Domestic medicine : $b or, a treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines. With an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitionersBuchan, William
Science
Domestic medicine : $b or, a treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines. With an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitioners
Buchan, William
Medicine, Popular -- Early works to 1800
Sedentary artificers are not only hurt by pressure on the bowels, but
also on the inferior extremities, which obstructs the circulation in
these parts, and renders them weak and feeble. Thus taylors, shoemakers,
&c. frequently lose the use of their legs altogether: besides, the blood
and humours are, by stagnation, vitiated, and the perspiration is
obstructed: from whence proceed the scab, ulcerous sores, foul blotches,
and other cutaneous diseases, so common among sedentary artificers.
A bad figure of body is a very common consequence of close application
to sedentary employments. The spine, for example, by being continually
bent, puts on a crooked shape, and generally remains so ever after. But
a bad figure of body has already been observed to be hurtful to health,
as the vital functions are thereby impeded.
A sedentary life seldom fails to occasion an universal relaxation of the
solids. This is the great source from whence most of the diseases of
sedentary people flow. The scrophula, consumption, hysterics, and
nervous diseases, now so common, were very little known in this country
before sedentary artificers became so numerous: and they are very little
known still among such of our people as follow active employments
without doors, though in great towns at least two-thirds of the
inhabitants are afflicted with them.
It is very difficult to remedy those evils, because many who have been
accustomed to a sedentary life, like rickety children, lose all
inclination for exercise; we shall, however, throw out a few hints with
respect to the most likely means for preserving the health of this
useful set of people, which some of them, we hope, will be wise enough
to take.
It has been already observed, that sedentary artificers are often hurt
by their bending posture. They ought therefore to stand or sit as erect
as the nature of their employments will permit. They should likewise
change their posture frequently, and should never sit too long at a
time, but leave off work, and walk, ride, run, or do any thing that will
promote the vital functions.
Sedentary artificers are generally allowed too little time for exercise;
yet, short as it is, they seldom employ it properly. A journeyman taylor
or weaver, for example, instead of walking abroad for exercise and fresh
air, at his hours of leisure, chuses often to spend them in a
public-house, or in playing at some sedentary game, by which he
generally loses both his time and his money.
The awkward postures in which many sedentary artificers work, seem
rather to be the effect of custom than necessity. For example, a table
might surely be contrived for ten or a dozen taylors to sit round, with
liberty for their legs either to hang down, or rest upon a foot-board,
as they should chuse. A place might likewise be cut out for each person,
in such a manner that he might sit as conveniently for working as in the
present mode of sitting cross-legged.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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