of the
authorities as to what they call “ physical education.” The mere
provision of physical exercises to be carried out in a haphazard way,
of dancing, and games, swimming and play centres is not only insuffi¬
cient, as has been proved in the past, hut may even do a child
irretrievable injury, especially if there is a latent tendency towards
the disease of a parent or ancestor.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION MUST COME FIRST.

The physical education of a child is too serious a matter to be

treated as a mere addendum or appendix to mental education, but,
on the other hand, ought to be the very basis of all education and
culture. It is a matter calling for a far deeper appreciation of the
part that physical movement plays in the making and perfecting of
the body as a physiological machine or engine than even the medical
profession yet seems to possess. It is a matter upon which, indeed,
the medical profession is even vague and indistinct, because it has
never given to the subject the long and detailed study it deserves.
I cannot warn parents and guardians too solemnly to exercise
their individual parental authority whenever necessary in this
matter, and not always to leave the matter in the hands entirely of
educational authorities who do not educate, and who may even
destroy the career of the most promising child at the most susceptible
period of its life by forcing its mental growth beyond its physical
capacity. The school doctors are admittedly anxious to do their
best, hut they have neither sufficient experience nor authority yet to
devise and carry out a reallv scientific system of physical education
and bodily reconstruction. In the case of children especially, games
and sports and dancing may work injury for life unless the child’s
DD
 401

physical condition is such as to warrant these, for all these should be

the reward of physical fitness rather than means to that end.
Even at the moment of writing I see nothing that bids me hope
for better things until there is a radical change in the ordinary
medical conception of what constitutes a really scientific method of
building up the human body by natural physical movements alone
that will ensure the very highest standard of physical and mental
power and balance in the children. It is because of this that I want
all parents and child lovers to study the methods I describe in these
pages, and that I am most anxious to win over medical men to a
fuller understanding of them, for I know that such evidence as I
adduce cannot fail to carry conviction to the inquiring minds of men
used to scientific thought and logical deduction, but which have been
kept operating too long in a groove or trench deeply dug through
long years of tradition and conservation.

CORRECTING AND PREVENTING PAST ERRORS.

Parents anxious about the health and future well-being of their

children will, I hope, support me in this matter not only for the
sake of their own little ones but for the sake of all those children
who, perhaps, from circumstances of fortune, are less happily placed
I am glad to say that already the more advanced school of medical
thinkers are rallying to my side because time is ever proving that
physical education is a subject which embodies the solution of both
the suppression and prevention of disease, and the provision of
th ose natural essentials of a healthy mind in a strong and healthy
body. The reproach that disease is not only not being prevented
but that it is actually increasing is, I think, the best evidence that
during all these years our medical men have sought too long for a
preventive of disease where it was not to be found. In a really
scientific system of physical education from childhood, with body
culture carried out from early days on the lines indicated here, may
I express the hope and belief that they will find the real corrective
for and prevention of physical conditions and disease that are but
the product of over-civilisation and a lop-sided system of education.
Until such methods are taught and practised in our schools I
strongly advise all parents and guardians to give their personal
attention to what may be a matter of health or disease, success or
failure, even, indeed of life or death to those they love even more
than life itself.
The care of the children is, indeed, a labour of love that can
 402

never be in vain, and their health-education and culture will bring

their own reward to the fathers and mothers of the country. The way
that I point out is the only way to provide a real education that
will make the acquisition of knowledge a pleasure and not a drudge
for the little ones, and that will place mental training on a still more
stable and valuable basis. Mind is, after all, the functioning of a
material brain, and that material brain is primarily dependent for
all its needs upon the too-long and too-often despised physical body.
This attitude of depreciation and disparagement of the corporeal
body is one that parents should take the van in changing, for muscle
and blood and bone and nerve and sinew have all a part to play in the
upbuilding as well as in the maintenance of the efficient mind.

A LEAGUE OF HEALTH.

Whatever may be the outcome of my advocacy of this cause, I

am personally determined to carry on my own mission work to the
last, for I have no doubt as to its final success so long as all lovers of
children rally round me. It will not be my fault if a future Premier
of England mourns in lamentations deep and loud over the physical
unfitness and deterioration of the people. But it is to the childrei;
and to the parents and guardians and all child-lovers that I must
look for encouragement and support. I want to see in every city,
town and village at least one organisation devoted to the teaching
and practice of natural physical reconstruction on scientific lines.
Every home might well be a nursery of a finer, healthier, and stronger
race of men and women. The watchword of the people to-day might
well be All-for-Health, and the time was never better adapted for
the beginning of a great physical renaissance movement throughout
the British Empire than it is to-day.
Under its banner all might be proud to march towards that
glorious goal and summit of human ambition—the sane, sound mind
in the strong and healthy body. In a later chapter, I make an
announcement which I feel certain will meet with a warm response
from every right-thinking man and woman, especially from those
who are the guerdons of the future, and who wish to save the children
from that physical decline which almost encompassed our national
destruction in the awful and recent past. I propose to form an
All-for-Health League, not only at home but in that even greater
Britain beyond the seas, for the purpose of a great national health
propaganda, and to use it as the fulcrum of a lever that may yet
move the world.
404
 405

CHAPTER XXIII.

NEURASTHENIA—A NEW CONCEPTION.

What it is, How it Arises, Symptoms of its

Presence, and how it can be Prevented or
Overcome,

FOREWORD.
This chapter has been specially prepared for neurasthenics
and all those who are interested in one of the most puzzling
of modern ailments. I give my opinions and inferences
not as mere theory, but as the actually proved and provable
results of personal experience—an experience that, I think, I may
say with all modesty is unique. As it'has been my especial province
occurred to me that the result of observations, as presented here for
to study the best method of attaining and maintaining physical
fitness, strength and health, and as a natural corollary, the best
method of husbanding and economising it when once secured, it has
the first time, will not be without interest to all who are afflicted with
this conditionJ the more so at a time like the present when, despite
all efforts to check or arrest it, neurasthenia is revealing itself more
and in worse forms than ever.
No other book on this subject that I have seen has probed to the
root-cause of this condition, and no author, medical or otherwise,
has seem,ed to realise that it is entirely the result of a diminished and
diminishing nervous income with an increased and increasing expen¬
diture, and that to obtain and maintain balance between them, and
still better, to increase income far beyond expenditure, is the only
way to overcome this condition and that permanently. This we can
only do by the natural methods hereafter described. That it can be
done by scientific and balanced physical movement I know and have
proved to demonstration, and I wish others, and especially sufferers
from it, to know the how and the why of it. Hence this chapter.
 406

“The Disease with 150 Symptoms.”

--

Neurasthenia has been called “ the disease with 150 symptomsbut as new
symptoms are continually making their appearance from time to time, it is probable
that they now number even more. As, however, many of these symptoms converge
so closely to one another in nature and character, and as the differences are
sometimes so fine as to be scarcely perceptible, I have endeavoured here to
enumerate only the distinct and characteristic mental and physical symptoms
that betray the neurasthenic condition, sometimes embracing many under one generic
appellation. Some of these symptoms are invariably present in true neurasthenia,
and all of them are indicative of some weakness, disorder or irritation of the nervous
system.

Fear in many forms. Irresistible impulses. Dread of company or

Pressure on top of head. Sense of impending crowds.
Stiffness at back of neck. disaster. Dread of being alone.
Pain on top of head. Dread of heart failure. Afraid of crossing
Pain at back of neck. Fits of depression. open spaces.
Loss of interest in work Afraid of being closed up
Shooting pains.
or play. in carriages or closed
Pain over eyebrows. Trembling of limbs. places.
Pain at temples. Twitching of muscles. Dread of jumping from
Head noises and dizziness. Sleeplessness. windows or high places.
Nervous irritability. Vague anxieties. Craving for excitement
Acute sensitiveness of Flushing and blushing and change.
skin Alternate feelings of hot Intense excitability.
Feelings of “ pins and and cold. Unaccountable dislikes
needles.” Loss of appetite. and aversions.
Sensation of insects on Capricious appetite. Fretfulness and
skin. Sense of confusion. moodiness.
Numbness in limbs. Feeling of oppression. Concentration of thoughts
Tenderness of scalp. Magnifying of trifles. on self.
Loss of power in limbs. Dragging pains in small Suspicion of friends.
Dizziness, especially when of back. Inability to adhere to
eyes are closed. Inability to maintain plans and resolutions.
Palpitation and breath¬ erect position. Stuttering and stammer¬
lessness. Lack of vigour. ing in presence of others.
Nervous headaches. Restlessness. Difficulty in writing in
Dread of insanity. Vacillation and want of presence of others.
Suicidal impulse and fears. decision. Susceptibility to sound.
Failure of memory. Nervous dyspepsia. Hearing imaginary voices.
Self-consciousness. Craving for drugs or Sense of failing mental
Loss of self-confidence. stimulant. power.
Loss of self-control. Palpitation and breath¬ Delusions and
Irresolution and doubt. lessness. hallucinations.
 407

I have now pointed out how everyone can possess a body built up in
such perfectly balanced strength as to be disease-free, and, if so
kept, even disease-immune. 1 now wish to show every reader how
to regain the priceless treasure of health once it has been won and
secured.
The possession and retention of health, like that of wealth, is
contingent and dependent upon its intelligent and wise use, the
relationship of income and expenditure, and the avoidance of any
infringement on capital or reserve. An expenditure within income,
ample capital, and a reserve fund sufficient to meet unforeseen and
unexpected emergencies, are all necessary to ensure the successful
conduct of any business, and to safeguard its financial position.
To maintain these vital principles, the services of auditors and
accountants are retained, whose duty it is to check the firm's books
and accounts, to study fluctuations of income and expenditure, to
ascertain the exact relationship of profit and loss, to balance assets
against liabilities, to safeguard the firm in every way against
insolvency and bankruptcy, and to keep the directors always apprised
of the true financial position of the house.

THE DOCTOR AS HEALTH ACCOUNTANT.

Something very much like that should, I argue, be the relation¬
ship between patient and physician. The doctor of the future will
be very much in the position of a Health Accountant, performing
somewhat similar duties to his patient in the matter of his health
possessions, and helping him to avoid those health crises and disasters
which we call disease rather than, as at present, waiting until they
occur before the patient requires his services.
Just as the soundest and oldest of business houses can be brought
to disaster by mismanagement, so the strongest and healthiest body
may succumb to neurasthenia by some misconduct or mis-direction of
its affairs, or for want of that close supervision over income and
outgo which is necessary to the successful conduct of every business
enterprise. Though I can give you the wealth of health, as I have
described in the earlier section of my book, anyone may afterwards,
by over-expenditure of health-capital or income, drift into the
distressing condition of nervous exhaustion called neurasthenia.
Neurasthenia is of all health troubles the one most self-incurred.
It is a morbid condition rather than a disease, although it is a
condition most favourable to other diseases, as I will show later. It
does not arise from any germ or microbe that attacks the body from
without, nor from diseased cells within. It is brought about, in the
 408

first place, through one’s own mismanagement of one’s vital affairs,

mainly through lack of knowledge and experience, and for want of a
proper system of what I may call health-accountancy.
I want now, in this chapter, to show every sufferer from neuras¬
thenia that the knowledge and expert application of natural laws in
the scientific manner I describe in the earlier part of this book, is
the one and only way by which this most distressing condition can
be mastered, and by so doing, to show also the absolute necessity for
that health education and bodily culture which I say each and every¬
one should have from the earliest days of childhood. With such
education and knowledge, and a really scientific system of physical
reconstruction from childhood, millions will, in the future, be saved
from its mental anguish and physical agony.

RUNNING THE BODY AS A BUSINESS.

To-day, the majority of men and women embark in the business

of life not only with no suitable education and training, but handi¬
capped from birth by ancestry and inheritance through generations
of civilised life. In the majority of cases, it is needless to say that
the result is failure—just as it would be in any other business in
which a human being engaged without knowledge of the require¬
ments and the conditions for success, or without the experience
necessary to ensure its successful conduct.
Of their own bodies and its operations most people have little
or no knowledge until disaster occurs, and only then is the doctor
called in.
What would we think of any business man, who embarked in a
business he did not understand, who took no note of his income and
expenditure, and who only called in an auditor and accountant to
attempt to put him right again when he had utterly failed in a
business where he could never justly have expected to succeed.
So the average man or woman to-day lives through the daily
business of life in haphazard fashion, unfamiliar with its details,
unable to keep any check on his incomings and outgoings, never
thinks of treating the doctor as a health auditor and accountant to
assist him in the management of his affairs, and is generally sur¬
prised when disaster overtakes him.

RUINOUS EDUCATIONAL METHODS.

Many suffer even from childhood through what a famous con¬

tinental specialist calls “ an anomaly of constitution,” and even from
 409

their youthful days they are apt to spend nervous energy beyond
their capital and income. Even, however, where this is not so, our
\ modern educational methods, by cramming the brain, with little care
of the physical body as compensation, and by inculcating and foster¬
ing the competitive spirit early in life, lay the foundation of
neurasthenia while children are at school.
Children are taught to worship the brain, and to pay every
attention to it with the object of making money or a career, and to
regard the body as its humble servant, and an inferior part of the
individual. Indeed, in England, as the Dean of St. Paul’s has
tersely put it, “ even learning is estimated by what it will bring in.”
While this remains so one cannot expect anything better. For, as I
have pointed out in the earlier part of my book, the mental and
nervous system depends for its supplies mainly on the digestion and
the blood, and both the preparation of these supplies and their dis¬
tribution, like every other bodily function, are performed partly
by muscular movement.
Stating out in adolescent and continuing in adult life with the
idea that the brain and nerves are better money-earners than the
body, and with the competitive spirit firmly installed and implanted,
these two persistent ideas continue to flog along a starved, weakened
and finally irritated nervous system to the point of exhaustion,
because the physical body itself at last becomes too weak through
lack of movement to meet its insatiable demands. The ambition to
defeat a rival, to make more money, to gain some honour or win some
success, whips many people along unceasingly no matter how steep
the hill they have to climb or how hard the road they must traverse.

MAN MUST LEARN TO LIVE.

Man, in short, is the only animal that has to be taught everything

he must know for healthy life. Yet he is usually left untaught in
the most vital essentials. Other animals have been given the know¬
ledge they require in that which we call instinct. The bird knows
instinctively how to obtain its food and rear its young. It can fly
for miles over sea and land to some warmer clime in autumn, and
find its way back again in the spring to the tree in the branches of
which it first peeped out upon the world.
The bee knows how to gather wax and honey, and how to con¬
struct its hygienic cells and keep them sanitary. The salmon needs
no chart or compass to come back to its own river after miles of
journeyings through many seas. Man alone must be taught how to
 410

live, what food to eat, what to drink and what to avoid, how to
economise and how to expend his life force.

PHYSICAL AND CENTAL OVERWORK.

Neurasthenia is essentially the outcome of this ignorance as to

the correct conduct of the business of life. It is the result of spend¬
ing nervous energy faster than it can be made, or replenished, and is
almost invariably the result of mental or nervous overstrain, shock
and worry. It is, indeed, a state that cannot be produced by purely
physical conditions, because the body cannot continue to perform
physical work after the point of exhaustion, but sinks to sleep,
during which time there is no further expenditure of nervous energy
for during sound and dreamless sleep even the machinery of life runs
more slowly, while Nature is helping one to heap up new supplies of
nervous energy for the morrow. The heart beats more slowly,
breathing is lighter and easier, for the time being the whole body
exists only in a state of suspended or diminished animation, so that
the sleeper awakes all the richer in nervous energy however much
tired muscles still may ache.
Where there is intense mental or nervous strain it is very
different. The over-tensed or long-tensed brain and nerve-cells
refuse to relax and cause insomnia or, remaining over-tensed
even in sleep, continue to operate sub-consciously and beyond the
domination or direction of the will, causing restlessness, dreams,
and nightmares, and thus the victim is literally consuming nervous
energy continuously day and night. I have explained very fully
what I mean bv this sub-conscious over-tension of the brain and
t

nerve-cells in mv chapter on “Muscle, Mind and Nerve.” in the

earlier part of this book, and I will return to the subject of sleepless¬
ness later on in the present chapter.
To revert to my statement that it is the mental and not the
physical over-strain that causes neurasthenia, although it is just the
same energy that is spent in both, it will be evident then that tempera¬
ment plays no small part in this dread condition, and it is not sur¬
prising that neurasthenia chooses as its favourite victims those with
the most delicate, hyper-sensitive and refined nerve-texture, whilst it
rarely attacks manual workers except where there is also some great
mental or nervous pressure. It is the brain worker and those of the
artistic temperament who are naturally the most predisposed to
neurasthenia, those in the higher professions and all those who live
by their brains and nerves rather than by their muscles.
 411

THE OCCASIONS OF NEURASTHENIA,

Sedentary workers and those engaged in the more responsible

commercial positions come next, while to these must be added that
vast army of men and women in every sphere of life upon whom
“ the daily round, the common task ” fall with merciless severity and
monotony, literally crushing and squeezing mind and nerve with a
relentless and increasing pressure. The war, needless to say, has
stretched millions on the rack of neurasthenia, for it was a war of
nerves as well as a war of munitions and strategy, a war, too, in
which the millions who never saw the trenches suffered through tense
strain, poignant sorrow, and overwhelming anxiety or grief, just as
acutely as many of those shell-shocked and nerve-wracked by the
noise, horror, and sufferings of battle waged under the most awful
conditions in history. Palpitation is nearly always an early
symptom, the heart fluttering, racing, and not infrequently appear¬
ing to miss a beat. This is very different from the increased action
following exercise, being of purely nervous origin. It means expen¬
diture of energy with no return, whereas in the former case income
is increased. It also arouses fear, which still further consumes vital
force in this wav.
i/

To enumerate all the occasions that give rise to neurasthenia,

is, of course, impossible in the space at my disposal here. Prolonged
mental work, business worry, professional ambition and aspi¬
ration, worry, shock, grief, fear, shame and, indeed, any deep
emotion or passion or even feeling, will cause the expenditure of
nervous energy at a rate which not even a millionaire of health could
long withstand.
The lover, plunged in grief at the loss of one to him more than
all else in the world, spends his energy in vain regrets and repinings
until the point of exhaustion. The soldier, through shock or fear,
amid the wrild frenzy of wrar and dazed by the roar of guns, loses all
control over himself, and is drained quickly of his last reserves of
nervous force. The merchant with forebodings of failure, the doctor
anxious over some most critical case, the stockbroker fearing the
disgrace of “ hammering,” the student burning at once the midnight
oil and his own life-force, these and hundreds of similarly situated
men and women all help to swell the already huge army of the
neurasthenic, for all are incurring the most prodigal expenditure of
nerve-force.
 412

FIRST SYMPTOMS OF NEURASTHENIA.

The first symptom of the loss of power in brain and nerve-cells

is almost invariably pain or stiffness at the back of the neck or
pressure on the top of the head, just as your arm would feel stiff and
painful if the muscles were kept firmly contracted for a long time.
There may be also sharp darting pains of a neuralgic type through
the head or over or around the eyes, or, perhaps, an alarming sense of
constriction as if the brain were being held firmly in a vice, while
sometimes the nerves seem almost to jump and dance on the skin at
the top or back of the head.
If a person can, at such a time, throw over all claims of business,
there is no better plan to arrest the almost inevitable progress of
this condition than to seek immediate change of scene, company and
air, preferably in some foreign country, where foreign scenery and
language will help to distract his thoughts and relieve cells in the
brain and nervous system that have become strained and painful
through severe or prolonged tension, conscious and sub-conscious,
as I have already explained in the chapter on “ Muscle, Mind and
Nerve.”
Unfortunately, few can afford to go to the enormous expense
that this entails, fewer still are disposed to break the chain of every¬
day habit even if they could, and far fewer neurasthenics have
sufficient will-power left to do so. So they continue madly on a
career as devastating in its own way as the ride of Mazeppa. There
is often to be observed in such cases a pathetic heroism, because the
victim receives little sympathy from others, the symptoms of his con¬
dition being subjective rather than objective, and not often apparent
to others, except in a form that alienates rather than arouses
sympathy. So he feels shunned by a world that lacks sympathy
and understanding, and he feels more and more that he must fight
his battle alone and unbefriended.

DOGGED BY DESPONDENCY AND DESPAIR.

At first there is the conscious recognition that something, he
knows not what is wrong with his health, although he may possibly
be told he is organically sound and is really the victim of no actual
disease. This only intensifies his sufferings, and he includes the
doctor among his enemies. Suspicions give birth to fear and lack of
faith in everyone around him. A business man devoted to his busi¬
ness, for instance, begins to doubt his ability to carry it on success¬
fully and to doubt those who work for or with him.
 413

As a result, he causes more and more work to devolve upon

x himself at the very time when he should be saving his own nervous
energy in every possible way. He imagines that everything depends
upon his own efforts alone, and that if anything does cause him to
break down, the business or pursuit will have to be sacrificed. It is
the same with the artist, the author, the doctor and others who see
the shadowr of Failure stalking them everywhere, and whose every
minute seems dogged by Despondency and Despair.

DISLIKE FOR WORK OR PLAY.

Addled to all this is an increasing sense of difficulty in per¬
forming any task or duty, or even of engaging in or enjoying any
pleasure or recreation. Intense depression supervenes, and the
victim is borne down by a vague but ever-haunting sense of impend¬
ing disaster. Headaches become frequent, and the sufferer becomes
irritable, restless, and sometimes possessed of a morbid craving for
excitement and novelty. Even the most microscopic difficulties are
magnified into unsurmountable obstacles. There gradually develops
a growing dislike even for work that was formerly the chief object in
life, and a loss of interest in all his surroundings. It becomes more
and more difficult to concentrate the mind on one’s daily labour; the
mind gives way to strange and irresistible impulses; there is lack of
continuity and even reading or talking cohesively on any subject
becomes difficult if not impossible.
All this fear, lack of faith, and lack of self-confidence and self-
control work together and form a vicious circle, the one perpetuating
the other, and all together devouring and consuming nervous energy
at a most destructive rate, putting extra work upon the digestive
organs and the cells in the blood that act as food carriers and dis¬
tributors, which, as a result of this prodigal consumption of vital
force, make frantic endeavours to supply the additional nutrition
nowr demanded by the brain and nerve cells through their increased
expenditure, although all these cells in neurasthenia are already
overworked. As a result malnutrition supervenes, to be quickly
followed by many functional disorders, for it has been truly said
that “ neurasthenia is the parent of a whole family of functional
diseases.”
WHAT MALNUTRITION MEANS.
In the first place, food now often passes unassimilated through
the system, because the digestive cells themselves do not receive
sufficient supplies of nerve-force to convert the food that is eaten
into nutrient material, while supplies, too, are diverted to brain and
 414

nerve cells that through their use and movement demand an unfair
proportion of food that should be more equally distributed and con¬
sumed among other cells, with the result that the other cells at last
“ down tools,” as it were, and refuse the supplies demanded by the
ravenous and clamorous brain and nerve cells.
The result is that the neurasthenic’s already heavy burden is
now added to, this increased expenditure of nervous energy is
aggravated still further by the cutting down of income, and while
more nerve-force is being spent as the condition becomes more acute,
less and less is coming in through the lack of supplies, or, rather,
through lack of the power to convert food into nutritive material or
its unfair and unequal distribution and consumption even if so con¬
verted. In short, the neurasthenic now begins to spend capital and
reserve rather than income, so hastening his own destruction.
Malnutrition is a condition which may be accompanied by
gastric pains or not, but which, in either case, means simply that
food is not fulfilling its proper function in the body, viz., nutrition,
because only a small percentage of the food eaten is converted into
assimilable form and the various tissues of the body are not, there¬
fore, nourished and sustained by it. On the other hand, much food
not only passes through the body in an absolutely undigested and
unassimilable form, and is of no value to feed the hungry and starving
nervous system, but much also remains in the system to putrefy,
ferment, and generate poisonous gases and acids, causing derange¬
ments in various systems, and often leading to acute nervous
dyspepsia, neuritis, sciatica, neuralgia, and other painful complaints.
Sometimes the food supplies are perverted into excessive fatty tissue
that infiltrates various muscles and organs, and may again lead to
serious forms of disease.
When there is malnutrition, there is rapid deterioration of
tissue, with pronounced functional derangement and disturbance,
especiallv of the nervous system, through which any or every other
svstem of the body may be injuriously affected. In this condition,
even so-called “ nerve-foods,” though they contain the essential
elements in an inorganic form, of which nerve-tissue is made, are
useless, because they cannot be assimilated by the enfeebled digestive
cells, and generally pass through and out of the body unchanged or
remain and cause constipation.

IS IT A MALADE IMAGINAIRE ?
In this condition it is not difficult to imagine how rapid now
becomes the deterioration of the nervous system, and how quickly
 415

new symptoms develop as the condition progresses. The brain itself

becomes more and more affected through the functional disturbance
of the various organs associated with digestion, assimilation and
elimination. Sleeplessness and the most acute depression become
more marked and more frequent. A sort of physical miasma arises
in the body to ascend and float over the sufferer’s brain, a cloud
through which no sun of hope peers. The victim reflects the gloom
within him, and becomes something of an Ishmaelite even among
his friends. Important affairs are neglected or treated with differ¬
ence. He becomes morbidly introspective and 'self-centred. His
conversation becomes one “ never-ending tale of morbid maladies."
He becomes obsessed with himself and his symptoms and can think
or talk of little else.
To his best friends even he often becomes a bore if not a butt,
and people of more robust and cruder nerve-texture despise him.
They look upon him as a hypochrondriac, the victim solely of a
malade imaginaire. Unfortunately, for the victim, neurasthenia,
while it may, to some extent, be called a disease of the imagination,
is no mere imaginary disease, but a condition distressing in the
extreme and deserving of the utmost consideration and sympathy.
In his own imagination he creates a hideous monster, a mental
Frankenstein to devour him. He is now drawing deeply and more
deeply upon his reserves of vital energy and begins to lose weight
rapidly. Probably he consults a physician, or friends, who, in a well-
meaning way, advise him to take more exercise, for in some vague,
undefined sort of way, everyone instinctively recognises the benefits
to be derived from physical exercise, although few, even among the
medical profession, yet fully realise the fact that physical exercise,
like medicine, may be a valuable friend or a dangerous enemy.
Perhaps they tell him lightly to “ try a game of golf,” or to
“ get a bicycle," or to “ try mountain climbing,” or to “ take long
walks,” all of which may simply add to the sufferer’s expenditure of
nervous energy by anything from 25 to 50 per cent, at a time when
new energy should be being placed to his credit. Not unlikely, the
neurasthenic, acting on such advice, will give up what was meant to
be a day of rest in every seven to the competitive or physical effort
involved in some game or form of sport. The fact that the Creator
allotted one day in every seven for the purpose of rest, and such rest
is absolutely essential for recuperation, is too often forgotten or
ignored in these days. At first, the excitement and novelty may give
him a transient sense of improvement in health and spirits acting as
does a “ cocktail ” on a jaded palate or appetite, but such “ cocktails ”
EE
 416

often repeated can only have a disastrous termination for one suffer¬
ing from neurasthenia. In his condition, physical exercise should be
most carefully indulged, according to his condition, peculiar circum¬
stances and in balance with the time he allows or can allow for rest
and recuperation and other individual considerations.

BRAINS THAT NEVER REST.

Every form of material has its “ breaking strain.” Engineers
know that and avoid it whenever possible. But the wonderful
material that comprises the human body and brain is too often taxed
to the very verge of breaking point by overwork, worry and the stress
of modern life. Even steel and iron, we know, gets “ tired ” and
overworked, and required a “ rest ” to enable it to recuperate.
Yet human flesh and blood and brain and nerve are often asked
to work on untiringly, and even to continue “ working ” in the form
of recreation and play, beyond the point of breaking strain, when it
is really rest they require. A man, in short, is often more considerate
to his razor, which he puts by at times for a much-needed rest,
than to himself. For the neurasthenic to indulge in vigorous and
strenuous physical effort to the point of exhaustion is like keeping
the engine of a motor-car running while in the garage and not in
actual use.
The result in such cases is almost invariably total collapse sooner
or later, for when the nervous system breaks down completely, as in
true neurasthenia, it affects the whole human body in all its depart¬
ments of life very much as a great railway disaster at an important
junction like Creive, in which both the railway and the telegraph
systems were disordered, would affect the life of the whole country.
The direct and indirect results are scarcely calculable.
In the first place the neurasthenia increases malnutri¬
tion, and this, in turn, causes internal functional disturbances that
provoke insomnia, with sleepless, restless, or dream-infested nights,
when the sufferer begins to feel the more acute ravages of neuras¬
thenia, and is tormented with the fear of insanity or the dread
thought that he is about to commit suicide, perhaps the most agonis¬
ing mental distress associated with this condition. The lot of the
neurasthenic now, often passing night after night with “ no oasis of
sweet slumber,” is, indeed, a pathetic one. To be robbed of sound
and dreamless sleep, often after weary and tiring days, is like spend¬
ing money with both hands. Nervous energy is now being wasted
almost continuously, and the brain and nervous system has no oppor¬
tunity to replenish stores.
 417

HOW TO WOO SOUND SLEEP.

Sleep, next to nutrition, must be restored if neurasthenia is to

be overcome, because it is during healthy and natural sleep—the deep
dreamless sleep of a healthy child—that Nature is most bountiful in
furnishing the body with new funds of energy. Expenditure by
conscious effort is then compulsorily prohibited and our sub¬
conscious expenditure of nervous energy is cut down to the very
minimum. The great workshop of the body is almost still, except
for the operations and activities absolutely essential to its main¬
tenance. The heart continues to beat but more slowly, the breathing
is slower, only such functions as are necessary for repair and the
replenishing of supplies are carried out, so that the healthy person
wakes up much richer in nervous energy than when he lay down.
Not so the neurasthenic.
He wakes up poorer in his vital force than when he lay down,
and so he has to face another day with less reserve than ever to fall
back upon. His bodily workshop is going on at full speed day and
night, and, indeed, working faster than ever during nights of sleep¬
lessness or broken sleep. Even when he sleeps the expenditure
continues in dreams. So again income is reduced while expenditure
increases, and he is losing in a double sense.
Now everything in Nature is the result of immutable and
unchangeable laws. There is a law that regulates the sound and
dreamless sleep of the child, and the broken sleep or sleeplessness of
the neurasthenic is the result of a transgression of that law. The
neurasthenic cannot change the law and cannot transgress it with
impunity. When he obeys the law, Nature will again reward him
with the precious gift of sleep.
Let him woo sleep by conforming to the law in every way. He
must eschew everything that tends to interfere with sleep. He
should avoid the late and heavy supper. He should see that his
surroundings are congenial and tranquillising. He should occupy a
bedroom that is at a proper temperature and well ventilated. Above
all, he should school and discipline his mind and nerves by repeated
efforts to sleep. He should practise dismissing every thought from
his mind on retiring, and, in the popular phrase, endeavour to make
his mind a blank.
He will find this difficult and even impossible at first, but in time
he will be able to master his thoughts and feelings. Remember that
a habit which has become fixed cannot be broken down in a moment.
It may take days, even weeks, perhaps months, to secure even a few
 418

minutes’ sleep at will in this way; but the effort, at first difficult, will
gradually become easier and more and more successful, until the new
habit of sleep is acquired, and sleep comes automatically as soon
almost as his head is on the pillow.
Practice proverbially makes perfect. “ Practice, practice, prac¬
tice,” answered a famous pianist, when asked what was the secret
of his unique musical skill, and the neurasthenic who is afflicted with
insomnia should profit by the hint. Man is, after all, largely a
creature of habit, and can by steady and persistent effort and constant
practice, school himself to the habit of sleep just as the pianist learnt
the mastery of his instrument by regular and conscientious practice.
At first it will, no doubt, be very difficult, just as difficult and as
tedious as learning to play the piano well. Persistence and patience,
however, will meet their reward as by the practice at first of one-
finger and then five-finger musical exercises the child can ultimately
learn to be a skilled pianist.

THE AFTERMATH OF INSOMNIA.

Remember that all this effort will mean a much smaller expendi¬
ture of nervous energy than hours spent in sleepless fretting and
worrying and thinking of self, so that even if you do not win sleep at
first you are still cutting down your nervous expenditure, for your
mind is being diverted, at least partially, from its usual course, and
less energy is spent in this way in the same time than in thinking of
your fears and worries during the same period. Every hour so spent
you are thus saving energy that would otherwise be wasted, and if at
first you only obtain a few moments sleep, you are further saving
the energy you would have spent in that time had you remained
sleepless. With patience, the minutes will become an hour, the hour
becomes two hours, until you will at last be able to enjoy your normal
amount of healthy, dream-free sleep. Besides, all this time you will
be disciplining mind and nerves, and steadily acquiring that self-
mastery over the brain and nervous system which will enable you the
better to regulate your income and expenditure of nervous energy in
the future.
There is no surer evidence of supreme self-control over the
mental and nervous system than the power to sleep at will, as was
possessed by great commanders of the past like Napoleon and
Wellington, and which was the great nerve-sustainer of men like
Foch and Haig in the immensely testing struggle that has just ended
in their great victory. This is not a gift, though some possess it in
 419

greater degree than others, but like everything else can be cultivated
by practice, and is worth more from the health point of view than all
the drugs ever compounded.
The aftermath of the insomnia of neurasthenia is one of the
most terrible penalties associated with that condition, for one is now
reduced to a state of nervous trepidation in which faith and hope in
everything departs. The loss of faith in oneself, in one’s friends,
even in God too often follows, and the sufferer becomes melancholic
to a degree that menaces even mental sanity unless prompt steps be
taken to check this condition. Even the atheist, though he denies the
existence of God, feels a sense of dependence, in the last resort, upon
something unknown, beyond and above him, as, in the other extreme,
the Pantheist worships God as revealed in all things.
The neurasthenic of religious mind feels that the Almighty has
withdrawn His favour from him, a sense that something has
departed from him and he is left helpless and alone, and that fear
develops as he grows weaker. The man who has lived a careless or
irreligious life feels that, perhaps, God is punishing him for his
neglect or worship. The atheist is worse still, for he feels that there
is nothing to which he can cling and becomes even more despondent.

FEARS OF MANY KINDS.

All feel their utter helplessness alone, and through this loss of
faith, and the fact that the world offers them either little sympathy
or consolation, they are driven more and more within themselves,
while their fear often engenders a hundred other fears. In this
mental attitude, deprived even of man’s last and only hope in his hour
of greatest distress, their whole mental attitude is one that lowers
bodily resistant power and makes the path easier for disease.
The fear of failure in a thousand directions is present in prac¬
tically every case, taking some form generally traceable to concen¬
trated thought on one object or in one direction. There are few
neurasthenics who escape entirely one or more of these fears, the fear
of insanity (a fear, happily, that is more alarming in itself than in
the possibility of its actual occurrence), the fear of a suicide’s ending,
the fear of being alone, the dread of company or crowds, the fear of
open or closed spaces, the fear of high places, the fear of disease, the
fear of Divine disfavour, the fear of something they know not what,
the fear of showing cowardice, the fear of being thought afraid, the
fear of monetary loss and poverty, the fear of disappointment—these
and a thousand other fears and forebodings place a tremendous tax
and tension upon nerve-centres, already ill-nourished and irritated
 420

through lack of nutrition and overwork, until the nervous system is

at last insidiously and utterly undermined and exhausted.
Even were one as rich as a Carnegie or a Eockefeller in this
more-precious-than-gold vital force, the combination of neurasthenia,
with its inseparable allies, insomnia and malnutrition, will bring him
to health bankruptcy, indeed, more likely so, for the richer one is in
nervous energy the less will he feel disposed to conserve and economise
it. On the other hand, he will be tempted to expend it still more
freely because he possesses it in such abundance. Nothing will cause
this extravagance more freely than enthusiasm, the whip and spur
which one drives himself when he consecrates himself to some labour
of love. Then, indeed, is it that “ vaulting ambition o’erleaps itself ”
in a way very different to that suggested by the poet.

HOW I, MYSELF, BROKE DOWN.

The artist, the musician, the author, the actor, the doctor, the
clergyman, the statesman, immersing their own individuality in a
cause to which they are devoted, do not count the cost and may easily
fail to note the signs that foretell the declination of nervous power
until suddenly faced with the wreckage of their former selves.
It is always possible in any walk of life that the spirit of even
the strongest man will drive his brain and nervous system to the point
of exhaustion and cause them to break down suddenly under too
severe a strain. No one can be so strong physically that the power of
a driving mind may not sometimes lead to disastrous over-expendi¬
ture and inevitable collapse.
Strong and robust as I was not so very many years ago,
and in the very prime of my vigour, I was impelled, under the
driving spirit of a great enthusiasm in the very cause I am now
advocating, to spend nervous energy faster—much faster—than I
could make it, although I lived a stern and disciplined life otherwise,
and was always, to some degree, in good physical condition, while my
accumulated reserves of health and vitality, through years of such
living, gave me undoubted advantages over the average man and
woman. On this occasion, however, my enthusiasm took wings that
outsped even my physical strength, and though I never had a day’s
illness or suffered from any disease in my life, I had at last a very
serious nervous collapse.
My weight sank from 15st. to 8st. My muscles seemed almost to
fade away. My skin simply covered my bones. Indeed, those who
see me to-day at 52, as fit as, if not better than, I ever was in my life
 421

(as my most recent photos reproduced in this book will prove), and
again turning the scale at about 15st., can scarcely credit this, when
I tell them the facts. Yet by my own methods, and exactly on the
lines I am now advocating, I made myself as strong and healthy
again in every way as I was in my youthful prime, just as I trans¬
formed myself in earlier life from a delicate youth into a strong and
healthy young man, and I mention this incident for the encourage¬
ment of others and to give them the assurance that I have a
sympathetic understanding in similar cases. I restored myself
entirely by increasing my income of nervous energy and restricting
my expenditure in the exact way I am describing in this book.

MENTAL AND NERVOUS EARTHQUAKES.

There is a breaking strain with the toughest physical material,

mental and physical, beyond which even the most perfectly developed
and balanced man or woman may fail. Any tremendous and
unexpected crisis may cause the best physical structure to collapse,
just as a violent earthquake will bring down the strongest building
and uproot the deepest and most firmly-laid foundation. But as in
an earthquake, the strongest built building upon the deepest and
surest foundation will be the most likely to resist the unwonted shock
while weaker and less securely established buildings fall, so the
mental and nervous system that has its physical foundation the better
and more securely established will the more readily withstand even
the most terrific mental upheaval.
There are, however, as the greatest of all poets has truly said,
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our
philosophy, and over and beyond all human calculations there may
come at times abnormal mental storms, tempests, cyclones and earth¬
quakes, that will shake even the strongest in their very foundation.
Here, again, however, those who have made man the chief object
of their study rather than disease or medicine, who have added a
deep knowledge of psychology to a comprehensive knowledge of
human physiology, who have learned to study man not as a mere
material product of dust but as a reflection of the Divine essence that
permeates and animates this tenement of clay, will be able to grapple
with and overcome neurasthenia most successfully.
The most sympathetic understanding, an almost superhuman
insight into the mental processes of the human mind, a most intimate
acquaintance with the inter-relationship of bodv and brain and
nerve, and a just recognition of the importance of physical, mental
 422

and nervous balance, will be demanded from those who, in the future,
aspire to the highest of human titles, physician and healer.

THE LATH AND PLASTER OF DRUGS.

The human construction that has been devastated by one of these

mental and nervous upheavals is not to be stuck together again in
jerry-built fashion with the lath and plaster of medicine or drugs.
It must be re-erected from the very foundation upwards, and rebuilt
stouter and stronger than ever, braced with unbreakable girders of
human muscle, buttressed and fortified by a mental and nervous
system as flexible and yet as enduring as finest tempered steel, under¬
pinned and strutted for the future so that the fiercest tornado of
mental or physical disease will sweep against it in vain.
The fear of any recurrence of similar mental “ earthquakes ”
must be overcome if neurasthenia is to be successfully treated, and
the study of the neurasthenic tells us that not only does this fear
precipitate disaster, but it often hinders or prevents recovery and
hinders reconstruction. Fear-thoughts will even bring about the
very disaster which they have long morbidly anticipated, and cause
the very wreckage which they so anxiously have sought to avoid, for
there was true psychology in St. Paul’s utterance, “ the thing I feared
has come upon me.”
A business man, for instance, in a state of neurasthenia may
strive so assiduously to avert financial disaster that his very anxiety
will drive him to overwork and so to precipitate the disaster he so
dreads. He is afraid, say, of bankruptcy. Such a person must be
schooled to realise that fear is itself an infirmity of the mind, and
that the surest way to conquer fear is not to shrink from it but to
challenge that which he fears. To suggest to a person that there is
nothing despicable in failure, financial or otherwise, to encourage
hope by pointing out that he himself can will fear away, to help him
to regain his self-confidence and courage, and to be positive not
negative in character, methods of mental therapeutics may well be
associated with the physical therapeutics I so strongly advocate.

WHAT LOSS OF NERVE-FORCE MEANS.

The great aim in the treatment of this condition must always
be to prevent over-expenditure of nerve-force, to economise it in
every way and to increase its replenishment. Over-expenditure is
the chief enemy, and the sufferer must be saved from himself or,
rather, be taught how to save himself from himself in this matter.
 423

Treatment, then, must be partly physical and physiological and

partly psychical Mentally much help may be given to a sufferer by
teaching him to practise self-suggestion, especially if the neuras¬
thenic feels that there is a bond of sympathy between, and the
neurasthenic has an almost uncanny power of divining the presence
or absence of sympathy in another. He is usually exquisitely sensi¬
tive in this direction, and for that reason all successful treatment
must be based on a perfect and sympathetic understanding between
patient and healer.
In no other form of illness does psychology play so important a
part in treatment, and for that reason one who can, from personal
experience, cross, as it were, the threshold of the sufferer’s mind, is
likely to be successful where stereotyped and traditional methods will
completely fail. Indeed, many of those who have found relief and
cure in the methods I advocate have told me, without being aware of
the fact which I have divulged here for the first time, they felt that I
must have myself suffered at some time from neurasthenia to under¬
stand their feelings and needs so perfectly.
Hypnotic treatment has a certain logical basis, but personally I
think it much the better plan for a sufferer from neurasthenia to
acquire the habit of self-suggestion rather than to submit his own
will to the subjection of another, for the former method helps to
build up will-power, whereas the other tends rather to weaken it and
to still further undermine the self-confidence and self-reliance of the
neurasthenic. A very good plan, indeed, is for neurasthenics to
commence each day with a code of affirmations that will help them to
fight against the many habits, tendencies and inclinations that are
responsible for an enormous wastage of nerve-force, and especially
against any one or more of which they are especially the victim. For
instance, the timorous should suggest to themselves to face boldly
any difficulty, the bashful to be bold, the indecisive to be decisive, and
the restless to cultivate repose and stolidity.
It is not a bad principle, indeed, for the sufferer to discipline
himself to do those things he dislikes to do, and to resist the things
he feels tempted to do where circumstances admit and no moral or
other law should restrain. A few such exercises as the following will
do much to strengthen and discipline the will. Let the neurasthenic
repeat to himself these or some similar phrases to suit his own
personal needs every morning.

LESSONS IN SELF-SUGGESTION.
1. I will have faith in God, in my friends and in myself;
 424

2. I will not worry under any circumstances;

3. I will not talk of myself or my symptoms;
4. I will do my duty fearlessly and have faith in God;
5. I will control all my thoughts and actions;
6. I will keep cool, calm and cheerful;
7. I will cultivate repose and serenity;
8. I will be good-tempered and not irritable;
9. I will not be jealous or greedy;
10. I will be patient;
11. I will think good of everyone;
12. I will cultivate good and pleasant thoughts;
13. I will be slow to suspect and quick to forgive;
14. I will economise my energy in every way;
15. I will defeat depression and despair.

Neurasthenics will be surprised, indeed, if they strive to model

their daily life on some such lines as this, to find in how many
directions they will be able to economise energy that is otherwise
wasted in life’s daily round of thoughts, deeds, and innumerable
annoyances and worries, great or small.
I have shown now that neurasthenia is simply the result of (1)
excessive expenditure of nervous energy, and (2) to the decrease of
vital income, and that in both these, malnutrition and insomnia play
a predominant part. Logically, therefore, it will be evident that
whatever decreases expenditure and increases income will help to
restore the balance that that has been disturbed in the nervous system
and to pay off all overdrafts on the Bank of Health, and finally to
possess an ample reserve fund for future contingencies. How can
we best achieve that object and reach that goal? My contention is
that we can only do so permanently and legitimately by the employ¬
ment of Nature’s own methods, used and applied scientifically as I
describe, because all other methods must interfere with great natural
laws and curative forces already existent in the body itself, and can,
at best, be but transient in their effect, because artificial and
unnatural.

NATURE AND NATURES LAW.

I have said that everything in Nature is ruled by law. The law

is fixed and unchangeable. Unfortunately, many to-day live in
ignorance of the law, and, in consequence, transgress it. It is to
prevent this state of things in the future that I advocate a system of
 425

health education and bodily culture in every school, supported by the

State, because, unfortunately, ignorance of the law is no excuse, and
Nature is inexorable. To obey the law without knowledge of it is
not easy, so if we wish to prevent the sins either of omission or com¬
mission that lead to neurasthenia, or, indeed, any diseased condition
in the people, it is only fair that the people should be instructed in
the law and instructed from childhood. Indeed, part of the school
duty in such a scheme as I suggest should be to instruct the children
on this most vital subject of the economy and expenditure of nervous
energy.
Even this knowledge, however, will not prevent many from still
expending nervous energy, as it were, “ beyond their means,’’ for
competition, ambition, enthusiasm and even desperation will always
tempt many to take risks in this matter in the hope that the attain¬
ment of their goal and object will compensate them later. It is
for these and other reasons that this condition is likely to continue
some time yet. even when every other form of disease has been eradi¬
cated, and this is why I have particularly chosen to deal with it here
as distinct entirely from other diseases, and to show just how and
why the methods I indicate can prevent it, if the sufferer adheres to
the law, or overcome it if, for any reason, over-expenditure of energy
causes its occurrence.
This book, indeed, would not be complete if I did not give this
knowledge, for knowledge on the part of the patient is essential to an
intelligent co-partnership between patient and healer, and every
sufferer, therefore, from neurasthenia should not only study the
advice given in this chapter most carefully, but should also read and
grasp fully the lessons conveyed in the earlier chapters.
The fundamental law of life, as I think I have proved conclu¬
sively in the previous pages of this book, is movement, which in all
animal life is muscular movement. Now all muscular movement com¬
prises contraction and relaxation, and I have explained in the
chapter on “ What is Scientific Physical Movement ” how the volun¬
tary muscles, by their contraction and relaxation, can be used to
bring into play all the involuntary muscles of the body and through
them reach every cell and influence every function of the body, in¬
cluding the cells of the brain and nervous system. I have also
pointed out in another chapter, “The Machinery of Natural Physical
Training,” the importance alike of mental concentration and equiva¬
lent relaxation in carrying out physical movements to the very best
advantage not merely for the physical body but to strengthen brain
and nerve.
 426

THE PARASITIC BRAIN.

In real and acute neurasthenia the brain and nerve-cells are and
have been kept in an almost perpetual state of over-tension, some¬
times consciously and sometimes sub-consciously, the sufferer being
unable to relax them by any effort of will. This continuous conscious
or sub-conscious over-tension of brain and nerve cells means that the
great central nervous system is drawing to itself greater supplies of
blood and consuming more supplies than the amount to which it is
entitled in an equitable arrangement of the bodily affairs.
The brain, indeed, becomes, for a time, a sort of parasite in the
body, but as these exorbitant demands continue, the digestive cells
at last grow too weak and exhausted to meet them, through weakness
and lack of movement, and they themselves collapse. So with all
the other cells in the bodily community, the cells that should act in
the body as chemists, stokers, distributors, scavengers, etc., ail of
whom are brought in time to the point of exhaustion, and cannot
even sustain themselves, much less the rebellious cells of the mental
and nervous system.

VALUE OF RELAXATION.
Now it must be evident that the first necessity of a body and
brain in this condition is the relaxation of the over-tensed cells.
But it is only possible in this state to relax the nerve-cells through
the relaxation of the voluntary muscles. Primitive man doing
purely physical work had no such necessity thrust upon him, for
physical overwork, alone, unaccompanied by mental overstrain, could
never cause such a condition as neurasthenia. It is only mental over¬
work or overstrain that can do it, or mental work super-added to
physical work. Physical exhaustion compels sleep during which
time the brain and nerve centres relax and recuperate. Mental or
nervous exhaustion banishes or diminishes sleep. Nature intervenes
when plrysical effort is made to exhaustion.
For instance, the soldiers in the retreat from Mons, physically
worn out, wounded, bleeding and exhausted, sank down at last into
sound sleep the moment they reached a place of safety and could
scarcely be awakened. Indeed, some slept or dosed while on their
horses, others even while marching on foot, their legs moving auto¬
matically without any effort of the mind. Their muscles then relaxed
naturally and spontaneously when the limit of muscular effort had
been reached, just as the muscles of a weight-lifter, after being
exerted to their utmost power in some feat, relax, and cannot repeat
 427

that feat until they are allowed to rest and recuperate. The active
brain, however, is not controlled or checked by nature in this way,
but will go on thinking and worrying both night and day beyond its
normal power if means are not taken to arrest or suspend Its
operation.
Here, I think, is the reason why it is the man or woman of high
mentality, the brain-worker, the highly-strung, the person of artistic
temperament, the refined, the hypersensitive, those in positions of
authority and those of every class who live mentally rather than
muscularly, that constitute the pathetic legion of the neurasthenic,
those, that is, whose daily duties demand mental and nervous strain
rather than physical and muscular. Indeed, fewT who do severe and
prolonged mental work having little time for recuperation, escape
neurasthenia altogether, and probably none escape malnutrition in
some degree.
This is because the brain and nerve cells overtax the cells of the
digestive system far beyond their normal powers, without supplying
that compensation which balanced physical movement gives, and
which is as necessary for their nourishment and fitness as for the
cells of a muscle.
In other words, the digestive cells become too weak to extract the
utmost amount of nourishment out of food, and so, in time, all the
other cells of the body must suffer similarly, because each and all are
interdependent and all actually dependent on the digestive cells for
nutrition.
This, no doubt, explains why the hustling American, with brain
and nerves ever on the alert, is so great a victim of neurasthenia and
nervous dyspepsia, and why, indeed, neurasthenia has been called
“the American disease.” Indeed, the name neurasthenia was first-
given to this condition by a famous American neurologist, Dr. A. M.
Beard, a name, I regret to say, that in itself is inclined to alarm the
victim of it, or, at least, to aggravate the state of fear ever present,
and especially in a people who have not been educated from childhood
in the language of anatomy, physiology and pathology, or, indeed, in
scarcely anything attaching to the human form, shape, substance,
organisation, and the manifold operations ever going on in the body.

WHY A HEALTHY CHILD SLEEPS SOUNDLY.

Now it will be quite evident that to increase income and curtail

expenditure of nervous energy it is necessary (1) to learn how to relax
the severely contracted brain and nerve cells, and (2) to improve
 428

digestion and nutrition and increase the revenue of the nervous

system. I have shown in an earlier chapter that relaxa¬
tion of the muscles is, and can only be, equal to contraction, and that
by learning how to completely relax the muscles within our control
we will learn also how to relax the brain and nerve cells.
Let me explain this a little more fully. The healthy child (an
example I am fond of using you will note) retires to bed and drops
instantly into sound and restful sleep. Why? Because at that age
it has no mental worries and completely relaxes muscle, mind and
nerves on lying down. Later in life, it has to provide itself with
food, shelter and clothing, and has other worries and troubles to
contend against. So the mind intervenes between its body and sleep.
The grown-up person too often takes his work and his troubles to bed
with him, and the sound sleep of childhood gives place to disturbed,
broken and dream-haunted sleep, and probably banishes sleep
altogether. Very few to-day can enjoy the dreamless sleep of a
healthy child because they cannot relax either their muscles or nerves
fully.
The sufferer from neurasthenia must practise relaxation both of
the muscles and of the mind and nerves as a first lesson in the economy
of his nervous energy. To begin with, he should practise relaxing
first one pair or set of muscles only at a time, as far as is possible, say,
those of the arm. Raise one arm above the head to its utmost limit
of extension, and then let it fall as limply by the side and as helpless
as if you had no power of mental control over it in any way.
When relaxed thus, the muscles of the arm should be quite soft
and flabby, the very antithesis of a muscle is a state of full contrac¬
tion. Repeat the movement five or six times, and then do the same
with the other arm, afterwards carrying out the same movements of
full and complete relaxation with both arms simultaneously.
Then do similar movements with the legs whilst sitting or
reclining. Finally, practise equally complete relaxation of every
muscle in the body while sitting in a chair. Sit up straight, with
muscles firmly braced and shoulders squared, every muscle engaged
as tense as those of a mounted trooper on parade. Then allow all
of them to relax as limply as if you had suddenly swooned, offering
no resistance and letting the body sink helpless into the chair with
the arms drooping and apparently powerless.

EQUAL CONTRACTION AND RELAXATION.

When you retire to bed, endeavour to relax every muscle of the
body in the same way. Try to imagine that your body is a heavy
 429

weight which you are utterly exhausted carrying about—and which

is, alter all, really to some extent the case—and, with a sigh of relief,
let it drop as heavily on the bed as if it weighed a ton. All this will
be most valuable in acquiring both the habit of complete relaxation,
and also in schooling the mind and nervous system as I have ex¬
plained in “ Muscle, Mind and Nerve.”
To give a popular illustration of what is meant by complete
relaxation of all the muscles of the body, I know no better example
than that of a man, in the condition which is familiarly described as
u helplessly drunk,” without the slightest mental control or direction
of the muscles of his body, and who, when he falls, sinks down “ all
of a heap,” as the saying is, without the least effort of resistance.
It is because of this utter lack of resistance that the drunken man
escapes the injuries that would result from such a fall in a condition
of sobriety, where resistance would be made automatically in falling.
In carrying out contraction movements, on the other hand, the
mind must be intensely concentrated on the muscles moved during
the whole effort of contraction, and these contractions should be made
vigorously and slow, not quick and jerkily. The mental concentra¬
tion draws the blood in greater quantities to the part to which it is
directed, causing greater oxidation and an increased demand for
oxygen, and the vigour and slowness of the contraction means that
the poisonous waste and worn materials are more thoroughly
squeezed out, making more room for new blood to take its place with
fresh supplies of nutrient material in greater quantity.
It is the force of the contraction that counts, not the speed, for
fast and jerky muscular movements increase the strain upon the
heart and tend to exhaust nervous vitality instead of strengthening
the one and economising the other. All contraction movements,
therefore, should be performed slowly but with the very maximum
of physical and mental effort, but they must never be carried to the
point of fatigue, or, on the other hand, allowed to degenerate into
monotonous and only semi-conscious effort.
This contraction and relaxation of the voluntary muscles, with
mental concentration on the parts or muscles moved, has both a
psychical and a physiological value in neurasthenia. The fact that
thinking of a part determines the flow of blood to that part gives the
mental concentration a high physiological value and also disciplines
the mind and schools one in the culture of that self-control which is
so essential to the regulation of one’s nervous income and expendi¬
ture. Physiologically, we know the value of this determination of
the blood to any part in the digestion of a meal.
 430

When the mind is active in other directions, the whole function

of digestion is disturbed and the gastric juices cease to flow freely.
But when a person is thinking only of his stomach and the enjoyment
of a good meal gives, the blood is drawn to the stomach in greater
quantities, the secretions are stimulated, and the food better digested.
This is why so many feel sleepy after enjoying a good dinner.

EQUAL HEALTH FOR EVERY CELL.

It is the same with the cells of the muscles when moved with the
mind thinking on the muscles moved, and not of other matters. The
living cells of the muscles themselves are, of course, better nourished,
because the blood brings them better supplies. But when this move¬
ment of the voluntary muscles is made in balance, all the cells of the
body are benefited in turn, as the blood is pumped more vigorously
everywhere in the body afterwards, and supplies are better dis¬
tributed and more fairly consumed.
The balanced movement of all the voluntary muscles, as I explain
in the previous part of this book, automatically sets cells of all kinds
in every part of the body in action. It is, in short, as if you gave
exercise to every cell of the body and brain, and this increases their
appetite, leads to their better nutrition, oxygenation and purifica¬
tion, and develops them all in equally balanced strength. There you
have the whole secret of how and why such methods as I advocate
will secure, maintain or regain nervous stability. Every brain and
nerve cell is “ drilled ” into health and strength by movement.
Those who carry out this treatment by means of balanced
physical movements must never forget how important a part the mind
plays in all treatment. When they have learnt how to contract and
relax the muscles perfectly they should also practise that relaxation
of the mind which is essential to complete relaxation.

HOW TO CULTIVATE SERENITY.

Habits of repose should be cultivated except when the move¬

ments are actually being carried out, and all fidgetiness and restless¬
ness fought against so as to economise energy to the utmost. The
exact prescription of exercise in reltionship to work and rest
differentiates such treatment as I advocate from ordinary physical
work or from games, sports and pastimes, which are too often
indulged in at the cost of a terrific expenditure of nerve-force. As
the great object in the treatment of neurasthenia is to save and bank
 431

nervous energy, not to still further dissipate it, only such physical
movements as are specified should be carried out, and all other
physical and mental activity reduced to a minimum. Sufferers
should school themselves into the habit of serenity, and try as far as
possible to give the mind an occasional holiday.
The three necessary steps in treatment are (1) to cut down
expenditure in the ways I have described and increase income and
(2) to make good the overdrafts on the Bank of Health, and (3) to
place a good supply of nervous energy as a Reserve Fund for future
emergencies. The question, then, for the physician or healer (or, as
I prefer to call him in this case, the Health Accountant) is to first
determine, by painstaking diagnosis in each individual case, to what
particular cause or causes the over-expenditure and decrease of
income may be due, and to prescribe treatment in each individual case
accordingly.
In one the cause may be worry, in another shock, great grief in
another, and so on; and, of course, treatment must be regulated
according to the state of each patient’s health account, and such
physical movement as is prescribed must be administered and
regulated in such a way as just to compensate the sufferer and not to
still further deplete his energy. All exercise should only be carried
out directly according to prescription, and though gentle walks may
be recommended, the time and distance even of these should be
distinctly stated by the person in charge of each case.

TWIN DESTROYERS OF ENERGY.

As in practically every case of neurasthenia there is malnutri¬
tion, it will also be the duty of those prescribing treatment to be able
to estimate from the sufferer’s condition just the nature and amount
of exercising that will strengthen the exhausted nervous system and
make good the energy lost by malnutrition (the perversion or diver¬
sion of food). In insomnia, where there is an almost continuous
leakage of energy, physical movement will have to be prescribed in
very careful doses according to the stage of the disease, the amount
of loss of sleep and consequent dissipation of energy and the move¬
ment that will just suffice to woo “Nature’s tired restorer," and
slowly replenish the exhausted nervous system by providing that
sound sleep which economises the patient’s expenditure of nerve-
force.
The quantity and quality of sleep, the amount of brain work,
the appetite and a great many other vital matters must be taken into
consideration, so it will be seen that in the prescription of physical
FF
 432

movement so as to restore and rebuild an exhausted nervous system, a

physician will have a much more delicate work to perform than he
has in the prescription of medicine.

RE-BUILDING THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

Rest and physical movement must be kept within exact balance,

and this alone is a work requiring the most exact diagnosis and a
keen and sympathetic insight into human nature, a perfect know¬
ledge of the physiological effect of each and every muscular move¬
ment, the power to adjust movement to recruit the exhausted nervous
system in specific cases by better digestion and better sleep, the
ability to ensure balance between income and outgo of nervous energy,
and all those rare gifts of health accountancy which can raise a body
and nervous system from a state of liquidation to solvency and the
possession of a handsome Reserve Fund in the Bank of Health.
To summarise, then, let me present the case briefly to the reader
as follows :—

THE HOW AND WHY OF NEURASTHENIA.

1. Neurasthenia, strictly speaking, is not a disease, but a

nervous condition brought about by the over-expenditure of
nervous energy with a diminished income, until the condition of
physical bankruptcy has been reached.
2. The nervous system being the regulator of all the bodily
functions, its failure has an evil effect on every other function of
the body. It starts the body on a sort of “ rake’s progress,” in
which every system, organ and function is involved. It impairs
digestion (and so decreases income still more), it provokes
insomnia (and so swells nervous expenditure), it causes a lower¬
ing of all the vital functions of life and so sets up a vicious
circle in the body reacting again injuriously on the central
nervous system and brain.
3. It almost invariably arises from mental work or over¬
strain, intense emotion, passion or feeling, or sudden shock. It
is characterised by many symptoms, the chief of which are lack
of faith, fear, depression, doubt, loss of confidence and loss of
self-control.
4. The brain and nervous system, kept in a continual state
of over-tension, conscious or sub-conscious, with a perpetual
leakage of nervous energy by overwork, consumes supplies to
 433

such an extent that the digestive cells become exhausted and

are unable to feed themselves, much less supply the hungry and
starving brain and nerve-cells. The brain and nervous system
becomes a parasite, and islowly robs other systems of their
vitality. Other cells of other systems then begin to suffer and
deteriorate through malnutrition, and at last the whole physical
organism becomes bankrupt. There has been a “ run ” on the
Bank of Health until it stops payment altogether.
The sufferer is like a person who has been living on borrowed
money and who has pledged everything he possesses and
borrowed from every source until the crisis comes, and he is
unable to satisfy his creditors.
5. Through ignorance of the laws of health and its manage¬
ment his body has gone into liquidation, and only now is the
doctor usually called in to set matters right if he can. It is just
as if a business firm refused to call in an auditor and accountant
until it became insolvent. The real duty of the doctor should
be to make periodical examinations of the state of the patient’s
health affairs, to ascertain his health assets and his liabilities,
and to avoid or avert bankruptcy by keeping a strict record of
the health income and expenditure of the patient.
6. What is now to be done ? The first thing is to cut down
expenditure. The next to increase income, pay off all debts, and
place a plentiful supply of nervous energy as a Reserve Fund in
the Bank of Health. How can this be done ? Drugs alone
cannot do it. Food alone will not do it. Only balanced physical
movement will replenish the system with new stores of nervous
energy.

HOW IT CAN BE CONQUERED.

7. Everything that lives manifests its life by movement.
The nerve-cells and the cells of the brain are living things.
They live by movement, their own movement and the movement
also of all these cells in the bodv upon which they are dependent
for their supplies of new energy.
8. Food and air are the two chief cources of vitality or
nervous energy. But food without movement is dead, and the
oxygen in the air can only be taken into the body in sufficient
quantities through movement.
9. The movement of the voluntary muscles brings into step
every cell of the body, as already shown. By increasing respira-
 434

tion it means the intake of more oxygen. It also increases the

muscular movement of the cells of the involuntary muscles
associated with digestion, circulation and elimination. Thus,
physical movement means more oxygen to vitalise the nerve
centres and every nerve-cell, and more nutrition because the
food is more thoroughly digested and more nourishment ex¬
tracted from it.
10. But the movement of all the voluntary muscles in
balance means more than this. It also means the freer elimina¬
tion of waste matter and self-generated poison caused by the
many vital activities of the body, so that the blood—through
which the nerve-cells are supplied—is both purified and
enriched, for the cells of the eliminatory system are also auto¬
matically set moving by the movement of all the voluntary
muscles in proper relationship.
11. All this movement, then, means the better aeration,
nutrition and purification of the whole nervous system from the
beginning. The nerve-cells live, as it were, in a healthier
environment, are better nourished and made stronger in every
way.
Thus the income of nervous energy is greatly increased.
12. Further, a more equable circulation of the blood is
established by this all-round physical movement with a fairer
rationing system to every cell of the body and brain, which
relieves the cerebral congestion and over-tension of the brain
cells, dispels morbid mental and nervous symptoms due to circu¬
latory disturbance, and so promotes healthy, natural sleep.
13. Venous and abdominal congestion is also relieved, still
further assisting in the removal of waste and poisonous refuse
that otherwise would remain to irritate and inflame the nerves.
14. Phvsical movements, carried out with mental concentra-
tion on the parts moved, school the will and give one the power
of self-control, the lack of which is one of the chief symptoms of
neurasthenia. This means power to restrain or suppress super¬
fluous and unnecessary muscular movements, restlessness, and
mental aberrations that cause a vast and extravagant expendi¬
ture to the neurasthenic.
So the expenditure of nervous energy is cut down to an
irreducible minimum.
This natural method of treating neurasthenia, in short, culti¬
vates and increases all the resources of the body that will add to the
 435

depleted nervous income of the neurasthenic, enforce a fairer distri¬

bution both of labour and supplies in body and brain, and prevent
extravagance and waste in the expenditure of nervous energy, thus
enriching not only the nervous system but the whole body, and infus¬
ing the whole organism with new life and energy. The tension on
brain and nerve cells is reduced to normal, and the cells multiply more
fruitfully, younger and better cells take their place, healthier,
stronger and more vigorous, so that in time the sufferer may be said
literally to have a new and better brain and nervous system as well as
a new and better body.
For long, neurasthenia has been regarded as a sort of mystery
disease, the no-man’s-land of medical science, because it is a condition
entirely beyond the domain of medicine, and to give a neurasthenic
medicines or drugs is at best only like giving a temporary dole to one
who reallv needs new7 sources of income. Here are the means at
kJ

hand by which the exhausted nervous system can be firmly and per¬
manently re-established by methods which, I am confident every
serious medical student will agree, are based on a sound physiological
foundation. I have no desire to usurp the rightful place of the
medical man nor to arrogate to myself an authority I do not possess.
All I am anxious to do is to present facts, proved facts, that I have
gleaned in a field of therapeutics which I have made peculiarly my
own after nearly 30 years of personal study, observation and
experience, to the medical profession, and I offer them both to
physician and patient for serious consideration in the belief and
faith that they will be of service in the alleviation of human suffering
and the physical reconstruction of humanity. The methods are
Nature’s not mine, and all that I have done is to enlist and emplov
them, as I hope the medical profession soon also will do,—-will,
indeed, be compelled yet to do,—in the service n£ all who suffer and
are in pain.
Two young men whose bodies were built up scientifically by the methods desciibed
in this book. The lower one shows remarkable chest development and expansion,,
and is a fine example to encourage the youth of the country.
436
 437

The attention of those who are ailing or diseased, and of medical men and medical
students, is particularly directed to the Appendix to this chapter, dealing with a most interesting
article and letter on Physical Treatment that appeared in The Lancet, the leading medical
journal, after this chapter had been written.—Author.

CHAPTER XXIV.

How and Why Scientific Physical Movement

is Nature’s Cure for Disease.

Although this book has been written primarily with the object of
showing how the State can, by a rational and national system of
compulsory physical education and reconstruction in our schools, go
very far on the road to the complete prevention and elimination of
disease, there is nothing in this book that does not apply with equal,
or almost equal, force to the adult who is to-day suffering for the
mistakes of faulty educational methods and the disease-tending
habits of modern civilised life.
In other words, the methods I have described will be found
equally as valuable in the cure of existent disease (with very few
exceptions) as for its ultimate prevention in the individual and final
elimination from a world in which it should have no place. For this
reason, therefore, I would like everyone, whether of normal condition
seeking to prevent weakness and disease or who is suffering from that
physical weakness which assuredly leads to disease, or who is actually
already in a state of disease, to read most carefully the earlier part
of this book, to study and understand the basic principles of the
methods there more fully explained, and to realise that there is
scarcely any form of physical weakness or disease with which we are
familiar to-dav that is not amenable to successful treatment by this
simple and quite natural method.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF MAN.

Disease, as I have shown, is largely the product of that lack of

all-round physical movement which was absolutely a necessity of
mere existence in those far-off days when disease was unknown to
man. It has taken centuries upon centuries for man to fall from his
former high physical estate, and the process has been so slow and
insidious that its progress has scarcely been observed until man has
become an easy prey to forms of disease that were unheard of even a
century or two ago. Just as man rose by slow degrees to his erect
 438

physical position and the vertebrate brain, so he has fallen from

health by a kind of inverted geometrical progression until his body
has lost its pristine vigour and resistant power to disease.
The first step, therefore, in the successful treatment and cure of
disease, as in its prevention, must be to restore to the human body
that individual strength to resist which alone can overcome disease.
We must return, so far as is possible to-day, to the path marked out
for us by Nature, and intended for us by Nature’s God. The law of
movement, which is the law of life, has been violated, and disease is
humanity’s punishment. That law is as exact and as unvarying as
the law "that holds the sun in its course and guides the seasons in
their coming and going.
Elsewhere in this book I have said that all disease may be
attributed ultimately to defective metabolism, that is, to loss of
balance between the waste and repair that is ever going on in the
body, but I might reduce this definition even to simpler terms by
saying that all disease is really the evidence of some disturbance of
the circulation of the blood, or the apparatus of circulation, includ¬
ing the heart, arteries, veins, and capillaries, and in the consequent
lowering effect on the resistant power of the bodily cells. Feeble,
congested, impaired, or arrested circulation from some cause or other
can be said to be the most prolific cause of all disease, because it inter¬
feres with and arrests nutrition, growth, and development in some
part or parts of the body and prevents the free elimination of waste
and poisonous matter.
When the blood travels slowly and sluggishly in its channels,
or is impeded in any way, it means that supplies are held up or
brought slowly, and, consequently, in insufficient quantities to every
part of the body, and also that the waste which is produced daily by
the vital operations of the body and its cells is imperfectly eliminated.
In fact, a sort of bodily blockade is established, transport and distri¬
bution are interrupted, and the cellular community of the body is not
only ill-nourished, but is left to live in an insanitary state because
the sewerage system of the body is unflushed by the slowly moving
blood, and foetid matter accumulates. Starvation and stagnation
unite to produce, encourage and foster disease just as the slimy and
stagnant pool is provocative of deadly disease and fatal to every
form of life.
Now, as I have explained, through the voluntary muscular
system, we can reach every cell in every part, organ, and system of the
body. The blood-circulation is the connecting-rod, and the various
muscles may be described as so many keys that wind up the engine of
 439

the whole system, the heart, and set the connecting-rod moving more
fastly. In this way the heart, like a powerful force pump, sets the
blood circulating rapidly and vigorously in all its myriad channels,
carrying copious supplies of food, air, and vitality to every cell even
in the remotest part of the body, and sweeping out all refuse and
waste matter just as a powerful hose cleans out a sewer.
This means that every cell is well fed, well nourished, and kept
living in the most hygienic environment. Consequently the cells are
built up strong, healthy, and free from any weakness or disease by the
natural movement of the voluntary muscles in balance, until the whole
body presents an invincible front to disease, while the cells multiply
more rapidly, and continue constantly to develop in strength and
resistant power until they attain to their highest standard and limit
of fitness and efficiency. To prevent disease, therefore, seems so
natural that one wonders why civilisation has been allowed to deprive
humanity so long of the chief and basic essential of healthy life, the
natural and balanced movement of the voluntary muscular system in
a scientific way to suit present-day demands of life and to help
rather than hinder the onward march of civilisation.
The elements of health—the essentials as distinct from the non-
essentials—are so simple and easy to obtain that one wonders why
humanity has not been better shielded from disease through the ages
than it has, and why it has been necessary for the expenditure of
such enormous sums of money to combat it.
“ I die,” said the great Sydenham, “ but I leave behind me three
greater physicians—-Air, Exercise, and Water;” and travelling far
down the corr;dors of Time, we find such a distinguished modern as
Professor Osier, Regius Professor of Cambridge University, sup¬
porting me in this, for he declares that “ modern treatment relies
greatly upon the natural methods, in other words, giving the natural
forces the fullest scope by easy and thorough nutrition, increased
flow of blood, and removal of obstructions to the excretory system or
the circulation in the tissues.”

RELATION OF FUNCTION TO MUSCLE.

What does this mean? It means that the successful treatment

and cure of disease depend mainly on improving the functions of
respiration, nutrition, circulation, secretion and excretion. The most
serious diseases may be traced ultimatelv to some minute departure
from the normal in the functioning of the body, and anything that
Before and after photos of cases of abdominal obesity successfully treated by these
methods, without any restrictions on diet or the use of drugs. These, of course, are only
a few out of thousands who have equally benefited in various forms of obesity. This is
Nature’s method of reducing superfluous flesh without risk of injury to the general health.
440
 441

will improve and stimulate function must, therefore, strike at the

very root and source of disease. In other words, impaired or
arrested functioning, especially of circulation, lowers bodily resistant
power to disease in any or all of its forms, and, conversely, the
restoration of functional activity everywhere, and of a free-flowing
circulation of the blood in the body must increase bodily resistant
power and enable it to conquer disease.
But I have proved in my chapter on “ The Physiology of Bodily
Reconstruction ” that function is dependent upon muscular power,
assisted by the nervous system, although so great a physiologist as
Professor Schiff has shown that muscular tissue has a contractile
power independent of that supplied to it by the nerves. Whether,
however, the motive power comes from the nervous system or is latent
in muscular tissue is not to the point here, because we know that the
muscles are the agents of function; indeed, that muscle is, after all,
only “ crystallised function.”
Thus, by natural and easy stages we are led to the logical con¬
clusion that muscle plays a predominant part in function, and that
through the muscular system over which we have direct control we.
can reach, develop and improve every bodily function, and thus, at
one blow, reach and remove the most fruitful cause of disease, viz.,
impaired, diminished, or arrested function. Now is it not equally
logical to deduce from this, the now proved fact, that if we use and
develop all the voluntary muscles in balance, thus, as I have shown,
automatically bringing into play all the involuntary muscles, we are
also increasing and improving the functional activity of every organ
and of every cell of every organ, and in this way also developing in
strength every organ by its own use and movement.

NO SYSTEM DISEASED ALONE.

The medical profession has undoubtedly made a very great mis¬

take in the specialised treatment of disease—and by that I mean
not treatment by special methods but the consideration and treatment
only of special organs and systems—as it has done by its classification
and multiplication of so-called diseases. As I have said, all disease
is one, and what are called diseases are merely various expressions
and evidences of a single cause. In one, it takes the form of indiges¬
tion; in another, rheumatism; in another, say, tubercular disease.
How much even of the latter most deadlv disease may be traced
ultimately to faulty digestion and elimination causing malnutrition
and loss of vital resistant power it would not be easy to say, but the
percentage must certainly he very high.
 442

If there is disease anywhere in the body there must be disease

everywhere, just as the derangement of one wheel in a machine will
interfere with and upset the working of every part of the machine.
True, certain organs and systems are more closely inter-related and
inter-dependent than others, but all are affected in degree by each and
all of the others. For anyone to attempt to overcome nervous
troubles, for instance, by treating the nervous system only, is, as
Euclid says, absurd.
The digestive system and the respiratory system must be affected
injuriously by any breakdown of the nervous system, and, on the other
hand, the nervous breakdown cannot but interfere with the healthy
functioning of the digestive system, and in a minor degree also of the
respiratory system. The circulatory and eliminatory systems, the
beating of the heart, the passage of supplies to every part of the body,
and the elimination of waste and poisonous matter from the entire
organism are all dependent of the nervous system. How then can a
man propose to specialise in nervous disorders, when so many other
systems and organs are malignly affected by them.

CURING ONE DISEASE OFTEN PREVENTS ANOTHER.

Again, on the same principle, what cures one disease should cure
all, for the same basic principles must underlie all successful treat¬
ment, or, at least, all treatment that is really radical and not pallia¬
tive, or what I have heard described as “ medical patchwork.” To
heal and cure a diseased body is not merely to put, as it were, a
patch on here or there, but to build up, or rebuild, a body so strong
and healthy in unison that it will tower invincible not over any
particular form of disease in any particular bodily locality, but over
disease in every form and in every system.
Furthermore, it must always be borne in mind that to build up
the body in such balanced strength in any and every part is not only
to cure some actual form of disease, but to prevent others of a more
gross and deadly character. To cure dyspepsia mav appear no very
great triumph in itself, but it must be remembered that by banishing
the dyspepsia, and consequent malnutrition, we are also preventing
all the more deadly diseases that are contingent upon the dyspeptic-
condition. To cure—or, rather, to radically overcome—any form of
disease may be, indeed, also to prevent others, because any form
of disease diminishes vitality and resistant power not only in the
actual seat of the ailment but everywhere else in the body.
Two photos showing the wonderful improvement wrought by the methods
here advocated after only nine months’ treatment for spinal curvature. This
only shows what might have been accomplished had this patient continued
treatment even for a very little longer.

443
Another case of spinal curvature showing marked excurvation and incurvation,
and the results achieved after twelve months’ treatment by the natural physical
methods recommended in this book by the Author.

414
 445

DISEASE HAS A SINGLE CAUSE.

It will be evident, therefore, that the only real cure for disease—
just as it is the only real preventive of it—is to develop the body in
such perfect and balanced strength everywhere that it will offer an
impregnable front to disease. That is to say, nothing really cures
any form of disease that will not cure every form of disease. There
was logic after all, in the claim of the charlatan or quack who sold
a nostrum warranted to cure every disease under the sun. If it
could cure one it should be able to cure all.
The curative physical therapeutics described here, being but the
application of natural and fundamental laws to the diseased body,
with the provision of the most favourable conditions for Nature to
minister to it, have been so successful in a vast and varied number
of nearly every form of human disease, that their very success has,
to some extent, caused them to be regarded with doubt and suspicion
by those who have too long regarded disease as separate and distinct
morbid entities rather than as effects all arising from a single and
similar cause.
That cause is the diminished, resistant power of the body itself,
and especially in some particular part or parts where the weakness
most manifests itself, for disease invariably attacks at the weakest
spot, and too often, also, breaks through the bodily line of resistance.
Reinforcements must be rushed to that part if the situation is to be
saved, and the whole bodily chain must be secure in equal strength
in each and everv link.
i/

The body is only as strong as its weakest cell, and only through
the voluntary muscles within our control and the circulatory system,
can we bring the balanced movement to each and every cell of the
body that is essential to make and keep it in the highest state of
physical efficiency to supply the body in every part, with that capital
and reserve of vitality to make and keep it strong enough to resist
disease and to make and keep all the cells in harmonious strength
and relationship to each other, so that the body presents in each and
every part an insuperable barrier to every form of disease.

CELLS CROW WEAK THROUGH LACK OF MOVEMENT.

Let us take, for example, an everyday case of indigestion or

dyspepsia, a condition, by the way, that is too often lightly regarded
as a necessary evil of modern life, whereas, it is really responsible
for many of the most serious and deadly diseases that develop
 446

through its presence and neglect. Now what are the usual and
traditional measures taken in the effort to relieve and cure this
condition. Certain foods are debarred. Diet is cut down. Pepsin
and other so-called digestives are prescribed. In other words,
instead of seeking to make the cells of the stomach and digestive
system stronger, everything possible is done to make them weaker.
The fact is quite overlooked that all these cells are living
muscular entities and that their muscular power is not to be
developed by diminishing their use and movement but by increasing
it gradually, just as we build up the muscles of an arm or a leg. By
the usual methods adapted, these cells of the whole digestive tract
that are directly responsible for the nutrition of the body can never
be made stronger, but must become weaker through lack of movement,
so that the patient grows weaker through lack of nutrition. The
appetite fails through lack of the movement necessary to make the
cells hungry. The cells require then but little food, or food eaten
is of little or no value to them, and even injurious, through lack of
the necessary motive-power to digest and assimilate it, because the
voluntary muscle-cells do not receive sufficient movement to keep all
the voluntary cells active, and so create appetite and digestive power.
But the trouble does not end here. When the digestive cells
fail, strike or mutiny either through unemployment and consequent
innutrition, a series of what might be called sympathetic strikes
begin to take place in other systems of the body. All the other
cells suffer through innutrition and may cry out in pain because
they are irritated, inflamed and injured by the accumulation of waste
in the system through lack of sufficient movement in some part or
parts to ensure its removal. The cells of the bodily sanitary system
become too weak to carry out their important function of elimination.
All the bodily cells, in fact, suffer in unison with the suffering diges¬
tive cells. Their muscular power decreases just as the muscles of
the arm would shrink, through lack of use and movement.

ASSISTING THE NATURAL CHANGES IN THE BODY.

Digestion and the assimilation of nutriment with the free elimi¬

nation of waste and poisonous matter—the two main factors in the
establishment of sound bodily health—are mainly carried out by
muscles that can be strengthened and developed by natural physical
movements. The churning movement by which the food is tossed
about in the stomach, and by which it is more thoroughly submitted
to the digestive action of the gastric juice, is increased by such move-
 417
GG
A most successful demonstration of the value of the methods of treatment for spinal weakness and curvature. The
result in this case was a complete cure and restoration to normal physical lines after a still longer course of treatment.
All these cases show what can be achieved by these methods, especiallyhf we begin by so training the children from
early schooldays.
448
Here we see two photos, taken before and after treatment, of another case of spinal curvature, with marked kyphosis,
and in which even still better results was achieved because the treatment was carried out for a slightly longer period.
 449

ment, and the cells of the muscles of digestion are all made stronger
and more efficient in the performance of their functions. So, too, the
cells that are responsible for the elimination of waste and poisonous
matter can only be kept in the highest state of efficiency and capable
of working to their full capacity through the movement of the volun¬
tary muscular system in the way I have described. The cells of both
these systems are not only made stronger and more vigorous, but they
multiply more quickly, and each generation of new cells is better in
every way than the preceding ones. Thus these two systems respon¬
sible for nutrition and' elimination are practically rebuilt by
improved and accelerated metabolism, that is, more rapid repair of
the waste that is continually going on in the body, and more perfect
elimination of that waste from the system, through the better and
faster circulation of the blood.
When all the voluntary muscles of the body are brought into
play in balance, it is very much like winding up a clock with a key,
and by such an act every organ and system is set moving and
kept moving. The cells of the muscles moved need more supplies to
repair the force spent by the movement. The digestive cells are thus
called up to do their work more thoroughly to meet this demand,
and so themselves become stronger and fitter by this movement. The
cell chemists of the body are also made to move about their duties
smartly and efficiently, and are maintained at their highest capacity.
And the “ little vessels ” in the blood that carry nourishment and air
to each and every part of the body travel faster and further as a
result of the movement. Every cell of every system, in short, is, as
it were, exercised and developed when all the voluntary muscles are
moved in balance, and all these cells are better nourished, more
thoroughly oxygenated, and provided with the hygienic bodily
environment that enables them to thrive vigorously and multiply
rapidly, with a continually improving progeny.
Thus the movement of all the voluntary muscles in balance is the
only possible way by which we can literally rebuild a new and better
body in every part, or strengthen and make disease-free any part
that is weak or diseased by bringing the whole organism into perfect
balance. This was Nature’s method from the beginning of things,
by which man was given and enabled to maintain a body in such
perfect balance as to be supreme over weakness or disease, because he
was compelled to live a life of all-round phvsical activity in those
days. It is still Nature’s way of maintaining the body in health
and preventing disease, and it is the only way in which Nature will
cure and overcome disease, but we must to-day obtain the same
 450

balanced physical activity in a concentrated form, because of the

conditions and demands of modern life.

NATURE’S GREATEST HEALING AGENT.

Muscular movement is Nature’s greatest therapeutic agent, and

the scientific application of natural physical movement to a weak,
diseased or deformed body in any part does not give a mere artificial
and transient sense of increased strength and betterment in that
part, but actually rebuilds any organ or system of better material
and enables all the cell-workers and fighters of the body to carry out
their functional duties better and more easily. In short, organic
function is developed by the improvement of cellular function, while
in actual organic disease an organ can itself be rebuilt by the
increased movement and multiplication of its cells, and by permitting
only the survival of the fittest and strongest.
To impress upon medical men the almost incredible possibilities
of what may be achieved by the process of cellular evolution, I am
reproducing here photographs of a remarkable case in which there
was not only very marked spinal curvature but actual tubercular
disease of the spine and pulmonary consumption, so serious, indeed,
that it had been given up as incurable by medical men. The patient
was a Mr. Harold Robinson, of Oldham, and the lateral curvature
was originally to the extent of quite 7\ inches from the normal. In
addition to his other afflictions, Mr. Robinson also suffered from a
dislocation of the hip. He was informed that it would be impossible
for him to live any length of time, and that he would never be able
to walk again.
The patient is to-day a well-known man in Oldham, and his case
naturally aroused something like a local sensation, for he is now not
only living and well, but has an exceptionally well-developed
physique, and his spine is almost straight again. In addition to
this, he is something of an athlete, and, apart from the fact that he
has been able to discard crutches altogether, he is a cyclist and a
swimmer.
This remarkable cure and transformation was brought about
entirely by the natural methods that I am describing and advocating,
and accomplished in a grown-up person. I select it for illustration
because it is one that can best be understood from photographic and
ocular evidence, and because it is easier to illustrate deformities than
 451

disease for obvious reasons, but these same natural methods are
equally successful in the cure of disease. I could, of course, present
many photographs of persons who have been freed from lordosis and
scoliosis, but feel confident that the photographs of Mr. Robinson
and a few others will be sufficient to satisfy and convince the most
sceptical.
1 he facts in Mr. Robinson's case particularly are so remarkable
that many well-known Oldham people have had pleasure in subscrib-
nig their names to the following form : —

“ the undersigned, have pleasure in stating that Mr. Harold Robinson, of 100,
Chadderton Road, Oldham, who a few years ago was only able to walk with crutches,
is able to dispense with crutches entirely, and he can now walk for miles without them.
For many years Mr. Robinson suffered with very marked curvature of the spine,
the spine being quite 7^ inches out of line. There was also dislocation of the hip.
Mr. Robinson was informed that it would be impossible for him to live any length of
time, and that he would never be able to walk again. His spine is now almost straight.
He enjoys perfect health, and has a remarkably good physique, the muscular
development being wonderfully marked, and it is unquestionable he is far above the
average man in physical strength. In addition to now being able to walk without
crutches, he can ride a bicycle and swim. We have asked Mr. Robinson to what
he attributes these splendid results, and he states emphatically that his marvellous
improvement is entirely due to the careful and regular following out of Mr. Sandow’s
treatment.”
The names attached to this memorandum include some of Oldham’s best known
people, and the following are only a few of the signatures:—

(Signed) W. Andrew, J.P.

(Signed) Councillor H. Kempe, O.M.
(Signed) W. H. Pigott, Superintendent of Police.
(Signed) Rev. Stanley Buckley.
(Signed) Squire Dunkerley, Alderman.
(Signed) Geo. Roberts, Missionary.
(Signed) W. Scholes, Manager.
(Signed) H. Riley, Salvation Army.
(Signed) E. J. Champett, Instructor of Physical Training to Oldham
Schools.
(Signed) Thos. Beattie, General Superintendent.
etc., etc.
j

Now it will be conceded that if such a remarkable rebuilding of

the human body can be accomplished in the case of a grown-up person
much greater results may well be expected when the physical bodies
of all receive this attention from early childhood.

WALKING IN NATURES FOOTSTEPS.

It is not only the effect of this upon the present generation but
 Mr. Harold Robinson, of Oldham, Lancs.

These are two photos of the gentleman whose case is fully described in this chapter.
Were it not for these photographs showing him as he was, a helpless cripple, and
as he is to-day, a healthy and robust man, together with the contributory evidence
supplied by local gentlemen, who have known his whole life-story, such a
physical transformation might well tax anyone’s credulity to breaking point. This
was achieved solely by the methods described in these pages, and this is only one
of thousands of cases of curvature and deformities overcome by such natural methods
of treatment applied in a scientific way. The photos opposite show
(1) a back view showing the now straightened spine—the spine was no less than
1\ inches from the perpendicular—and fine muscular back and shoulders, with
(2) a photo of Mr. Robinson’s healthy, chubby and well-formed child. Sensitive
as to his own physical defects, Mr. Robinson hesitated long before marrying lest
the children who might follow would be similarly afflicted. His cure, however,
was so complete that he hesitated no longer, and this sturdy child is the fruit of his
marriage. How important, therefore, from the national point of view, are methods
of physical reconstruction in their influence through parentage alone upon the
children of the future.
453
 4j4

upon subsequent generations that must be borne in mind. Here is a

man given up by physicians as a hopeless case, yet he is now the
father of a child perfect and symmetrical in form, as will be seen
from the photograph here reproduced, with no trace of its parental
shortcomings. When one sees and considers the vista thus opened
up for the release of Nature’s own magnificent healing and recupera¬
tive properties it will, I am sure, attract and fascinate all those
whose duty it is to alleviate human sufferings.
In fact, I go so far as to say that in this discovery of the applica¬
tion of natural physical movement so as to reach and influence each
and every cell of the body, the medical profession will be able to solve
the greatest problem of life to-day, the one and only method of over¬
coming or preventing disease. It is Nature’s way, and I am certain
that the medical men themselves will agree with me that it is impossi¬
ble to improve upon Nature, which contains and carries the one and
only medicament that will rebuild and reconstruct the cellular body
of which man is composed.
This natural method of dealing with diseases and even deformi¬
ties does not deal so much with a diseased stomach or liver or lungs or
spine as with a unified body in which all the organs and systems are
linked together by the nervous system as a single and indivisible
whole. A disturbed and diseased condition of any organ or system
may have its origin in some part of the body far remote from the
actual seat of disturbance. The whole nervous system may be
deranged when there is gastric or digestive disturbance, and may
express it in parts of the body far away from the stomach. In the
same way, a very trifling nervous disorder will completely upset and
temporarily paralyse the function of digestion. A diseased or
disordered liver, as most people have experienced some time or other,
will cause acute mental depression, irritability or severe head pains
and mental confusion. The value, therefore, of methods of treat¬
ment that seek to restore balance everywhere rather than to treat any
particular organ or system will be at once apparent.
It is because these natural methods regulate cellular and organic
function and increase organic strength and balance everywhere that
they are so successful in every form of disease. No system or part of
the body is allowed to jeopardise the other nor is allowed to live a
parasitic existence in the body at the expense of others. Balance is
obtained everywhere, and this means that the cells of all the bodily
systems are rebuilt and maintained in their due proportion and
relationship for the provisioning of the whole organism, its sanita¬
tion, and security against disease.
 ACCURACY OF DIAGNOSIS AND PRESCRIPTION.

Although I have had to emphasise the importance of exact and

correct diagnosis and prescriptions elsewhere, I am reluctantly com¬
pelled, owing to its vital importance to success, to refer to this matter
again here, especially its necessity in the treatment of actual and
existent disease. In ascertaining a true diagnosis nothing is too
trifling to be omitted. The patient's age, constitution, organic
condition, complaint and existing muscular power must first
be ascertained, the conditions that have brought about deterio¬
ration and disease fully understood, the true seat of the loss
of balance located, the exact nature, quality and amount of
movement to suit the patient must be estimated with the
utmost exactitude, temperament, family history, habits of life
and other purely personal considerations must be noted, and in the
selection of movements every care must be taken to prescribe all
movements to strict subjection to the state of the heart. Changes of
exercises must be prescribed by easy gradations according to a
patient’s improvement, and no time or labour spared to strengthen
particular weak spots until the body, as a complete and organised
whole, is made so powerful everywhere in balanced strength as to
resist and conquer disease in any form. Needless to add, it is also
most essential that the movements are carried out by the patient with
his mind wholly concentrated on the muscles being moved.
I am convinced that doctors must and will yet be forced to adopt
them, however long they may hesitate and procrastinate. It may be
that my grandchildren or great-grandchildren will see what I myself
may not live to see, viz., the decision of the whole medical profession
to employ natural therapeutics only in the prevention, treatment and
cure of disease. But I am confident that, sooner or later, and, if for
no other reason, the increasing prevalence of disease will force them
to look away from their present methods, and seek their own physical
salvation and that of their patients in the true and only way.
Already, I know, there are those who will continue my work when
I am gone, but I am especially anxious that medical men will give
these methods the unanimous support of their profession and at
least devote more study and attention to this subject.
So long as the medical profession neglects or fails to give a more
just recognition to the part played by the muscular system in its
effect and influence cn physiology, so long will disease continue to
 456

persist despite their most strenuous efforts towards either its pre¬
vention or cure. This is the essential point which I wish to impress
upon physician and patient alike. The “ bottle-of-medicine-man,
to use Sir George Newman’s own phrase, is already passing, and
doctors everywhere coming to appreciate the fact that nothing of
an artificial character cambe introduced into the body that can equal
in its beneficent action the power that is ever present in Nature^itself.
To minister to Nature and to permit the most favourable conditions
for the manifestation of that inherent healing power is the best
service that the physician can render to the ailing and diseased body.
This can only be done by an approach to those natural conditions
under which man was intended to live, viz., a life of balanced
physical activity which gave to each and every cell of the body that
movement which, in turn, is essential to its living and well-being.

THE CELL THE UNIT OF HEALTH OR DISEASE.

I have shown, and I hope proved, conclusively in this book how

we can nearest approximate to that natural healthv life. I have
shown how, with our present-day amassed and organised knowledge,
we can supply this necessary movement through the voluntary
muscular system to every cell of the body, and do so conveniently to
suit modern conditions of life. I have shown how it is only through
the cellular body that we can re-educate the nerve-centres and re¬
establish the healthy functioning of every organ and system. This
is the way and the only way by which we can either prevent or cure
disease. It is in the cell, that microscopic living entity which
represents us in miniature, that we will find the true method of
emancipating the human body from disease. The prospect is such a
fascinating one that it should impel every medical man to turn his
thoughts in this direction. Movement is the fundamental pheno¬
menon of life, and when medical men have studied and mastered its
influence on cellular function and through it on organic structure and
function, they will have gone far towards the solution of a problem
that has long baffled, and, indeed, is still baffling, the acutest minds
of medical professors throughout the world. I say this with all
modesty, and not in any spirit of arrogance, but simply as an honest
expression of opinion based on a life of specialised study and per¬
sonal experience in a subject to which the medical profession has
scarcely yet paid sufficient attention. If disease can be cured and
prevented, as I most emphatically believe it can, no methods of pre¬
venting it or treating it should be considered beneath the dignity of
a profession to which the very existence of disease must be a
reproach.
Ihe physiological effect of curative physical movement, such as
is described in these pages, may be briefly summarised as follows :—

1. The body must be regarded as the most perfect automatic

machine in the world, not as a number of separate and distinct
machines each operating independently of one another.
2. Disease, therefore, must be considered as a unit, for
what upsets or hinders the effective operations of any one wheel
or even cog in this human automatic machine must interfere
with the operations of the machine as a whole.
3. The circulatory system is the connecting-rod through
which power is brought from the voluntary muscular system,
through the digestive and respiratory system to maintain all the
human cogs and wheels in a state of efficiency.
4. Now, to keep the whole machine in perfect working
order, each and every part must do its fair and proportionate
share of the work, operating at its fullest capacity easily and
efficiently. All this work of the body is done bv the living cells,
which can only be kept fit and strong and able to reproduce
better cells of their own species by movement and use.
5. Life is movement, and unless kept moving, any part and,
in time, every part of the body will weaken and become diseased,
or, if deprived of movement long enough, must die, just as
machinery will rust and rot if not kept constantly in use.
6. In health, the living cells that carry on the work of the
body constitute an ideal community of muscular workers and
fighters. Each species of these millions of cells has its allotted
task to perform. Some build tissue, some prepare the supplies
for bodily maintenance, some are chemists, some soldiers, some
look after distribution, and some are scavengers.
7. Every organ and system of the body is upbuilt and main¬
tained by the movement of these cells, and every bodily function
is performed by them. Over some of these cells we can exercise
direct control, others are beyond our direct control or only par-
 458

tially subject to it. All can be reached and influenced, how¬

ever, through the voluntary muscles and the cells of which they
are composed. Nourishment and air are supplied to them from
the digestive and respiratory systems by the circulatory blood,
and the distribution is improved by this movement of the volun¬
tary muscles. So, too, is the elimination of all waste and
poisonous matter.
8. The cells of the voluntary muscles are the only cells we
can move directly at will, and by so moving them we increase
their capacity, efficiency and output, improve them in quality
and increase them in number, old and feeble cells succumbing,
leaving only the youthful and strongest. Thus we make a
voluntary muscle bigger and better by moving it at will, and
this movement, bringing the blood to it more vigorously, all the
cells, including the nerve-cells it contains, are better nourished
and their waste matter more freely carried away. These nerve
cells, it is important to remember, keep that particular part of
the body in communication with every part of the body, includ¬
ing the brain. All the cells in the muscles moved are
rejuvenated by the movement of the muscle, and if every volun¬
tary muscle were moved in the same way in balance all would be
similarly benefited.
9. Conversely, if the muscles or any of the muscles are
kept without movement, the cells of those muscles, including the
nerve-cells which link them up with other parts of the body, are
deprived of their full share of supplies and the free elimination
of their waste through the lack of movement, and so become
weak and unfit, while many die. Thus the unmoved muscle or
muscles diminish in size and substance, and the muscle, if kept
long enough unmoved, atrophies. The nerve-cells in all such
unmoved muscles also suffer in the same way, and this is imme¬
diately communicated to other parts of the body by the nervous
telegraphic system, causing disease and disharmony, or lack of
balance.
10. But as I have shown in my chapter on “ What is Scien¬
tific Physical Movement,” the voluntary movement of even one
muscle only or group of muscles immediately sets the involun¬
tary cells of every other system of the body in motion to supply
again the force that has been consumed by its, or their own,
movement, and to carry away the waste that has been caused by
the contraction.
 459

11. Now this simple muscular movement of any muscle of

group of muscles not only strengthens and develops its own
muscle-cells and nerve-cells by bringing them more and better
nourishment, and by removing wraste matter which would injure
their health, through the better circulation of the blood, and by
causing them to multiply their species more rapidly by division
and sub-division, thus improving the “ breed ” continuously, but
its demands also give all the involuntary cells—whose duty it is
to supply all these demands—“ employment," as it were, makes
them move more, and so keeps them fit, weeds out unfit cells, and
causes a higher and better birth-rate of new cells.
12. In other words, even the contraction of the biceps
means an increased demand upon the services of the digestive
cells to make good the waste, upon the eliminatory cells to
remove it from the system, upon the cells in the blood to carry
and distribute air and food, and to bear away refuse, and,
indeed, upon all the involuntary cells of the body so that all the
involuntary cells are proportionately strengthened and
developed by their own movement, become more reproductive
and are able to carry out their functions easily and vigorously
through the initial movement of only one voluntary muscle or
set of muscles.
13. But these involuntary cells will only move and work to
the extent required to meet the demands of the one muscle or set
of muscles moved. This means that they are working only up
to restricted output, running below power, because they are not
getting sufficient movement to keep them in the highest
efficiency. To ensure this all or nearly all the voluntary muscles
must be made to move. When only one muscle or set of muscles
is used some cells in the unmoved parts will die off, some grow
weak towards disease, and all will fail to reproduce younger and
still more vigorous cells, propagating instead cells as inefficient
or even weaker until disease attacks some part of the body suc¬
cessfully, because the feeble cells are unable to resist and conquer
it. This is what is meant by lowered resistant power to disease.
The nerve-cells in the unmoved parts also suffer, and so the
wffiole body is thrown out of balance.
14. From creation, man was given a great number of
muscles to move and use, and bv their united use and movement
his body was maintained in health and strength as it was
designed and created to be. The sufficient movement of all, or
 460

nearly all, his voluntary muscles was essential to existence in

those days, and as a result he was disease-free, because these
muscles, all being brought into play, brought all the involuntary
cells of every bodily system also into movement as I have
explained, and heft all these cells moving and functioning to
their maximum capacity, in order to supply and keep pure the
greater number of muscles that were then being used in everyday
life. Not a weak spot of cell was to be found anywhere, and all
the cells, organs, and systems were in absolutely balanced
strength to resist all the encroachments of disease.
15. As time advanced and civilisation made it less and less
necessary for man to use all his voluntary muscles, the cells of
the involuntary muscles and systems were, consequently, also
called upon less and less to move, for the diminution of volun¬
tary muscular movement made less demands upon them in every
way. Thus through this gradual loss of movement essential to
their well-being they became poorly nourished, reduced in power
and efficiency, contaminated by uneliminated waste and poison¬
ous matter, while they are diminished in number, all this reduc¬
ing resistant power to disease and still weaker cells often take
their place instead of stronger.
16. Muscles that were unmoved and unused caused certain
cells especially to weaken and become diseased because the cells
in the unused parts suffered most, and that part or parts became
so weak as to fall before disease, while the cells reproduced even
more infirm descendants.
17. When that occurred, however, the nerve-cells of that
part or parts also suffered, and the cells of other systems suffered
in sympathy, and thus disease was manifested in systems and
parts of the body often far removed from the seat of actual dis¬
turbance, just as a defective drain will cause and spread disease
afar off from the actual place of breakdown. That is what I
mean when I say that as the nerve-cells are in communication
in every part of the body, disease must be considered as a unit
and the whole body also as a unit.
18. Only by bringing all—or nearly all—the voluntary
muscles of the body into action within balance—which is what
I mean by scientific physical movement taking the place of the
everyday and all-round phvsical movement of primitive life in a
concentrated form to suit modern life—and through them
keeping every cell and all the cells of the bodv moving at their
 461

maximum of effort and efficiency to serve the needs of the body,

can we again restore functional efficiency to these cells, and
through them strengthen every organ and every function so as
to overcome existent disease or the weakness that leads to
disease, or to prevent it in the modern human body as Nature
compelled man to do in primitive days. This is a new study
for medical men, which will give them better results than the
present methods of grappling with disease, and is Nature’s own
method of prevention and cure.
19. In this way we can even build up an entirely new and
better body in any or every part, and make the body so strong
in balance in all its cells, as either to prevent or cure any and
every form of disease, and by what I call cellular evolution in
the earlier part of my book, rebuild a body even better and more
resistant to disease than it was at birth. The greater nutrition,
oxygenation and purification of the cells of every system is
secured by balanced physical movement. Old and feeble cells
die off through incapacity and only the younger and more vigor¬
ous cells are left to continually reproduce still stronger and
healthier cells of their species.
20. I think it will be evident from all this (a) that if
there is disease of disorder in one part of the body there is dis¬
ease in all parts of the body, (b) that to cure the part or parts
that is or are affected is to cure every part, (c) that to remove
the common cause of disease, viz., lack of resistant power in
certain cells or in all the cells by making each and all of them
so strong in balance is to either cure disease or to prevent it by
making all the cells of the body equally strong and disease-
immune. This, I say, we can only do in Nature’s way by restore
ins: to the body that balanced movement of the voluntary muscles
which was its right and prerogative in the days of our splendid
prime, and which alone can give it that "strong, tenacious and
conquering resistant power which is its first and greatest line of
defence against disease.

Note.—It may be objected that most of the photos reproduced in the book are of young or
comparatively young men showing an external muscular development above the average to-day, hut
only normal as men were intended to be. This is so, but it must be remembered that many of these
were weak and even suffering from some ailment when thev first began to follow out the methods
advocated here, and. were built up entirely m this way. Equally satisfactory lesults, from a curative
point of view, are obtainable by men and women of all ages, though naturally the process must be
slower in old age than in youth. In everv case, however, and at all ages, these methods are valuable
to build up organic and vital reserve power and so to combat and conquer disease.

HH
 462

Important to Readers of this Chapter.

Remarkable Article in “The Lancet,” the Leading Medical Journal.

-<X»oO-

Readers of this chapter will he pleased to hear that the greatest medical journal in the
world had a leading article and a letter in its issue of December 21 st, 1918, in strong support
of physical treatment, and admitting its great success in overcoming many forms of disease.
The leading article contains the most remarkable admissions as to the value of what
Dr. Radcliffe, the author of the letter, calls “ Nature s remediesand I want every reader of
this chapter to read this appendix to what I hawe just said, as it is of the greatest importance
to sick and suffering mankind.

APPENDIX.
Whilst engaged on this my very last chapter, the current issue of
The Lancet, under date of December 21st, 1918, lies on my desk. It
contains a most interesting article on “ Primitive Agents in Treat¬
ment,” and an equally attractive letter on “ The Value of Physical
Treatment,” from the pen of Dr. Frank Radcliffe, medical officer in
charge of a Manchester hospital for the physical treatment of
soldier-victims of the war. The sanity of the views expressed in
both of these is to me, indeed, a welcome sign of a new orientation
of thought even in the very sanctum sanctorum of the medical pro¬
fession, the editorial columns of the recognised official organ and
probably the leading medical journal of the world. Both article and
letter are welcomed by me as thin rays of sunlight peeping through a
sky as yet somewhat cloudy and troubled. Yet there are points in
both article and letter with which I venture to disagree, and upon
which I would like to comment.
It is, for instance, distinctly gratifying to find that stern, un¬
bending organ of medical tradition and authority not only lending
itself to the support of natural physical methods of treatment, but
even admitting that “ the ordinary practitioner has, largely of his
own free will, surrendered any say in these matters,” and that the first
step is for the profession to set its house in order and to make sure
that physical treatment is placed on a satisfactory, scientific basis.
The admission here that those chiefly responsible for the healing
of broken and suffering humanity have voluntarily allowed any
proved methods of healing, but especially simple and natural methods
coeval with Adam, to pass neglected, until others had accomplished
cures almost miraculous by them, is by no means flattering to the
sagacitv of those responsible for high medical policy, and proved my
contention that medical tradition has too long drugged and blinded
 463

those whose special mission it should always have been to seek for
and employ methods of treatment of any and every kind likely to
reduce the huge casualty lists of sickness and disease that have been
increasing every year despite orthodox methods of medicinal treat¬
ment.
Instead of contemning or condemning others who refused to be
handicapped by tradition, The Lancet might rather acknowledge,
even in a modest way, all those whose efforts have at last forced the
present recognition of natural, physical and primitive methods from
such a staunch defender of medical tradition and orthodoxy, and
whose work along natural lines have proved so beneficent to
hundreds of thousands of suffering men and women, unreached by
the orthodox methods of treatment—that great physically “ sub¬
merged tenth,” whose bodies could only be saved and regenerated by
the very methods which doctors have for years, according to The
Lancet itself, neglected, despised and “ surrendered.”
In the meantime, I would, with all modesty, suggest that medical
men, who have for so long closed their eyes to methods which are, as
I am proving in this book, Nature’s own and only way of overcoming
disease, and whose whole training has dealt with the effects of
medicine on a diseased body rather than the application of natural
physical movement scientifically to pathological conditions—the
latter a subject, by the way, which has not even yet deigned to study
and investigate fully—will have much to learn when they do turn
their mind in this direction. It is for this very reason that I have
advocated in this book special colleges for the exclusive study of
this subject and special courses of physical therapeutics for doctors,
and still more for the medical students of the future, included in all
future medical education.
To deal now with Dr. Radcliffe’s letter, there is, after all, little
in it that every medical man does not know since the days of
Hippocrates. It gives concrete proof of the value of physical
exercise, and natural therapeutics, even in an unscientific way, in
releasing the healing force of Nature. It gives a long list of condi¬
tions in which these natural methods of physical treatment have
proved successful. These include :—
1. Debility from any cause, e.q., pneumonia, typhoid, dysentery, all post-operative
conditions, e.q., appendicitis, hernia, etc.
2. Rheumatism, including myositis, myalgia, hbrositis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteo
arthritis, both in the earlier stages.
3. Neuritis, including neuralgias of all kinds, particularly headaches, which are often
of rheumatic origin, due to fibrositis of the cervical muscles.
 464

4. Nervous conditions, including neurasthenia, loss of nerve tone, general tremors and
insomnia, associated at the present time with the overstrain of war and
shell shock.
5. Heart conditions, particularly arrhythmia, tachycardia, bradycardia, loss of
myocardial tone ; dilatation, whether associated with valvular disease or not.
6. Post-operative conditions, such as adhesions following abdominal operations, con¬
tracted scars producing deformity by the trapping of nerves of tendons.
7. Fractures with only fibrous union; in other words, deficiency of callus.
8. Paralysis with paresis of any nerve, more particularly facial, ulnar, median,
musculo-spiral, sciatic and branches.
9. Synovitis and fibrous ankylosis of large or small joints where breaking down of
tissue and re-education of movement are necessary.
10. Circulatory conditions, such as trench feet, post-frost-bite and erythromelalgia.

For the benefit of the uninitiated reader, unfamiliar with the

medical nomenclature of pathological conditions, I give the following
explanation of such medical terms used above as may be puzzling in
simpler English terms :—
Dysentery Inflammation of the large intestine.
Pneumonia Inflammation of the lungs.
Appendicitis Inflammation of the appendix,
Hernia Commonly called rupture.
Typhoid A fever, usually attended with ulceration of bowels.
Myalgia Pain in the muscles.
Myositis Inflammation of the muscles.
Fibrositis Inflammation of the fibrous tissue.
Rheumatoid arthritis Inflammation of the joints from rheumatism.
Osteo-arthritis Inflammation of the bony structure of a joint.
Neuritis Inflammation of a nerve.
Neuralgia Pain of a nerve or nerves.
Neurasthenia Nerve weakness and exhaustion.
Arrhvthmia Irregular action of the heart.
Tachvcardia Rapid action of the heart.
Bradycardia Slow action of the heart.
Myocardial tone Tone of the muscular tissue of the heart.
Dilatation Enlargement of an organ.
Post After.
Adhesions A matting together of tissues.
Callus The new material that unites a broken bone.
Paresis Slight form of paralysis.
Ulnar Pertaining to the elbow and forearm near the inner bone.
Median In the middle.
Musculo-spiral A nerve of the arm.
Sciatica Neuralgia of the large nerve of the hip and back of thigh.
Synovitis Inflammation of the membrane of a joint, most common in the
knee joint.
Ankylosis Fixity of a joint.
Erythromelalgia Redness of skin with pain in lower extremities.
 465

I his is a report on cases which came under Dr. Radcliffe’s own

personal observations as medical officer in charge of an hospital near
Manchester for the treatment of wounded soldiers and sailors whose
health had suffered in the ways above mentioned as a result of war
conditions, after a course of physical treatment as understood and
practised there, 4 or the information of Dr. Radcliffe and his fellow
practitioners, and also for the encouragement of such of the public as
may be personally interested, I would like, however, to give here
particulars of the still .more remarkable results that have been
achieved, not only in such cases as he reports, but in many other forms
of disease and in orthopaedic cases of various kinds. I know that
the medical profession having now had their attention professionally
directed to the matter will be interested to know what can be and
actually has been accomplished by natural physical movements alone,
but applied and carried out in the most scientific way, and for that
reason I add my own experience here to that of Dr. Radcliffe.
Among the many and varied diseases and deformities treated
with the utmost success by the natural methods here described bv me
may be mentioned the following :—
1. Indigestion and Dyspepsia, both in acute and chronic
form, including acid dyspepsia, atonic dyspepsia, nervous
dyspepsia, flatulant dyspepsia, biliousness, nausea, sick head¬
ache, gastric cattarrh, dilated stomach, heartburn, loss of appe¬
tite, pains in chest, shoulders and back, etc.
2. Constipation, a condition especially amenable to this
treatment by bringing into use abdominal muscles rarely used in
modern life, and employing them to act as a natural massage to
the viscera; even in colitis these methods have proved successful.
3. Liver Troubles.—Exceptional results have been obtained
in these conditions. Liver congestion, torpor and sluggishness
have been completely overcome, and great relief has been
obtained even in more obstinate forms of liver trouble such as
jaundice and fatty degeneration, and cirrhosis of the liver in its
early stages.
4. Neurasthenia and all Functional Nervous Disorders lend
themselves more readily to these natural methods of treatment
than to any other. Splendid results have been obtained in shell¬
shock cases, cerebral neurasthenia, sexual neurasthenia,
dyspeptic neurasthenia, spinal neurasthenia and cardiac neuras¬
thenia, and in neuritis, hysteria, St. Vitus’s Dance, epileptic
fits, neuralgia and sciatica, while minor forms of paralysis have
 466

also been greatly benefited. Nervous disorders arising from

feminine troubles and spinal weakness have been treated with
results that have amazed the medical men in charge of the cases.
5. Obesity in Men and Women.—In the reduction of super¬
fluous flesh and the amelioration of the dangerous conditions it
induces, threatening vital organs, physical treatment is, of
course, naturally indicated, and is not only far more successful
but far safer than drugs, medicines, purgatives, violent sweat¬
ing or “ banting.” The photographs reproduced will give a
better idea of results that have actually been achieved by these
methods to the health, benefit, and comfort of the persons so
treated.
6. Heart Affections.—Hearts weak and irregular in their
functions, especially if the functional disturbance is of nervous
origin, have been made strong and normal in their functioning,
and, in addition to the heart troubles mentioned by Hr. Radcliffe,
many more serious cardiac disorders have, after medical advice,
been most successfullv treated, esneciallv when taken in time.
tj " jl •/

The heart itself has been improved organically, and the influence
of the nervous system has been considerably modified, while the
psychological effect has been most helpful in cases where there
was often undue and even needless alarm.
7. Lung and Chest Complaints, it is scarcely necessary to
say, are among the diseases that have lent themselves most
readily to these methods of natural physical treatment, and, in
many cases, phthisis, when not too far advanced, has been
arrested and prevented. The improvement of the carriage, the
deepening and broadening of the chest, and the toughening of
the lung tissue are all contributory to this result. Bronchitis,
asthma, emphysema, and other diseases of the respiratory
system are also conditions in which these methods have con¬
quered.
8. Rheumatism and Gout.—The improvement of circula¬
tion, the increased elimination of waste products and the dis¬
persal of uric acid deposits and crystals have been easily and
naturally accomplished by these methods, and rheumatism in all
its forms, gout, lumbago, sciatica and uric acid disorders of
various kinds have been quickly and permanently overcome.
9. Anaemia— In this condition, physical movements scien¬
tifically applied, have been uniformly successful, strengthening
all the digestive organs and so improving digestion and nutri-
 467

tion, enriching and purifying the blood by increased oxygena¬

tion and elimination.
10. Kidney Disorders, functional and chronic, have all been
successfully treated, and conditions leading to Bright’s disease,
dropsy, and stone have been overcome. The effect of physical
movement, when applied scientifically, in promoting renal
activity, is now well established and recognised by many medical
men.
11. Lack of Vigour.—In this state of diminished vitality,
whether from sexual causes or otherwise, the benefits of the
treatment have been placed beyond dispute. The whole nervous
system regains tone, nutrition and elimination are increased,
and such conditions as spermatorrhoea and impotence banished
by purely natural means.
12. Physical Deformities and Defects.—A glance at the
photographs reproduced elsewhere will convince the most
sceptical of the value of these methods in cases of lateral spinal
curvature and in kyphosis or lordosis. Other defects and
deformities that have been overcome by the same means are
knock-knees, bow legs, pigeon chest, etc.
13. Circulatory Disorders, including hypersemias and con¬
gestions, local inflammations, varicose veins and other venous
troubles, arterio-sclerosis, and other serious disturbances of the
circulation have all been benefited and cured by methods that
promote the normal and equitable distribution of the blood
through all its channels.
14. Skin Disorders, likewise, have also lent themselves most
readily to this natural treatment, including erysipelas, acne,
herpes, eczema and other distressing skin troubles.
15. Physical Development for Men.—A very large per¬
centage of the physical troubles from which men suffer to-day
may be traced to an imperfect and unbalanced physical develop¬
ment that injures or hampers organs and disturbs their
functions. Many of the men whose magnificent physical de¬
velopment may be seen in the photographs appearing in these
pages were very poor in physique and sub-normal in their
general condition, and their present superb physique and robust
constitution may he attributed entirely to these natural methods
of drawing out the best that is in a man at least in the physical
sense.
 468

16. —Figure Culture for Women.—The same may be said to

apply to the women depicted in a number of the illustrations
who owe their splendid figures, physical beauty and perfect
health to-day to this natural method of health and beauty
culture.
17. Boys' and Girls Ailments.—In cases of rickets, round
shoulders, debility, ansemia, wasting, and many of the weak¬
nesses and ailments to which the little folks are peculiarly liable,
the results have been most gratifying, and many children have
been saved from years of subsequent suffering and misery.
18. Insomnia, that terrible condition which has well been
called “ the vestibule of insanity,” and which is especially the
product of modern civilisation and mental rather than physical
labour, has proved itself more tractable to natural treatment by
physical movement than anything else.
The above statements have been verified by the most critical
journal in the world, Truth, whose editor sent a special investigator
to personally report upon the remarkable cures that were continually
being reported by those who had tried these natural methods of
regaining health and strength. The investigator ultimately bore
public testimony to the fact that personal investigation compelled
him to admit that actual “ cures were achieved in no less than 94
cases out of every hundred and great relief given in 99,” while, per¬
sonally, I believe that these figures might have been still higher but
for the impatience of many of those under treatment, who expected
in a few weeks something approximating to the miraculous.
Indeed, I go so far as to assert that practically every form of deadly
deisase, especially if taken in its earlier stages, can be checked and
overcome in its devastating' progress by these natural methods of
cellular reconstruction and evolution, and not merely some forms of
disease as suggested in “The Lancet.*’ No case, indeed, is beyond hope
except if the sufferer is figuratively if not literally a dying man, or is
prohibited by muscular atrophy or pain from carrying out these move =
ments. If the voluntary muscles cannot be moved or only used with
great pain, then such auxiliary methods of promoting what I may call
artificial movement as massage, electricity or hydropathy will, no doubt,
prove beneficial to re-establish the free and voluntary use of the patient’s
muscles, after which they no longer be necessary.

But. as I have said, in this subject doctors have yet a very great
deal to learn, and I say this modestly as an unqualified man should
to men who have chosen as their profession the science and art of
 469

healing sick and suffering humanity. As already observed, what I

would like to see is physical treatment by means of natural physical
movements alone made a special subject of study added to the present
curriculum of every medical student, and, even colleges opened for
exclusive study and practice in this subject, for those who desire to
specialise in it For in this matter it is fusion not fissure that is
needed.
I would like here to quote a short extract from a very interesting
article that I have just read in The World's Work from the pen of a
Mr. E. Wooton, in which he says truly :
“ A pure anatomist and physiologist has nothing experien-
tially that may guide him in the matter of choosing exercises.
Judging of the body’s actions merely as a student of the normal
and the natural, he is quite unfamiliar with the effects following
that which is distinctly abnormal—a perseved—in system of
training.”
For physical culture to become a really satisfactory science there
must be an intimate acquaintance with the training itself, and this
should be in harmony with the indications of physiological law.
Quite obviously medico-physical culture affords a fair field for
specialising to the qualified medical practitioner.
Prevention, of course, is the goal, and as the writer truly
adds:—
“If there is one subject on which human knowledge has
arrived at certitude—although not finality—it is in relation to
the influence on health of exercise, air, temperature, baths and
foods. These are, so to speak, objective agencies working
through physiological laws, and their application can, as a rule,
be made far more rationally—that is, with a surer knowledge
of need, and of result—than a doctor can treat a disease ”
And Dr. Fadcliffe adds : “ There are many other conditions
which might be mentioned where physical treatment is indicated.
It is the accurate and direct therapeutic application of exercise in
its many forms which is absolutely necessary to ensure a scientific
and well-balanced method of procedure. It will certainly replace
many bottles of medicine, and benefit the patient by Nature's
remedy
But I fail, I am sorry to say, to see even yet a really true, deep
and just appreciation in either The Lancet article or in Dr. Fad-
cliffe’s letter of just how and why physical movement, scientifically
 470

applied, will both cure and prevent disease. In fact, the physio¬
logical effect of such physical movement on cellular structure and
function has never yet been understood or even realised by medical
men, whose studies have only led them to observe the action of
medicine and other orthodox agents upon the body, and to judge
rather by clinical observation and results than by processes from
cause to effect. They see and admit the value of physical movement,
but have not probed yet the reason why.
Even an advanced medical man, like Dr. Padcliffe, cannot be
expected to distinguish between the action and influence of scientific
physical movement alone in stimulating cellular function, reproduc¬
tion and evolution, as distinct entirely from ordinary physical
exercise and methods of treatment that employ as aids and
auxiliaries electricity, hydrology, and passive massage, for his
studies and observations have been identified with methods of treat¬
ment embracing all these in combination. The value of scientific
and balanced physical movement alone, as I mean it, has not so far
been made clear to them.
It is because I have made the study of physical movement,
applied in a scientific way for the cure and prevention of disease, the
chief work of my life-time that, I think, the facts I am adducing in
this book will come as a startling revelation to medical men, and will
make clear to them, for the first time, just how and why such move¬
ment has achieved so great success and in such a variety of human
diseases and physical defects.
Passive massage as recommended and employed by Dr. Padcliffe,
while valuable, and indeed, essential in some cases to improve circu¬
lation in the part to which it is applied or give artificial movement
locally only to the cells in that part to break down adhesions, or to
bring back lost power to an atrophied muscle by affording artificial
movement to the cells without compensation, has no such deep-search¬
ing influence on the great involuntary and cellular man as has
physical movement applied scientifically, because its effect is only
local and affects only the voluntary cells and nerve cells in that part.
Massage is valuable where a voluntary muscle has become so weak
that it cannot be moved at the direction of a patient’s will, but
conscious physical movement alone will develop all his voluntary and
involuntary muscles and cells as I explain in a previous chapter, and
cause all the cells to multiplv more rapidly and reproduce better and
still better cells. In fact, in passive massage the masseur derives
far more health benefit in every way than his patient, for the latter
gets little or no compensation for the effort but the former does.
 471

Electricity will, we know, cause the muscles of a dead frog to

twitch, but it cannot stimulate the beating of the heart, or increase
respiration, or beneficially influence the millions of involuntary cells
in the body. This equally applies to massage. Conscious physical
movement can and does.
So with wet packs and hydrotherapy in general. They are
valuable for determining circulation to some local area of the body,
to repair injured or inflamed tissue more rapidly, or for dispersing
congestion, but they do not and cannot set all the cells of the body
moving, multiplying and developing in vigour and power as does the
physical movement of the voluntary muscles.
Natural methods of moving all the muscles by conscious
and willed effort, except where there is too great pain or
the muscle has become so atrophied as to be practically
powerless, are the best, and, indeed, the only methods of
developing not only the voluntary muscles themselves, but
when carried out in perfect balance, movements can be applied
so as to develop and increase both in number and vigour, the
living cells of any or every system in the body, improve their
functioning and actually rebuild the human body in whole or in
part, as necessary, because it is the only way to supply that move¬
ment to all these cells which is essential to their healthy existence,
to surround him with a hygienic environment, to eliminate all waste
and poisonous matter, and to bring the whole into such balanced
strength as to conquer and defy disease.
This is my conception of the only kind of movement that can
truly be called scientific physical exercise, and it is just such move¬
ment that must be provided if doctors are to conquer, prevent and
eradicate disease. It is movement of this kind, accurately and
scientifically applied, that few doctors as yet understand or know
how to apply successfully to a weak or diseased body, because they
have not yet devoted sufficient and serious study to the subject. I
am putting all the facts before them here so that they can see for
themselves how great a study such a subject presents to them, and to
explain to them the true reason why of what, I think, I may almost
call its amazing and miraculous success over medicine and orthodox
therapeutics. It is a more far-reaching study even than medicine,
and it offers prospects of reward to medical men far greater than any
they have yet had in their many admitted victories and triumphs
over disease.
But all physical movement for the cure or prevention of disease
must be carried out in an absolutely scientific way. For this reason
 472

I am quite in accord with the writer in The Lancet when he

expresses the desire that it should not be left to those who might carry
it out unscientifically, as, I am afraid, is too often the case at present.
The prescription of remedial and curative movements is quite as
serious a matter as the prescription of medicine, if not more so, and
the gravest danger will be incurred to millions unless it is prescribed
and applied in a strictly scientific way.
Under any circumstances to think that the best results can ever
be obtained from these methods, whether prescribed by medical men
or others, unless they are prescribed and employed by those who have
long and seriously studied the subject in all its phases, and who have
had experience of its wonderful possibilities, both in their own
person and in theory and practice, and who are quite certain that
they are really practising and prescribing scientific and curative or
preventive physical movement as distinct from physical movement
that is not scientific, as in ordinary everyday work or games or even
commonly accepted ideas of physical training that are erroneous
even in their conception and of little value for remedial or preventive
purposes.
This, indeed, brings me back to the leading article in The Lancet
already referred to. A portion of it deals with attempts that are
being made and expected to have wonderful results in the treatment
of disabled and debilitated soldiers by what is called “ the agricul¬
tural cure/’ According to The Lancet, “ The agricultural colonies at
Port Villez, Juvisy, Martillac, Milan, Poseia, and Palermo, have
already proved what Professor Silvio Rolando, of Genoa, calls the
veritable resurrection of the soldier during the agricultural cure.
In agricultural work a great variety of exercises is possible all day
long.”
Now, all of us must admit that fresh country air and farm work,
with the change from the excitement and allurements of town life or
the frenzy of war conditions to pastoral conditions and healthy re¬
freshing sleep must exercise a healthful influence, but to expect it to
bring about what Professor Silvio Rolando, of Genoa, calls “ the
veritable resurrection of the soldier,” is, I think, an exaggerated
claim, for the physical effort expended in agricultural work is
distinct from scientific physical exercise, as it gives no compensa¬
tion, or, indeed, physical exercise, as distinct from work which is
not intended to benefit the body but to accomplish a certain task.
Between the two there is just as much difference as between food and
medicine.
Here, again, is evidence that even in these quarters there is no
 473

exact conception of what is strictly scientific and curative exercise

or what its great potentialities. Movements that are carried out in
a sub-conscious way, as in agriculture, without the maximum of
physical eftort and mental concentration on the muscles or parts
moved, can have no therapeutic value from an exercise point of view.
The intense physical movement of only one set of muscles in the
conscious and concentrated way I have described would be more
beneficial than long hours in, say, guiding a plough with the mind
engaged on the work being done instead of being concentrated
entirely on the bodily parts being moved. This is no more effective
for curative purposes than to quote The Lancet's own words,
“ physical treatment carelessly carried out, motions without aim
repeated without energy, and soon forsaken as being without interest
or, at all events, leaving a sense of bordom and insincerity.”
Light, natural physical movements done solely for the purpose
of exercise and carried out with full mental concentration on the
muscles moved and with the maximum of physical power will always
be found to be of a far higher curative value than sub-conscious,
automatic, or semi-conscious physical movements as in agricultural
or any other physical work, in which the mind may be directed
altogether away from the movement being performed. Such move¬
ments applied in balance and due ratio as to many of the voluntary
muscles as possible provides the life-movement essential to the very
life of the millions of cells in the body to their nutrition, sanitation,
propagation and evolution. Through the conscious direction and
movement of the voluntary muscles of the body in balance we alone
can build up the body in such balanced strength that it will be able
to overcome existent disease or resist and prevent the first encroach¬
ments or the most violent assaults of disease from without or the
weakness within that imperils the bodily citadel, and which, if
neglected, betrays it to disease. To do this it is necessary first to
locate exactly where there is loss of balance and to strengthen it.
For, as I have already said, loss of balance somewhere in the
body, with resultant diminished resistant power, throws open the
gateway of the human citadel to disease, and long generations of
civilised life have caused most of us to-day to be afflicted through
ancestry and birth, as well as by modern conditions of life, with
some disturbance of balance. In some this imperfect balance is
more marked than others, and such are, of course, more liable to
disease.
Before this loss of balance can be restored, it is necessary to dis¬
cover exactly where the loss of balance is. That implies the greatest
 474

accuracy of diagnosis and long study and experience in prescribing

just the exact movement and in the exact way to the exact part or
parts that will bring back the unfit or diseased body to a condition
of perfectly balanced strength. For this reason, therefore, agricul¬
tural work or ordinary physical labour of any kind has, and can
have, no actual curative value, because it does not and cannot restore
balance to the unbalanced body as it does not apply to unbalanced
part or parts, but is liable to disturb it still further. Physical
labour is not physical exercise applied and carried out with a
distinct and specific object, but is, as I have said, physical effort
without compensation, and in the case of a sick person may be even
worse than valueless and dangerous, just like medicine taken without
medical prescription. Physical labour cannot cure or prevent
disease, but often causes it. Were it not so, physical labourers, even
agricultural workers, would not have to consult medical men so
often.
There is just one other point in the letter to The Lancet under
notice which I would like to refer, because, although it has no direct
bearing on the subject under treatment in this chapter, it indirectly
affects the great army of human sufferers whom it is the chief aim
and end of all of us to assist and relieve. It is a matter, however,
in which I can only venture my own honest opinion, but upon which
I feel acutely, for it refers to another of the bonds of conservatism
and traditional etiquette which hampers medical men from render¬
ing still greater services to humanity, and is, I know, irksome and
galling to many worthy and distinguished members of the profession.
If the object of the medical profession is, as it should be, to do
the greatest good to the greatest number, it cannot continue to
ignore the great possibilities of newspaper publicity and the ramify¬
ing network of postal communications that offer to every medical
man new avenues to greater fields of service, and which would widen
and extend his present parochial and limited horizon reminiscent of
a feudal period and the parish pump. In The Lancet, Dr. Radcliffe
—still clinging to an etiquette that is altogether out of place in these
democratic days—finishes up his letter with a sly dig at advertising,
but, to-day, publicity has attained a dignity that robs it of much
that was formerly adduced against it, and I see no reason whatever
why British professors of medicine should not follow the example of
their brethren in America and elsewhere, and so place their know¬
ledge, experience and discoveries at the benefit of the whole world
instead of restricting these, as at present, to a comparatively limited
few in their own neighbourhood and district.
 475

There should be nothing infra dig in a medical man enlisting

the agency of the greatest power in the world in announcing any
method of treatment or discovery for the alleviation or eradication
of human suffering. On the other hand, it has everything in its
favour, and it would provide an international consulting room for
medical men that might bring new life and hope to thousands and in
the defence of humanity against an enemy that recognises no
frontiers.
In my own modest way, because untramelled by professional
etiquette, the press and the post have enabled me to do everlasting
good to suffering men and women in every part of the globe, who
might never have received relief otherwise from years of pain and
suffering, and, instead of decrying the lay press, I and ailing
humanity, to the contrary, must ever feel under an unpayable debt
of gratitude to it, as thousands upon thousands who have been
relieved and cured by the methods described alone, have gladly borne
testimony to me in person or in correspondence by post. I see no
reason whatever why qualified men should continue to curtail and
restrict their good offices to humanity by refusing any longer to avail
themselves of such an agency for doing public good as I have per¬
sonally proved it to be.
However, to return to the subject of physical movement, in a
scientific way, as distinct from the ideas of physical treatment held
by medical men generally and The Lancet writer, which show how
little the medical profession even yet understands this subject. To
make myself quite clear I am compelled again to reiterate some of the
salient points already referred to elsewhere, but this, I hope, will be
excused, as I am very anxious to prevent any confusion or conflict of
ideas. Let me endeavour then, briefly, and, I hope, quite clearly, to
put my case for what I mean by the really scientific application of
natural movements for the cure as well as for the prevention of
disease in the proverbial nutshell as follows :—
1. Life is movement. Without muscular movement and
the circulation of the blood, the living cells of the body would
get neither nourishment nor air, and would be poisoned by
deadly carbonic acid gas. They would die, like ourselves,
whom they represent in miniature.
2. The slightest movement of a voluntary muscle brings an
increased rush of blood to that muscle to carry away the waste
and to bring supplies of nourishment and air to make good that
waste. All physical movement achieves this obiect. It will
 476

be seen, therefore, how important a factor is the circulation of

the blood in health or in disease.
3. This same movement also causes all the involuntary cells
of the various organs and systems to move automatically, to
prepare, transport and distribute this nourishment and air
which are the prime necessities of life, and to eliminate the
poisonous gas and waste matter which would be fatal to life if
retained, as I have shown in my chapter “ What is Physical
Movement ?55
4. Therefore, in some form, movement is the prime essential
of life. The movement of one or more voluntary muscles in any
part of the body immediately calls upon the heart to pump the
blood faster to that part to carry away the waste and poisonous
matter caused by this movement, and to replace the materials
destroyed and repair the waste. The action of the heart is
gradually strengthened by this natural movement, and it then
is able to force the blood faster through the various channels of
circulation to every part of the body, while this natural move¬
ment, also, by quickening or deepening respiration, increases
the oxygenation of the blood, relieves it of the poisonous
carbonic acid gas so injurious and even fatal to animal life.
Massage, electricity or hydropathy does not improve the heart’s
action in this way, but only draws the blood locally to the spot
where it is applied in greater quantity for a time, without any
increase of force either in that spot or in any other part of the
body.
5. But movement may be performed by the conscious direc¬
tion of the brain or performed automatically or sub-consciously.
So long as it is performed consciously—that is, by a direct com¬
mand from the brain through the nervous system to the muscles,
the cells of body, nerve and brain are set and kept moving, and
are developed and evolved continuously by this conscious move¬
ment. The moment a conscious act becomes a sub-conscious
one. all these cells cease to develop and evolve further than
required for the performance of that act.
6. Only so long as the mind is fixed on the muscles or parts
moved do the particular cells employed in those parts, and the
cells in the brain and nervous system also employed continue to
develop, multiply and increase in number and efficiency on a
continuously ascending plane. In other words, only conscious
physical movement keeps on increasing the cells both in number
and efficiency by continuously evolving better cells in all the
parts brought into action by any physical movement.
7. This means that where the cells in the brain, the nerve
cells and the muscle cells, involved in a movement that is carried
out without the mind being concentrated and directed to the
muscles or parts to be moved, cellular progress and development
automatically ceases, as in ordinary work or play which has
become automatic and sub-conscious by reiteration, and can
even be accomplished while the mind is occupied on something
else beside the work or feat to be performed. When all the cells
directly and locally employed have arrived at that stage they
remain stationary. This is what I mean when I say there is
no compensation for sub-conscious physical effort,
8. But I have shown that the act of one muscle or group of
muscles brings into play also millions of cells in all the other
systems and parts of the body automatically, i.e., sets and keeps
all these moving also, so that when a voluntary muscular move¬
ment is no longer performed with the mind on the muscles or
parts moved, not only do the cells actually employed cease to
receive compensation and suffer from arrested development, but
all these millions of other associated cells also similarly suffer,
and make no progress beyond the point necessary for the per¬
formance of the particular feat or task to be accomplished.
9. So that work or play performed automatically has no
value in increasing cellular efficiency or breeding better cells in
body and brain beyond the standard needed to accomplish some
feat or do some allotted task. Neither physical labour, there¬
fore, or sports and games go on improving cells by multiplica¬
tion and evolution beyond a certain point. The benefit, too, to
the voluntary muscles is only to those muscles and parts actually
moved, while many of the involuntary cells everywhere in the
bady are only called upon to keep moving sufficiently to supply
the demands of the directing cells of the brain, the nerve-cells
and the muscle cells actually engaged, which usually represent
only some of the more than 500 muscles of the body.
10. Now, on the other hand, what I call scientific physical
movement is, in the first place, movement carried out with the
mind exclusively engaged on the muscles and parts moved for
the time being. Physical movement is not scientific if it is
carried out sub-consciously or automatically, whether in play or
in work, or in what is by courtesy sometimes called physical
training.
 478

11. Secondly, only simple and natural movements are

employed—the movements that Nature instinctively implants
in the healthy infant to keep it healthy. By combining and
collating and regulating our present-day knowledge of the
possibilities of these primitive and natural physical move¬
ments, and “ Bovrilising ” them into a compressed and
“ tabloid ” form compatible with civilisation and modern
methods of life, these methods are no mere man-invented system
of physical therapeutics, but are rather my discovery of how to
supply and apply these natural and ancient movements and
agents which kept primitive man strong, healthy and disease-
free, for the cure and prevention of disease in an easy, agree¬
able and highly concentrated form to-day. In other words,
these methods are Nature’s remedies applied scientifically for
the first time, and all I claim is to have devised certain move¬
ments and combinations of movements that give in a few
minutes the benefits from the all-day and all-round physical
active life of primitive man.
12. Now, when these movements are scientifically carried
out, they must be done with the utmost vigour of contraction
and full and equal relaxation, thus increasing (1) the nutrition
of the muscle cells and nerve-cells of the voluntary muscles
moved and the complete removal of all waste and poisonous
matter that if uneliminated most freely would lead to unfitness
and disease, and (2) equally of all the involuntary cells of every
system and part of the body as I have shown. (There is no
danger to the organically sound person and free from any
physical weakness, such as a tendency to rupture, in putting this
maximum effort into every movement, because he cannot put
more into the effort than he possesses. But for the organically
unsound or physically defective it is advisable that the effort
exerted should be graduated by easy stages from the beginning.)
13. Thirdly, when I speak of “ conscious ” physical move¬
ment I mean emphatically that the mind must be concentrated
solely on the muscles and parts being moved at the moment, and
not drawn aivay from it to anything else. This is why I do not
believe in musical drills except as play, because the mind is
diverted from the muscles and parts being moved. It is also
why I say that physical work games, sports amd pastimes are
not scientific movement, because the mind is more centred
on the work or the game or the feat to be performed than upon
the muscles being employed. And in saying this I speak of
 479

that which I do know from long and varied experience and not
from text-books.
14. In other words, the importance of this conscious and
concentrated effort upon the muscles moved means this. By
putting in the maximum of effort into each contraction a con¬
tinuous development and betterment of the cells is maintained,
because the effort, of course, is increasing though imperceptibly,
as the strength of the individual also increases and the effect
upon the cells is cumulative. It is much as in the case of
Milo’s cells, which were continuously developed by lifting the
growing calf from birth until he could lift a full-grown ox. The
daily progress, though scarcely perceptible, was Cumulative,
because a greater effort was being made daily, though also im¬
perceptibly, and new and stronger cells were being evolved on
an ever-ascending scale until the feat of lifting the ox was
accomplished But the moment the ox ceased to increase in
weight, and only the same effort was required to repeat the feat,
the process of cellular evolution ceased. This is what happens
in all sub-conscious physical movement where a task or a feat
has to be accomplished, and once accomplished, the cells cease
to develop and improve further, and will even degenerate if the
task or feat be discontinued for a time.
15. Conscious physical movement as I define it, viz., with
the mind wholly centred on the muscles moved, and not on the
feat or task being done, means the permanent and continuous
evolution of the cells until the highest attainable maximum of
efficiency is reached, and even then the cells, by this conscious
effort, are maintained in this 100 per cent., efficiency, old and
feeble cells being “ weeded out ” and only the youngest and
strongest allowed to exist.
Had Milo put his whole energy daily into the effort neces¬
sary to lift an imaginary and growing calf until it was a full-
grown ox, the evolution of the cells would have continued even
after the hypothetical ox had ceased to increase in weight, until
the living cells had reached their very maximum of strength and
efficiency, and so long as he continued to make* his maximum
physical effort with full concentration of the mind on the
muscles the cells would have been maintained at their highest
possible standard of efficiency, because his mind was not being
diverted to the actual feat he was performing, and cellular
evolution continued until the absolute maximum of efficiency
was attained and maintained.
 480

In sub-conscious movement, as in work or flay, there is

merely cellular evolution until the quality of cells necessary to
ferform a certain work or feat is obtained, when they will
become stationary and degenerate if the feat or work is not con¬
tinued. Conscious muscular movement is fermanent and geo¬
metrically frogressive cellular evolution until ferfection is
attained and maintained.
15. Physical movement, scientifically applied, again, does
not call into play only a certain number of muscles, but prac¬
tically all the voluntary muscles are brought into action in turn,
and moved and developed in balance, whereas agriculture or
any physical labour or sports develops some muscles and
neglects others, which causes both disturbance of balance not
only (1) between muscle-cells and nerve-cells of the voluntary
muscles and parts moved and similar cells in unmoved or
unequally moved muscles and parts of the voluntary system, but
also (2) between the moved and the unmoved or unequally moved
cells of the involuntary systems of the body, and, again, (3)
between all these respective cells in the internal and involuntary
systems and the superficial and voluntary cells. It is this dis¬
turbance of balance of some fart or farts of the body that
diminishes resistant fower and leads to disease, and as all farts
are inter-defendent and inter-related, all must be equal in
balanced strength if a body is to be disease-froof, because what
affects one fart affects the whole to some extent.
16. Scientific physical movement, on the other hand, by
consciously bringing practically each and all of the voluntary
muscles of the body in proper order and sequence into balanced
movement, with the mind fully concentrated on the muscle or
muscles being moved, sets all the involuntary muscles and cells
both of bodv and brain moving to their very maximum of effort
and in perfect balance, thus developing all these cells of every
system and part of the body to their utmost capacity, vigour
and reproductive power, the cells, that is, upon which the per¬
formance of function depend. It gives continuous and pro¬
gressive compensation to these cells in return for movement,
whereas games or sports or physical work in which the move¬
ment is or becomes sub-conscious, only develop the cells to the
point necessary to perform the feat or the work and then the
cells cease to develop further, while some cells again are com¬
paratively neglected altogether.
17. Physical movement scientifically applied not only thus
 481

restores external and internal balance and builds the body and
brain in symmetrical and harmonious strength everywhere, but
it builds up a new and better body in any or every part as
desired, by what I have fully described elsewhere as a process
of cellular evolution. In other words, the natural movements>
being scientifically applied and carried out consciously, and not
haphazard or sub-consciously, u weed out ” weak, old and infirm
cells unable to keep pace with the increased demand put upon
them, and so are literally worked to death, only the fittest and
youngest surviving, through being able to live such a strenuous
life of movement. Thus, by scientific movement, we can actually
build up an entirely new organ or system, or, in time, an abso¬
lutely new and better physical body, including a new and better
brain, with healthier and more active and stronger cells in
balance, keeping them always youthful and longer youthful,
vigorous, and in their highest efficiency, by the physical move¬
ment essential to life that maintains them only in their prime,
and will not tolerate the existence of weak or unfit cells or cells
too old to become diseased, or to combat and conquer disease
germs from without.

May I just add, in conclusion, that I shall always be pleased to

place any medical man in possession of information on any point
regarding the employment of physical movements in a remedial or
curative sense which is not still clear to them. I have no desire to
dogmatise nor to assume an oracular tone, but I am most anxious
that every medical man should divert his mind to a study which the
medical profession has admittedly paid but slight attention in the
past, and which I personallv have found a most fascinating one, and
one, I believe, of incalculable benefit to suffering humanity. It is,
indeed, as Dr. Radeliffe and The Lancet agree, too precious to be
exploited by quacks and charlatans to the danger of the sick and the
suffering.
Life of the Author as told in Photographs.

Series of Photos
showing the Author at different
periods of his varied career.
These are presented here for the
encouragement of the youth of
the nation, and to show what can
be accomplished by anyone who
patiently and conscientiously fol¬
lows out the methods described
in this book.

W
The Author at the age of 10.
Delicate as a boy; he became
enthused with a fervour for
physical development, after seeing
the statues and pictures of ancient
and classical heroes in the art
galleries of Europe, and lived ii
afterwards with one ambition Photo taken at the age of 18, showing
only, to become as well-developed the remarkable increase of development
and strong as they were. in the intervening eight years.
482
 V.
Photo taken at 21, showing great biceps and triceps development of arm. It was about
this period that the Author first appeared in London at the Royal Aquarium, accepting
Samson’s challenge to the world, and defeating the famous pupil of Samson—Cyclops,
and subsequently Samson himself, for wagers of £100 and £1,000 respectively.
484
 VI.

Author at about the same age, showing symmetrical development and balanced
physique of back, shoulders and limbs.
485
 VII.
Sandow as Gladiator.

Aged 23. Reproduced from the painting made of him by the famous artist,
Mr. Aubrey Hunt, who first met Sandow near Genoa, and was struck by his
remarkable physique. It was Mr. Hunt who mentioned Samson’s challenge to*
Sandow, and the latter left for London on the same evening to accept it.
486
 *

VIII.

Another photo taken at about the same age.

1ST
 IX.

The Author about a year later. A study showing 'contraction of biceps and
flexors of forearm.

488
 X.

Photo-study of the Author at 25.

489
 XI.

Statuesque pose, from photo at about 26, with all muscles relaxed
 XII.

The Author at 27.

1!)1
 XIII.

At 30, with muscles in contraction.

492
 XV.

Photo at 37, with muscles relaxed.

494
 XVI.

Two years later, at 39.

495
 XVII.

Photo of Author in Semi-Relaxed

attitude. Taken at 40.
XVIII.

Another study at 40, with muscles contracted.

4!)fi
 XIX.

The Author as he appeared about 42, showing back muscles contracted.

497
 XX.

Two studies of the Author at 43. Note development of abdominal muscles in photo on
left and triceps development of arms.
498
 XXI.

As He is To-Day.
Striking photo of the Author at 52, confirming his statement in this book that muscle,
once built up, remains, to a great extent, always, provided the body is only given a
few minutes daily exercise to maintain balance when once it is established.
The original Farnese Hercules, to The Author in a similar pose. Many say
whom the Author has been com¬ that the Author’s proportions are the more
pared. The accompanying photo symmetrical of the two.
shows—

500
HINTS FOR THE PREVENTION
OF DISEASE AND EXERCISES
THAT WILL HELP.
 503

CHAPTER

Hints for the Prevention of Disease and

Exercises that wili help.

The exercises given here are only for normal men and women
who are organically sound and suffering from no disease or weakness
tending towards disease. To make certain of this it is always best
to consult your own medical man at the beginning’, lest there be
some latent or inherited weakness entirely unsuspected, as was the
case with the million and more rejected, after medical examination,
for military service, most of whom were entirely unsuspicious of
any physical weakness whatever. These exercises are only meant
to be used as a preventive against disease or weakness tending to
disease.
Those who are not organically sound, or who are suffering from
any actual illness or disease or weakness towards disease, should not
use these exercises, but should have exercises specially selected,
prescribed and graduated to suit their particular illness, disease or
weakness, and this either by a medical man who is familiar with
curative exercise treatment or on the advice of an expert in curative
physical culture to suit their individual condition and requirements.
The number of movements given here in each exercise, with the
increase suggested at the end of every three months, apply only in
normal conditions of life, but where there is excessive mental work,
great anxiety, grief, loss of sleep, or any other abnormal condition
causing great expenditure of nervous energy, which sometimes
happens, the number of movements may be curtailed so as to
preserve balance between physical and mental expenditure. My
chapter on “ Neurasthenia " deals with this matter very thoroughly.
Before commencing these exercises, every reader will find it a
good plan to take a set of measurements and mark same on chart
which is given at the close of this chapter. By keeping this chart
posted up to date at the end of each period, the reader will thus have
a record of his progress. This is to be recommended in every case,
 504

as it will give the reader greater interest in noting increase of

measurements every three months, and improving development of
physique as the exercises are continued. A photographic record
with photos taken in the nude or wearing loin-cloth only or ordinary
bathing pants of this progress will show the astonishing improvement
made in twelve months, and, again, at the end of every succeeding
year.
1. Study Anatomical Chart herewith and learn the names
of all the superficial muscles indicated on it. Repeat the name
of the principal muscles used as you carry out each movement.
2. Perform each movement as if against great resistance,
so as to increase force of contraction and with full mental con¬
centration on the muscle or muscles being moved, and keep
the mind from wandering. Contraction should be maintained
during each movement and the whole number of movements to
be made in any exercise. Relax the muscles only betAveen
exercises (not between movements in exercise) except in the
one relaxation exercise specified where all the muscles are
relaxed.
3. Remember that it is not so much the number of move¬
ments made, but the amount of contraction put into each
movement that counts. This enhances the benefit of each
contraction by assisting in the elimination of the waste caused
by the contraction and the bringing up of greater supplies of
nutriment by the blood circulation.
4. By concentrating the mind fully upon the muscle or
muscles moved, the cells in the motor areas of the brain
associated are also developed. This helps to deA5 6 7elop also will
power, and to give you control over the voluntary muscles and
through them over the nervous system also.
5. Do the movements exactly as explained, and for the
exact number of times given for at least the first three months
You may, if you feel very weak, do less, but never do more.
After three months they may be increased by five each and
similarly every subsequent three months until they can be
carried out not more than 50 times.
6. It is best to use only one arm or leg at a time, except
where otherwise advised, as this enables you to concentrate
more fully and put more effort into the contraction. This
 505

means quicker and better results and tends to develop and

strengthen the heart gradually.
o %j

7. Don’t be in too great a hurry or grow impatient. It

took me years of concentration and conscious effort to buildup
y ^ ^ ai i cl you must not expect to build up a disease-
free body in a few weeks or even months.
8. Do not feel alarmed if after the movements at first you
feel stiffness or pain. This is usually only muscular pain
through weakness and disuse of certain muscles, and it will pass
away*
as you o
grow stronger.
o

9. Do not introduce “substitutes for any of the move¬

ments here given, as they are all selected after long experience
and observation.
10. The best time to carry out the exercises is in the
morning immediately on rising and before breakfast. Those
who feel too faint or weak for this might have a cup of tea or
coffee or hot milk first with a biscuit, but on no account should
exercise be undertaken for at least two hours after a full meal.
11. Where, however, this is not convenient or against
personal inclination, the evening may be chosen and the
exercises performed before retiring to bed, unless that interferes
with sleep.
12. The bath should follow the exercises, cold or tepid in
the morning and warm in the evening. As far as possible
the movements should be carried out at the same time daily,
Sundays excepted, for regularity and continuity add to their
value.
13. If possible, the exercises should be carried out
stripped to the waist, but a singlet may be worn that allows
plenty of room for the free play of the muscles around the
shoulder. If convenient, it is a good plan to perform
the exercises in front of a mirror, as it is helpful to watch
the actual working of the muscles and to see them develop.
14. At first, the exercises may be divided into two lots,
and carried out on alternate days ; half being done one dav
and half the next, the only exception being the breathing
exercises, which should be done every day. Exercises should
be eithei divided equally and can be selected at discretion of
reader.
A very striking example of physical development in balance as obtainable by these exercises.
Little prospects of disease germs invading such a body.
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 508

Exercise 1. Stand erect, heels together, toes outwards, chest

forward. Upper arm pressed to side and remaining stationary
in this position while the lower arm is carrying out the
movements. Arm slightly forward, fist closed, knuckles
behind. Place right hand on left biceps. Then contract left
arm, raising dumb-bell to shoulder, but keeping upper arm
close to side and unmoved. Return to first position and
repeat movement 10 times, keeping mind concentrated solely
on biceps of left arm during the series of movements. Return
to original position and repeat with right arm, feeling con¬
traction with left hand. Perform 10 times. Principal muscle
brought into play and to be concentrated on, biceps
of arm.

Exercise 2. The same movement with forearm reverse knuckles

of fist to front. Bring arm, being moved a little forward of
body this time, to enable you to catch hold of the triceps of
the other arm with free hand to feel and note its contraction.
Raise fist to shoulder as before, without moving upper arm,
keeping knuckles in front, straighten out again and repeat
with each arm 10 times, first feeling contraction of triceps;
study contraction in mirror. This movement develops the
triceps of the arm as shown in chart. Principal muscle brought
into play and to be concentrated upon, triceps of arm.

Exercise 3. Stand as in previous exercise, with arm bent at elbow,

palm in front, and fist raised level with shoulder. Feel flexors
of left forearm (see chart) with right hand to note muscles
contracted. Bend first forward and downward from wrist only,
keeping forearm rigid. Raise fist again to former position and
repeat 10 times. Return to first position as before and repeat
movement with right arm 10 times, feeling contraction with
left hand. Principal muscles brought into and to be con¬
centrated upon, flexors of forearm.

Exercise 4. Stand erect as before, both arms hanging by side,

knuckles in front. Place right hand on muscle of front
forearm, marked in chart, to note contraction. Bend
left fist upwards from wrist only, keeping left arm fully
stretched out at side of body, and then return fist to original
position. Repeat 10 times. Same movement with right arm,.
 509

feeling contraction with left hand also 10 times. Principal

muscle brought into play and to be concentrated upon,
extensors of forearm.

Exercise 5.Stand erect as before, but with left arm bent at

elbow, knuckles out, fist at shoulder. Place right hand on
left shoulder at muscle marked Anterior and Posterior Deltoid.
Now push arm straight upwards over head to full extent as if
pushing up heavy weight with all your strength. Bring arm
back to original position as if pulling against great resistance
whilst doing so. Pepeat movement 10 times. Same movement
10 times for right arm, feeling shoulder muscles with left hand.
Principal muscles brought into play and to be concentrated
upon, Deltoids.

Exercise 6. Erect position as before. Arm hanging loosely at

side. Place right hand on top of large muscle marked
Trapezine in chart between shoulder and neck just above
collar bone. Push shoulder forward and downward without
moving body or arm except at shoulder. Repeat 10 times
and also same with right shoulder feeling contraction with left
hand. Principal muscle brought into play and to be con¬
centrated upon, Trapazius.

Stand erect, heels together, toes pointing outwards,

and hands on hips. Elbows back, chest raised.
Eves
*• front and head well back. Then tense muscles
of neck and press chin downward slowly on to chest.
Then press head backwards as far as possible as if
against strong resistance. Take one hand from hip
and feel contraction of muscles at nape of neck or
watch in mirror. Movement to be performed 10
times.
 510

Exercise 8. Position as in last. Press the head slowly to the

extreme right and downwards towards right shoulder
as if against strong resistant power, and then bring
head slowly over to extreme left side in the same
way as per diagram. Release right hand and feel
contraction of muscles at side of neck with it, and
then repeat with left alternately. Keep muscles
of neck (marked Sterno-Cleido-Mastoid in chart)
thoroughly tensed right through each movement,
and carry out each 10 times. Principal muscles
brought into play and to be concentrated upon,
Sterno-Cleido Mastoid.

Exercise 9. Stand as in Exercise 8. Without moving the shoulders,

turn head as far to the right as possible, and then
to the left in the same way, as per diagram, keeping
muscles tensed all the time as if moving against
great resistance. Hands may be released from hips
to feel contraction of Sterno-Cleido-Mastoid muscles
as shown in chart, or watch in mirror. Principal
muscles engaged and to be concentrated upon, the
Sterno-Cleido-Mastoid.

Exercise 10. Stand with feet apart, left foot slightly in advance
of right, and left arm fully extended horizontally,
as per diagram, marked Pectoralis Major on
chart. Bring left hand slowly down across front
of body, slightly bending elbow, as if pulling
down heavy weight. Then let hand travel back
to level of shoulder again. Repeat 10 times
and do same with right. Feel large chest muscle
market Pectoralis Major on chart with free hand
or keep free hand on hips and watch in mirror.
Principal muscle brought into play and to be
concentrated upon, Pectoralis Major.
 511

Exercise 11. Stand feet apart, as in movement No. 10, with right
hand on hip. Press left arm slowly (1) backwards
behind back. (2) downwards, and (3) upwards
towards right hip and slightly bending elbow
when raising behind back to hip as per diagram.
Return to position and repeat 10 times. Same
with right arm afterwards. Note contraction
of Latissimus Dorsi muscles, as shown in chart,
or watch in mirror. Principal muscles used and
to be concentrated upon, Latissimus Dorsi as
shown in anatomical chart.

Exercise 12. Stand erect, heels together, chest advanced, knuckles

downwards, and arms
extended, sideways in line
with shoulders as per dia¬
gram 1. Raise shoulders
to dotted line in diagram 1,
then bend arms at elbow
as in diagram 2, letting
shoulder drop again dur¬
ing the bending of the
arms. Then, while stretch-
i n g arms to original
position, raise shoulders to
dotted line as in diagram
once more. Before be¬
ginning to bend arms again relax muscles of the shoulder, and
allow shoulder to drop as in first position. In other words,
raise and lower shoulders alternately as arms are being bent
and straightened. Repeat movement 10 times, watching
contraction in mirror. Principal muscles used and to
be concentrated upon, the Biceps, Triceps, Deltoids and
Trapezius, as marked on anatomical chart.
Exercise 13. Stand quite easy, toes at an angle of 45 degrees,
arms hanging by sides. Draw in abdomen and raise chest, at
the same time pressing out the muscles marked Latissimus
Dorsi and Serratus Magnus on chart, the former running from
above the waist at back behind the arms and below7 the armpit,
so that the muscles force the arms outwrards as if a wedge had
been driven between each arm and the side of the body, or, in
 512

other words, these back and side muscles are brought under
the armpits and show clearly from the front. See photo of
author showing chest expansion in chapter on “ The Machinery
of National Physical Training ” (opposite page 241). Repeat
10 times. This is muscular chest expansion, and the breathing
must be natural and normal. Principal muscles : Latissimus
Dorsi and Serratus Magnus.
Exercise 14. Stand straight, arms hanging by sides, knees
braced. Bend over to left side from hips only as far
as possible, at the same time bringing right hand
well up under armpit, stretching left arm down as
far as possible. Then bend over sideways from hips
only on the right side, trying to touch side of leg as
far down as possible, and bringing left fist to
armpit. Repeat movement 10 times. The prin¬
cipal muscle here employed is the Obliquus
Abdominis (see chart) upon which the mind should
be fully concentrated. The biceps, triceps and
deltoid muscles are also brought into play.

Exercise 15. Lie flat on back, legs close together and straight?
toes pointed forward, arms stretched full length behind the
head. Inhale deeply through the nostrils and raise the upper
part of the body into a sitting position. Do not stop, but
continue bending forward till the finger tips reach beyond
the toes, as per diagram, then exhale. Return to previous
position, inhaling. Keep head between arms throughout the
movement. If you cannot do this movement at first, place toes
beneath weight so as to get leverage. The principal muscles
used and to be concentrated upon are the Rectus Abdominis
and the Erector Spime (see chart). Repeat 10 times.

l 2
 513

Exercise 16. Lie fiat on back, arms fully stretched out behind
and with hands underneath head. Heels and head both raised
slightly from the ground. Raise the right leg until it is at right
angles to the body as per diagram 1. Then lower right leg
without touching floor, at the same time raising left. The
exercise should be done slowly and not with any jerking
movement, the one leg being lowered as the other is raised.
Repeat 10 times. Then perform the same movements
simultaneously with both legs as per diagram 2, and repeat 10
times. The principal muscles used are the Rectus Abdominis
(see chart), upon which concentrate the mind.
Exercise 17. Stand in erect position, chest raised, heels together,
toes pointing out. Place both hands on Gluteus Maximus
muscle as shown in chart, and push middle part of the body
for ward, returning to original position, keeping upper part of
body and legs quite still and only moving middle part of body
forwards and backwards. Repeat 10 times. Concentrate mind
on principal muscle brought into play, the Gluteus Maximus.
Exercise 18. Stand easy, and then tense large muscles in front of
thigh of left leg by bracing or stiffening knee backwards and
feeling muscle in front of thigh contracting with left hand.
Repeat same movement with right thigh and right hand,
and then with both thighs feeling contraction with one hand on
each thigh. Principal muscles brought into play, the Quadri¬
ceps Extensor as shown on chart, and mind should be kept
fixed on it during movement. Repeat each of these movements
10 times.
Exercise 19. Stand beside a chair, grasping top rail of chair with
left hand. Place right hand on hip or at back of right
thigh so that you can feel the contraction of the
biceps or flexors muscles of thigh as marked on chart.
Press the right leg up behind the body as per diagram,
as if trying to raise heavy weight attached to ankle.
Recover and repeat. This movement should be
performed with each leg alternately 10 times.
Principal muscle used, the Biceps of thighs, upon which
mind should be centred.
 514

SRCISE 20.

Again stand at side of chair left hand on

hip, other grasping chair as in diagram.
Raise left leg as high as possible sideways
and outwards as if forcing it upwards against
great force and recover position. Repeat 10
times and follow in same way with right leg.
Principal muscles brought into play and
upon which to concentrate are the Abductor
muscles of the thigh as shown in chart.

Exercise 21

Same exercise reversed, only stand as in

diagram, with right leg raised outwards
and sideways before commencing the
movement. Bring right leg slowly down¬
wards to ground as if pulling heavy weight
down, and then recover original position.
Perform exercise with each \eg 10 times
alternately. Muscles brought into play,
and upon which to concentrate are the
Adductor muscles of thigh as marked on
chart.

Exercise 22. Stand easy, and bending down clasp calf of left leg
with both hands. Then raise heels from ground, and feel
muscles of the back of calf marked Gastrocnemius and Soleus
on chart contracting quite hard. Lower heel again to ground
and repeat this movement 10 times, first with the left leg and
then with the right, using full pressure. Concentrate thoughts
on muscles of calf being used.
Exercise 23. Stand as before, with feet firmly on the ground.
Stoop and clasp front of lower left leg where muscle Tibialis
Anticus is marked on chart. Raise toes of left foot from the
ground and note contraction. Lower toes to original position
and repeat 10 times, afterwards doing the same with the right
leg, using full pressure in both. Principal muscle used and to
be concentrated upon, the Tibialis Anticus.
 Exercise 24.
Stand with feet about 12 inches apart, heels on floor
arms by side, knees pressed back. Sit down slowly,
without touching floor, knees apart, as per diagram.
Return to original position. Heels should be kept on
floor during movement, and leg stiffened when rising up.
To increase power of contraction imagine heavy weight to
be resting on shoulders during the movement. Muscles
brought into play and concentrated on, the Quadriceps
and Biceps of the thigh as per chart. Other muscles used,
the Gluteus Maximus. Repeat 5 times only.
Exercise 25.

Same as previous exercise, only before commencing

movement, raise heels and stand on tip toes as per
diagram. Sit down as in No. 24 and rise slowly up.
Again, the pupil should imagine he is raising a heavy
weight on back from the ground. Repeat 5 times only.

Exercise 26. Stand with hands at shoulders, elbows

bent as per diagram. Body and head well back, face
looking upwards. Nowr bring the body, as shown in
diagram, smartly forward, stretching arms above head
as you bend forward, keeping head and arms in one
line, and without bending the knees, endeavouring to
touch the ground about 12 inches in front of the toes,
exhaling. Return smartly to first position, inhaling.
Repeat 5 times.

Exercise 27.

Breathing exercise. Upper chest breathing. Stand

I erect with heels together, knees braced, hips pressed
back, hands crossed over the abdomen. Fully inflate the
lungs, raising chest as high as possible, as per diagram,
pressing abdomen with hands. Exhale, relaxing pressure
of hands. Keep shoulders down during this movement.
Don’t hold breath between inhalation and exhalation.
Repeat 10 times.
 516

Exercise 28.

Breathing exercise (abdominal breathing). Stand

erect with neck pressed back, chest relaxed and hands
clasped over abdomen as per diagrams. Inhale slowly
through the nostrils and inflate lungs to the fullest
extent allowing the abdomen 'instead of chest to swell
fully and forcing the hands forward. Expel all air
possible from lungs, drawing in abdomen, and raising
the chest. Place hands on abdomen to feel inhalation
and exhalation. Don’t hold breath. Repeat 10 times.

Exercise 29.

Breathing exercise (costal breathing). Stand erect,

placing hands flatly on ribs, Angers forward, as per
diagram. Inhale deeply and slowly, and feel ribs
expanding and chest widening as you inhale. Do
not raise chest or abdomen. Exhale fastly and
fully by mouth. Repeat 10 times. (N.B.—On no
account should the breath be held between
inspiration and exhalation. This applies equally to
all these exercises, apart from breathing exercises,
except Exercise 15.)

Exercise 30.

Stand erect, feet forming a right angle, left toe

pointing in front. Strike out quickly with right
hand in front carrying left foot forward, knee bent
and right leg braced behind as per diagram 1. Do
same movement with left arm, and repeat each
movement 10 times. Perform this movement
swiftly both in lunging and retreating.
 517

Exercise ‘>1. Stand with right too pointing forward and left foot
at right angles. Strike forward sharply with left
hand, at the same time carrying forward right leg,
knee bent and left braced as support behind as per
diagram. Repeat same movement with right arm
carrying forward right leg as before as in diagram.
Repeat each 10 times. N. B. — These last two are
relaxation movements and should be done with
relaxed muscles swiftly, smartly and lightly. Only
meant to develop speed and suppleness of muscle.
In carrying foot forward let toe touch ground only
lightly and almost noiselessly. Repeat 10 times,
as before.
Exercise 32. Stand erect, toes at an angle of 45 degrees, arms
extended sideways, and level with the
shoulders. Knuckles downwards. Bend
arms at elbow, without moving upper arm,
and bring fists slowly to side of head
above ears. Put full effort as if intending
to squeeze or crush head. Return to
position and repeat 10 times. Principal
muscles brought into play and to fix mind
upon are the Biceps, Triceps, Deltoids,
Trapezius, and Erector Spinse also should
be contracted. See chart. Reverse,
starting with fists against side of head
above ears, bringing arms level with
shoulders, putting great power as if striving to stretch to your
utmost or attempting to reach with each hand the furthest
point possible sideways from each shoulder. Repeat this also 10
times.

N.B.—The exercises here given are equally suitable and

beneficial for people of both sexes, as the voluntary muscular
system is the same in both. In a man, however, the muscles
developed will always show more prominently than in a woman,
because there is greater destruction of fatty tissue between muscle
and skin in his case. On the other hand, physical exercise will never
cause a woman to develop a masculine and muscular appearance,
because Nature in some way preserves from destruction the fatty
tissue between muscle and skin in her case. For this reason, the
 518

limbs and figure take more beautiful curves when physical

exercises are carried out, and the flesh becomes firmer and healthier.
These exercises will increase grace and beauty of outline, improve
carriage and gait and poise, and benefit health from a preventive
point of view, as they have already done for the healthy and well-
formed women whose photographs are reproduced in this book.
Relaxation Movements.—It may be well to make quite clear
here exactly what I mean by relaxation movements. Strictly
speaking, of course, there is no such thing as a relaxation
movement, for the complete relaxation of a muscle means absence
of all movement. This is a term I have invented to describe
any movement when the movement of a muscle or muscle s is not
performed with full power of contraction but with muscles relaxed
instead. In other words, the muscles are held lightly and not
braced, so that they are always ready for quick action in response
to a command from the will. Such movement s are of special value
to develop speed and agility. The more relaxed the condition the
swifter the execution of the movement. In relaxed movements
the contraction takes place quickly at the end of the movement,
whereas in contraction movements the muscle is flexed slowly from
the very beginning. In other words, the mind must be concentrated
on relaxation and not on contraction.
To carry out the exercises may not always be easy or pleasant.
Indeed, it will require an effort of will to stick to them under all
circumstances. But the reward, though not immediate or visible
at once, is great, for the body is not only more healthy and strong,
but the mind and will are disciplined and brought into subjection,
so that your prospect of success in life will be greater.
 ANATOMICAL CHART.
Showing Principal Superficial Muscles brought into play
the following rpovements.

FLEXORS OF
THE HAND & WRIST- — .

fj-TRICE. PS

- DELTOID.

--j HYOID MUSCLES

_RHOMBOI DEL’S
STERMO CLEIDO
MASTOI D -TRAPEZIUS

POSTERIOR -LATISSIMUS DORSI

DELTOID
- LATERAL g< ANTERIOR
V,r OELTOIDS
SERRATUS- SERRATUS MAGNUS
MAGNUS
1-OBLIQUU!)
ABDOMINIS
RECTUS
abdom inis
--PYR I F0RMI5

. QUADRICEPS
"•EXTENSORS .^X\ (extensors)
OF THE FOREARM

XlADRICERs -

'III tibialis
pf"'ANT ICUo

.FLEXORS
OF THE FOOT

(Facing page 518)

 519

MEASUREMENT CHART FOR MEN.

For the benefit of those who would like to note and keep a record of their
physical progress, this chart is given. It will be interesting for one who carries
out the exercises here given to keep such a record, and to be able to contrast his
condition on commencement and at later periods.

PRESENT AFTER AFTER AFTER AFTER AFTER

DETAILS. 1
DAY. 3 MTHS. 6 MTHS. 1 YEAR 18 MTS. 2 YRS.

Height . .

Weight

X eck

Waist . .

Chest (con¬
tracted)

Chest
(expanded)

Thigh (left)

•
Thigh
(right)

Upper arm 1
(right)

Upper arm
(left)
—

Forearm
(right)

Forearm
THE MEASUREMENTS MUST (left)
BE TAKEN ROUND THE
BODY AND LIMBS.

Calf (right)

Calf (left)

OO
 520

MEASUREMENT CHART FOR WOMEN

Those who wish to keep a record of their progress and improvement will
find this chart convenient, and it will be a pleasing experience for them afterwards
to contrast their measurements, weight and height then with their original condition.
This chart can be used for two years.

PRESENT AFTER AFTER AFTER AFTER AFTER

DETAILS.
DAY. 3 MTHS. 6 MTHS. 9 MTHS. 18 MTHS. 2 YEARS.

Height.

Weight

Neck . .

Waist .

Chest (con
tracted)

Chest
(expanded)

Upper arm
(right)

Upper arm
(left)

Forearm
(right)

F orearm
(left)

Thigh (left)

Thigh
THE MEASUREMENTS MUST
(right)
BE TAKEN ROUND THE
BODY AND LIMBS.

Calf (right)

Calf (left;
 52]

CHAPTER XXVI.

My Appeal to the People for a Real League of

Nations against Disease.

AN ALL-FOR-HEALTH LEAGUE.
Like some stout Cortes of modern times, Mr. Lloyd George sees,
in his hour of triumph, a new world swimming into his ken. It is as
yet an inchoate and shapeless mass, enshrouded in mist and rain, and
hung over with many clouds, but through and over all these the sun
of hope breaks, to give revealing glimpses of its staggering
immensity, its amazing potentialities, its incalculable and im¬
measurable possibilities, immediate and remote.
MAKING THE NEW WORLD.
The old world, charred, scarred, blackened and half-consumed
by the angry flames of war, is already becoming but a blurred and
sinking object far away in our wake on the dim and distant horizon.
Soon, let us hope, it will sink to be seen no more. We are leaving it
fast behind—have left it, letushope, for ever. Let us be quite certain
that our compass is true, that our charts are all in order, and that no
new siren-voices lure us from our true sea-path to be shattered on
rocks or sucked down in maelstroms not less deadly than those from
which we have escaped.
To destroy that which is already more than half-destroyed is
easy if we are so determined. To reconstruct the new may he more
difficult, and to make the new world a better world still will be even
harder. Construction and reconstruction demand an architect and
a builder, an incendiary can destroy.
One thing is already apparent. In the new world, human life
will have a new and added value. Human bodies and brains will he
appraised at a higher rate than ever before. But better and stronger
bodies and brains will be required in return, and there will be scant
mercy for the culpably inefficient, physically or mentally. Old
systems and standards of education must give place to new, for the
education of the individual is the first step in the upbuilding of a
new and better world. We must begin by building better men,
women and children; in other words, bv building; the builders who are
to rebuild and reconstruct a new and better world. Otherwise the
new world will prove hut little less pleasant to live in than the old.
 522

BETTER BODIES AND BETTER BRAINS.

When, then, is to be the standard by which we shall be judged ?

It will be a high standard and a severe one—not set by decadent man
but by stern and immutable Nature. Man must again become a dual
being, with both a higher type of body and a higher type of brain.
The old educational shibboleths will be discarded. A better type of
brain will be looked for than the mental money-box which modern
education gives people to-day in place of that organ.
A better type of body, too, will be necessary to the upbuilding
and maintenance of a real thinking-machine that will be asked to
create, initiate, produce and put into execution plans, methods and
campaigns for something greater and bigger than ever mind of man
has yet conceived. The body must be as a strong tower above which
flashes the illuminating mind to make safe the new world against the
risks and dangers that brought about the destruction of the old.
This is the type of human being of which it may truly be said
he was made in the image of his Creator, man, as the Creator
intended him to be, as he was, indeed, Divinely created and con¬
structed to be. In attaining to such an ideal all can contribute
something, from Premier to peasant, from aristocrat to artizan.
Here is work and reward for all, and all will be equally needed.
I have myself spent thousands of pounds of my own money to
help mankind to a truer perspective of life. I have—at a great
expense in war time—prepared and written this book and collected
these photographs from all parts of the world with the same object,
and prepared it for publication at a time when I knew the micro¬
scopic searchings of Mars were certain to bring to view the ghastly
revelation with which we are all now familiar. My own work does
not, cannot, end here, nor will my efforts in this direction end until
the hour of my departing.
To-day, however, I appeal to all sane-thinking men and women,
to every father and mother, and to the young men and the young
women who will be the fathers and mothers of the future, to add their
labour in what I declare to be the first and most necessary step in the
restoration, upbuilding, establishment and maintenance of a people
truly great, viz., the physical reconstruction of the individual human
body and the establishment and sustenance of the human mind on a
deep and strong physical foundation. Even the children are invited
to put their little hands and brains to this splendid task. No effort
can be spared if we are to enter into a new world, that will really
 523

also be a better world, without unnecessary qualms and forebodings

as to the future.

OBJECTS OF THE ALL-FOR-HEALTH LEAGUE.

“ What can I do ?” is the question that I can hear the reader ask.
I have thought of a way that will enable every reader to help at a
trifling expenditure in the way of labour or time. It is my intention
to organise an international All-for-Health League, in this country
at first, but I hope increasing and spreading very soon to the utter¬
most ends of the earth. This will be then a very real League of
Nations against man’s most treacherous, most relentless and most
mischievous enemy, Disease.
The objects of the League will be to enforce Government action
for the suppression and prevention of disease, to promote and foster
habits of health and strength among the people, to form clubs and
organisations everywhere for the diffusion of health knowledge and
to popularise the physical culture of the body; above all, to use every
possible effort to save the children from educational methods that
imperil their physical health and happiness, and, indeed, their whole
future life and well-being.
A perusal of this book is sufficient to convey to my readers the
principles and objects of the All-for-Health League, because they
are all pretty well enunciated in these pages. But I may say, by way
of encouragement, that I am confident of enlisting distinguished and
powerful patronage from men and women whose names are “ familiar
in our mouth as household words,” and I am hoping also to enlist the
gracious services of Royalty to honour us at Patron and President.

EVERY SHOULDER TO THE WHEEL.

The readers of this book will, I hope, form a nucleus around

which this real League of Nations against Physical Deterioration
and Disease will be upbuilt, for without organisation and united
effort we cannot report progress. There will be many obstacles to
overcome and many difficulties to be surmounted. Conservatism and
tradition may oppose us, but with a clear conscience and a firm faith
in what we preach and practise, nothing can daunt or dismay us.
On the other hand, we will rally round our banner all those sane-
minded men and women who have high ideals and a loftv ambition,
who are anxious to give children the physical outfit for life that the
strenuous life before them will demand, who seek to help me in the
prevention, cure and overthrow of the enemy Disease, and to give
us in the new world into which we are about to enter men and women
 524
of a physical and mental supremacy and grandeur, besides which the
inhabitants of the old will seem but as Liliputians and with but
Liliputian ideas and ideals.
As I say elsewhere in this book, no one lives unto himself alone,
and no one, however humble his or her position in life, is without
influence for good or ill both by precept and conduct. The smallest
lever can raise and move a weight many times greater than its own,
and a very small wedge in the tiniest crevice is sufficient to remove
mountains. I say this for the encouragement of those whose modesty
may paralyse effort, and who may deem their own services too
cheaply to enlist them in this great crusade against humanity’s most
deadly foe. By whole-hearted co-operation now, such a League as I
suggest may yet prevent such dread possibilities as the last awful
influenza epidemic with its 6,000,000 dead, to say nothing of the
millions of others whose innate vitality and resistant power alone
pulled them rapidly through. Had all these people been physically
fit with bodies charged with vitality and strongly resistant to disease
they would not have died, and might never have even succumbed to
the disease.
It is good to know at such a time as this that we will have behind
us the momentum and impetus of the world’s greatest statesmen, and
the world’s mightiest power, the Press. War and its lessons are too
fresh in our minds yet for any statesman or public journal not to
profit from them, and to avail themselves of the experience gleaned
for the good of the people. But memory is apt to be a treacherous
thing at times, especially when new interests will arise and new
problems have to be solved. So let us take the present tide at the
full, and seize the power and opportunity that patriotism and
enthusiasm just now place at our disposal for the physical uplift of
the people.

THE HOUR AND THE MAN.

History has again repeated itself in presenting us simul¬

taneously with that ancient and ever-acceptable combination in this
country, the hour and the man. The time could not possibly be
better suited to the situation than the man, for Mr. Lloyd George’s
great speech at Manchester shows that the head of the Government
in this country, at least, sees things clearly and sees them whole, while
his war-work shows him the man of action as well as the man of
thought and speech. And what Britain does to-day the world will
do to-morrow.
 525

But behind the Premier again must be the irresistible sweep of

public opinion to support and sustain him, and as he himself has
declared, in work of such magnitude everyone can do his or her share.
It is to provide a channel through which much of this individual
effort can flow that I am forming the All-for-Health League. Every
reader of this book should join this League and persuade others
to join. It will cost nothing, and I am confident the reward will be
great, for duty well done and service rendered in any good cause in
itself brings reward exceeding great.
The All-for-Health League will aim chiefly at all the chief
objects that a perusal of this book would suggest to the reader,
viz. :—
1. To build up by cellular reconstruction and evolution a
stronger, finer, healthier and disease-proof race of men, women
and children;
2. To agitate for physical education in our schools in pre¬
cedence of mental education, and by the scientific methods here
enunciated and explained;
3. To arouse the intelligent interest of the State in all
matters pertaining to individual and national health and
physical well-being of the people;
4. To promote legislation that will safeguard the health-
rights of the people and enforce them, and to organise public
opinion politically;
5. To advocate for the people equal opportunities from
childhood for health and hygienic conditions of life;
6. To form social clubs and physical culture organisations
throughout the country for the spreading of health knowledge
and the culture of the body as described later.
7. To print and distribute helpful literature for the pur¬
pose of giving the people higher and better ideals;
8. To take as our League motto, “ Life is Movement,” and
to spread the doctrine of scientific physical movement as the
first essentia] of a healthy and happy life;
9. To assist every movement of a similar kind, and
especially to lend our aid to all auxiliary reform movements
that are for the hygienic advancement of the people;
10. To agitate for the addition of this subiect to the cur¬
riculum of every medical college, school and ’Varsity, and to
advocate the establishment of special colleges for the training
of students in scientific and curative physical movement by
Nature’s methods;
 526

11. To save and rescue this country from that state of

physical decline into which it had fallen previous to the war,
and to build up a better race of men, women and children,
physically, mentally and morally.
12. Last, but not least, will be the foundation of social
clubs throughout the country, in every city, town and village,
all to be federated in one great international organisation with
its headquarters in London, and to be called

THE BLUE-BLOOD CLUB,

the most exclusive club in the world, but exclusive only in the
sense that none but the healthiest, fittest and cleanest living
men and women will be permitted to enter its portals or parti¬
cipate in its councils. I have already begun the preliminary
negotiations for the establishment of the mother-club in the
metropolis, and expect confidently to enlist the co-operation of
the greatest in the land in establishing what I really believe will
be one of the most uplifting movements for the physical salva¬
tion of the people ever undertaken in any country.
The Blue-Blood Club will represent, but on a far greater
scale, something like Vincent’s, of Oxford, the club reserved
only for men who have won their “ blue,” and by far the hardest
of all the ’Varsity clubs to join. But in the case of the Blue-
Blood Club, membership will not be restricted to those who have
won success or honours in cricket, football, rowing, or any other
form of sport.

But success in sports, games and athletics even will not suffice
in itself to qualify for membership in the Blue-Blood Club, because,
as I have already shown, it is no uncommon thing for even a very
successful athlete to possess physical defects and shortcomings that
would disqualify him from belonging to a fraternity in which
physical and organic fitness in the highest degree is the essential
passport to membership. On the other hand, one who possessed a
symmetrical and well-formed physical body in perfect balance every¬
where, with an organism perfectly sound and disease-free but with
no pretensions whatever to athletic supremacy or prowess, will only
be assured of a place among these kings among men and queens
among women.
In fact, for such a brotherhood onlv those without phvsical or
organic blemish, and a perfectly balanced physical body, will be able
to qualify. Such a club as I propose here will be a body to the
 527

membership of which Royalty may well aspire, if only as an example

and a pattern to the nation. Membership, indeed, will be something
to be prized for more than the entree into the most exclusive circles in
Society. It will be a club unique in its kind, and. in time, I hope to
see it represented in every city, town and village throughout the
world, with an esprit de corps and a spirit of cameradarie among its
members unrivalled even to-day by that of the masonic craft.
The highest physical and medical standard will have to be
reached by all who aspire to membership, however highly they are
placed in the social sphere. Caste, lineage, connections, influence,
money, or even fame in any particular sphere of life will not of itself
throw open the doors of the Blue-blood Club to anyone, however dis¬
tinguished. Its members will constitute a real aristocracy of
physique, constitution and health, and the essentials of qualifica¬
tion for membership will alone ensure its being truly the most select
club in the world.
Only those who can pass the most severe medical tests, whose
every system and organ is sound as it was in our original progenitor
in the Garden of Eden, whose muscles, nerves, skin, heart, lungs,
liver, kidneys and intestines are without flaw or defect, whose bodies
are strong, symmetrical, and balanced in their beauty and strength,
who are without taint of disease, through heredity or acquired,
whose whole character is guaranteed not by others but by the
physical condition of bodies that themselves bear evidence of clean
thinking, clean living and clean conduct in every affair of life, can
hope to belong to this real aristocracy and nobility of an age that has
grown iconoclastic towards ancient idols and refuses to bow the knee
even before those who boast “ the pure blood of an illustrious
race ” or a man degenerate even though “ hung o’er with titles and
strung round with strings.”
Think with what pride a man or woman will claim membership
to such an elite—the real elite—of humanity. Membership of such
a club will be an open sesame to every door, a breaker down of every
social barrier, a real distinction of “ class ” that will appeal to a
democratic age, and the only and desirable line of cleavage between
the millions in the new age that is just about to dawn. Such men
and women will be entitled rightly to assess themselves at a higher
value to anv nation than the men and women who neglect and ignore
the cult of the physical body, who shirk their responsibilities to
unborn generations, and who violate, either through ignorance or
expediency, almost every hvgienic law.
In time, and especially with such physical education and
 528

“ health conscription ” as I propose from childhood, I can see

branches of this mother-club springing up in every corner of the
globe, and even every man and woman fully qualified to be worthy
members of such an organisation. The chief value of the club, in
fact, would be that it would constitute and present an ideal to the
people, especially to the children, and inspire them to live lives in
consonance with Natural and Divine laws, intended to give man
from the beginning of the world a body so perfectly balanced in its
physical strength as to be successfully resistant to disease in any
and every form. In other words, every child would look with
admiration and envy towards those whose perfect health and
physique enabled them to claim membership of the Blue-Blood Club,
and would be inspired to hope and strive one day to join its exclusive
ranks.
But, in the meantime, the practical example of the few will be
infinitely better than precept and theory. There is no reason to-day
why any man or woman should have a 50 per cent, physical body
when he or she can have a 100 per cent. one. Look at the splendid
types of men, women and children photographically depicted in this
book. Most of these are types of normal men and women who have
taken the trouble to make their bodies symmetrical and strong in
such perfect balance as to be disease-free. Everyone can do the same
and should do so, notwithstanding our present abridged and
amputated educational methods by which our educational authorities
hope, in some way, to develop. Brobdignagian brains on Liliputian
bodies.
In fact, to encourage the thousands who will fit themselves to
join such a body as the Blue-Blood Club, it is my intention to create
also the rank of Associates, so that even those in humble circum¬
stances can stand in equal rank with the fully-qualified members of
this most exclusive club, as Associates, provided they can qualify
physically. For, in both cases, the qualifying tests will be the same,
and Members and Associates will alike occupy a unique position in
the eyes of the world as men of impeccable physique and constitution,
and pre-eminent above their fellow-men in every physical sense.
This is what every man and woman should strive to be, and this
is an especial reason why every reader of this book should, in the
first place, become a member of the All-for-Health League, and
induce his or her friends, relations and acquaintances to do so also.
The objects of the League are such that thev will insensiblv fit men
and women to take their proper place in this true nobilitv based on
the primitive physical grandeur of man, smoothed, embellished and
 529

adorned by all the mental refinements and moral improvements that

humanity has admittedly gained through civilisation, but too often
at the price of those mighty muscles and the sinews of steel with
which men once waged unceasing war against his savage enemies in
primitive jungle and forest. To-day, I say it is possible for every
man and woman to once more regain that muscular grandeur and
inviolable health, superadded to the mental and moral glories of
modern civilised life.
The high physical standard essential to qualify for membership
or association at first may naturally limit the number of those able
to join so exclusive an organisation, but membership of or associa¬
tion with such an organisation will mean so much, setting, as
it were, the seal and crown on a man’s or a woman’s health
and physical ambition and attainments, that thousands of
Leagueites will, I am confident, soon fit themselves in every
way to qualify for admission into the magic circle, the inner¬
most temple into which only those who have attained to the
highest possible standard of physical worth and excellence can ever
hope to obtain admission. However, no matter how many or how
few are able to qualify at the outset, the Blue-Blood Club will be
formed, and will certainly take rank as the ideal club to which every
right-thinking man and woman should belong, or, at least, strive to
belong to.
It is intended, as soon as the Roll of Membership justifies it, to
provide members with a club-house that will transcend everything
of its kind in any part of the world, a real Temple of Health,
externally and internally, a worthy habitation for the men and
women who shall make it their place of rendezvous. It has long
been a dream of mine to see such an establishment and institution
erected in this great metropolis of the world, and with the encourage¬
ment and support I have so far received, there is every prospect of
my dream coming true.
Architecturally, the intention is to have it modelled on the most
classic lines, a worthy rival to the architectural and artistic glories
of Rome, Florence and Venice. Wide, capacious corridors, galleries
and rooms shall be turned into veritable art galleries, with statues*
and pictures of ancient heroes and heroines, and the mural decora¬
tions will be in harmony with the motives and ideals animating the
members of such an organisation. Capacious exercising halls with
all the most modern devices and apparata to keep the body in its
highest state of physical excellence, swimming baths vieing with
those of Rome in its historic days, hygienic baths of every kind, and
 530

every convenience and comfort that can appeal to those who wish to
maintain the body in an almost regal dignity as it should and ought
always be maintained are to be provided, and the club will be one in
every way of which even the most perfect type of men and women
may well be proud to claim membership. The intention is at present
to provide every modern accommodation and convenience for those
who worship at the shrine of Hygeia.
My conception of the All-for-Health League is a world-organi¬
sation on as big lines and as powerful in its own way as the Masonic
institution, the Blue-Blood Club occupying a position akin to the
Grand Lodge of Freemasonry. In the League itself, clubs or
branches of the Blue-Blood Club will be formed, in which members
and associates unfit, in the high physical sense necessary to qualify
for a Club representing the Grand Lodge of the new Order of
Health, will be able to prepare and fit themselves for that position.
These clubs will, to all intents and purposes, be forerunners and
miniatures of the Blue-Blood Club itself, and will be known as All-
for-Health Clubs, which I hope and confidently expect to see spring¬
ing up in every city, town, and village of the United Kingdom, and,
indeed, throughout the world. Men and women physically unfit to
pass the Blue-Blood standards of health and fitness would be
initiated into these clubs just as men are initiated into Masonic
Lodges, and would then be enabled to pass through various
“ degrees,” or stages, until finally physically fitted to enter the Blue-
Blood Club itself as Members or Associates. With such a lever as
this we could, to use a famous expression, move the world.
Our purpose as our ideals will be high, to elevate the physical
standard of the people, to safeguard and assist the children to
enforce that intelligent and active interest of the State in all matters
pertaining to health, physical training, housing, the feeding of the
children, etc., and to lead mankind at last to a diseaseless world by
living lives in strict conformity with the natural law of life, the law
of movement.
It is, of course, only possible at present to give the barest out¬
line of what we will be able to achieve when once this great Free¬
masonry of Health is organised and established. We can safely
reckon on the support of that mighty agent of publicity, the Press,
which already shows its eagerness to give its potent aid to every
movement that makes for the health and efficiency of the people.
But individual effort will also count for much, and I want everyone
who is interested, no matter in what part of the world they may live,
to enlist for service in this great work, and to use his or her influence
 531

in every way to help the good cause. In such a work everyone can
bring something to the common good, and the humblest can stand
side by side with the wealthiest in this truly democratic army that
will wage relentless war against disease, and everything that tends
to be productive of disease or arises from the presence in our midst
of this common enemy of mankind.
Those who are anxious to serve should communicate, in the first
place, with the Secretary of the All-for-Health League, when they
will receive a programme of our ideals, plans and arrangements and
a card of membership, as soon as organisation is completed. Those
who join will not only derive health benefit themselves but will also
be expected to preach and practise the gospel of health, physical
fitness and freedom from disease, at every opportunity, to set an
example to others of hygienic and cleanly living, and to inspire in
all, but especially in the rising generation, the same ardent
enthusiasm for whatsoever is noble, whatsoever is good and whatso¬
ever is right for that body which is, or ought to be, the temple of the
>,human soul. This is a Gospel that the world is much in need of
to-day, and I look to our future members or helpers, in however
humble a capacity, to do their best to spread it broadcast whenever
and wherever thev can.
If we can only implant in the children the stimulating ideal of
physical beauty and its inseparable companion, health, and arouse
the spirit of emulation that now fills them when they seek victory in
some form of sport or in some mental examination, a needed impetus
will begin to a phase of education and culture that has not yet been
approached in the right way. I want to fire the youthful mind
with the keen zest for physical well-being with which a boy strives
to become a good football player or a girl to excel at tennis. These
sports, after all, can never give a boy or girl the perfectly balanced
strength that will give him or her a body beautiful and strong, a
body, too, able by its very strength to resist and defeat disease.
If the children themselves are given an intelligent interest in
their own wonderful bodies they will enter into their physical educa¬
tion with vim, enthusiasm and determination. It is no use to sow
seed on soil completely unprepared for it. The children must be
taught to admire, covet and strive for a body as perfect as that of an
Apollo or an Adonis, and to feel ashamed to remain otherwise. This
is what I mean when I speak of giving the children a new ideal.
Phvsical education and bodily reconstruction must not be allowed
to be regarded as a task like mastering the Pons Asinorum or coni li¬
gating the verbs of a dead language. The subject should be vivified
 532

by splendid pictures, sculpture and stories of the great men of bye-

gone days, and the children should be so educated that they will
come to regard weakness and disease as things of which they must
feel ashamed. Physical strength and beauty are things that will
niake a powerful appeal to children so long as the lessons are not
permitted to become a bore, and the breath of life is breathed into
the dry bones of anatomy and physiology. The child should have
its natural spirit of emulation turned into a healthy and desirable
channel instead of too often being frittered away on useless and even
undesirable achievements.
A modification of the training of Spartan children, omitting its
ugly and repellent features, might be adopted. Every boy should be-
taught to aim and strive only for that which is manly, to shrink from
physical weakness and cowardice, to regard disease almost as a sin
against his Creator. Each girl, too, should be inspired by the heroic
women of the past with a healthy ambition to become “ a perfect
woman nobly planned.” If we do this, and persist along these lines,
the seed sown will assuredly fall on fruitful ground.
In the meantime all who can will, I hope, send their names
along for membership of the All-for-Health League, or, if they feel
that they already possess a sufficiently high organic and physical
standard, should apply to become members or associates of the Blue-
Blood Club. The Blue-Blood Club, and its contributory clubs, will
all be affiliated to the All-for-Health League in one great masonic
brotherhood throughout the world, modelled on much similar lines to
that other world-famous organisation, and to belong to any of these
organisations will be a passport to friendship everywhere through¬
out the world, and in itself a guarantee that will ensure a welcome
from all who admire and respect high thinking and clean living. It
will constitute a real brotherhood and freemasonry based on self-
respect, physical as well as mental, which alone can ensure life on
that grand plane which is essential before we can enter into the new
and promised land where disease shall cease from troubling and men
and women be at rest from such unnecessary pain and suffering.
Much depends, as I have said, on my readers in beginning,
carrying on and helping forward in this splendid work. Many of
them will have done the State some service already during the tem¬
pestuous days through which we have just passed. Those that have
volunteered and risked life and limb to defeat one enemy of the
nation will, I am sure, be only too ready to volunteer for service in
a less dangerous but quite as necessary a war against a far more
malignant and treacherous foe, physical deterioration and disease.
 533

Some of them may have been left scarred and wounded and bruised
after fighting for home and kith and kin. They have suffered them¬
selves, and, alas, too often the children that come after them will also
have to bear their cross also.
But, in the new crusade against weakness and disease they will
be benefiting themselves and their children, ‘and their children’s
children will also reap a harvest of health Those who join these
All-for-Health Clubs, and strive, even if they never succeed, to
qualify for membership of the Blue-Blood Club, will, at least, have
their reward in the possession of a better and healthier body, of a
far higher type in every physical sense, and will be able to offer and
bequeath to their children an estate that the money of a million
millionaires could never buy.
Let all who can come forward now, and, as a famous martyr once
said, “ we will light a candle that will never be extinguished.” All
they are asked to do, in the first place, is to send along their names
and address to The Secretary, The All-for-Health League, 67,
Jermyn Street, London, S.W. 1., and full particulars, with card of
membership, will be sent to them as soon as organisation is com¬
pleted.
Only by these methods here advocated may we, in accordance
with the natural law of evolution, hope to raise mankind from the
low estate of physical deterioration into which so great a mass of it
has fallen or been driven by cruel circumstance. Fortunately, there
are already in our midst many who have either attained and main¬
tained a high degree of physical, organic and constitutional excel¬
lence that will enable them to qualify for membership in the world’s
pioneer Blue-Blood Club, or become Associates, and all who desire to
do so should send along their names and addresses to The Secretary,
who will be very pleased to send them all further particulars, as soon
as arrangements at present in hand are completed. Application to
join as Members or Associates should, in the first instance, be
addressed to The Secretary, The Blue-Blood Club, 67, Jermyn
Street, London, S.W. 1.
In this way, it is hoped that we will set a new fashion and
standard for all, so that out of our present decadent state “ a loftier
race than e’er the world has known may yet arise.” It is to that end
that all my efforts aim, and I look with every confidence to the people
themselves to rally round and accord this movement their hearty
support at a time when the physical reconstruction and regeneration
of the people is, above all things else, the first and most important
step in national and, indeed, international reconstruction.

LIBRARY
kfj
 i

534

- APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP FORM -

-+o*o+-

To The Secretary, All-For-Health League,

67, Jermyn Street,
London, S.W. 1.

Sir,—
I desire to have my name enrolled as a prospective member of
the... and shall
be pleased to do all in my power to assist its objects.

Name..

Address.

Occupation. ~

Fill in All-For-Health League or Blue Blood Club as desired.

i
 Printed by
Messrs. SIMSON & Co. Ltd.,
Market Place, Hertford,
Herts.

The illustrations in this book are printed from half-tone blocks by—

Messrs. GEO. ALEXANDER & Co.,

39-40 Shoe Lane,
London, E.C. 4.
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