Limits of Physical Training

1916

The tendency toward physical training, as well as its specialized form, military training, does not aim so much at the increase of the actual physical power as at the increase of the reserve power. The former, no matter how small, is usually sufficient to maintain ordinary bodily needs.

But the ordinary muscular force is wholly inadequate to sustain any unusual demands of the body, whether from disease or otherwise, and against which the body must be prepared. The laity speaks of the increase of reserve force as a "hardening" process. Under this conception it is believed that any hardship or discomfort increases the body reserve, and that the more suffering and hardship the better.

The more comfort and ease under which one lives, the less reserve force there is developed — because not needed — and the "softer" they become. Hardening is exercise of the wholesome kind against resistance. It must, however, be done with an eye on the actual powers of the body, from the standpoint of endurance. The amount of fatigue must never rise beyond a point where the fatigue products can be easily absorbed and the body recuperate.

Otherwise, whatever increase of power there is will be actual and needed to drive a less easily running human engine. There may be increased muscular power, but it will be bound — "muscle bound" — to the actual needs of the body. — Medical Record.

Help for Nervous Women

1901

How Rest and Relaxation May Be Gained for Tired Bodies

Dr. John Mitchell, in Harper's Bazar: When you are asleep, it is to be hoped that you are still. Few people are when they are awake. If one observes the crowd in the streets, it is curious and most disagreeable to see how small the number is who are not constantly making grimaces and working their faces or jaws in some manner. I have heard it said it was bashfulness that caused this, but it has not been my observation that bashfulness was so widely distributed an American trait; besides, how does twisting the face help to keep one in countenance? No, it is not bashfulness; it is misdirected nervous energy, which ought to be aiding the movements of their legs or getting stored up somewhere in the central nervous reservoirs for future use.

Learn to keep still when you rest; when you move, move with the part of the body needed; do not waste your force by walking with your arms and face, as well as with your legs. If circumstances force an unusual and fatiguing amount of exertion upon you, break it down and then by periods of absolute rest. No matter how brief they are, they will be useful if you make them complete and perfect, as well as bodily exertion. A minute or two minutes of quiet, with closed eyes if possible, with your tension relaxed and the gearing of the machinery thrown off for the moment, will help and refresh you greatly. Here, again, more may be gained if the ability to relax mentally can be secured, in a fashion similar to the withdrawing of muscular tension. Learn to empty your mind when not using it.

A New Test of Death – Electrical Stimulation of Muscles

1878

A New Test of Death.

In the course of his researches on the electrical stimulation of dead muscles, Kappeler subjected twenty corpses to the action of various electric currents, noting the time of disappearance of contractility. In persons emaciated by chronic maladies it disappeared much more rapidly than in well-nourished individuals, or those who had had acute disease. It disappeared seven minutes after death at the quickest, and at six and a half hours at the slowest. In cases where a rise of temperature is observed after death, electric contractility persists longest. So long as there remains the least flicker of life the contractions continue intact. In the most prolonged faints, in the deepest lethargies, in poisoning by carbonic oxide, chloroform, etc., there is contraction so long as life lasts. But if the muscles make no response to the electrical stimulation, Kappeler pronounces life extinct.

Women Becoming Manly, Men Effeminate, Foppish

1910

Woman Developing Strong Arm

While Men Are Changing to Effeminate, Foppish Persons

Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 28 — Dr. Dudley A. Sargent, a celebrated authority on physical development, declares that woman is fast assuming the physical proportions and mental characteristics of man. Dr. Sargent is director of the Harvard and Sargent gymnasiums in this city. He cites from a model of a composite woman, molded from measurements made from 10,000 women, all taken prior to the year 1890. On the other hand, he avers that man is inclining toward effeminacy.

"Although I've no actual figures to verify the statement," Dr. Sargent says, "I know for a fact that the women of today are more mannish than the women of that time. Women, in the savage state, are so like men in form that it is well nigh impossible to tell them apart. Then, as civilization progressed, their especially feminine characteristics became accentuated, until the exaggeration was almost painful to look at.

"Then the pendulum began to swing the other way. Women are again beginning to look and be more like men. Great changes in this direction have been made since the molding of that statue. The women from whom the measurements for it were taken were different in conformation compared with those of today. The composite was the extreme type of femininity. She was woman overwomanized. Her hips and all the pelvic portion were overlarge. Her waist was oversmall. Her feet were undeveloped. So were her back and neck.

"Since that time her physique has been thoroughly made over. It is approaching that of man. The sloping shoulders of her grandmother's time have disappeared. They are no longer in fashion. In their place we find well-knit, athletic shoulders, broad ones. Her back, likewise, is better developed. Her hips are not so large as they once were. The entire pelvic region has decreased in size and the result has been an enlargement of the waist. The small waist is a thing of the past. Her neck is thicker and more muscular; her limbs more smoothly developed; her hands and feet are larger in every respect. Her chest has been said to be flatter. I should hardly wish to endorse that last opinion. It is true, however, that her chest may appear flatter, because I am glad to say the corset, which formerly forced it upward, has of late, been somewhat modified.

"Another reason for the change in woman's physique is that within the past 10 years women have done a great deal more in the way of athletics than they did formerly. Golf, tennis, running and swimming have done much to improve woman's physical development.

"It is a rule that one may take few exceptions to, that if a woman devotes herself to the activities of a man, there is bound to be a loss of sex. This approximation of man's physique is, from an anthropological point of view, a bad thing. It is to be hoped that men and women do not grow to be more alike than they are today. The same may be said of men. From the overdeveloped Sandow, man has changed to the effeminate and the foppish being. The assimilating of the sexes by each other is a possibility to be decried."

—Olean Evening Times, Olean, NY, Nov. 29, 1910, p. 2.