Health: How to get it and keep it.: The hygiene of dress, food, exercise, rest, bathing, breathing, and ventilation.Woods, Walter V.
Science
Health: How to get it and keep it.: The hygiene of dress, food, exercise, rest, bathing, breathing, and ventilation.
Woods, Walter V.
Health; Hygiene
If the man who has eight or ten hours of busy brain work in-doors
daily, and who, when his duties are ended, has no heart for physical
exercise, would, every hour or two, turn aside from his work, and
take even two minutes’ vigorous exercise, in his office or in the
adjoining hallway, he would return to his labor with brain considerably
refreshed, and at the close of the day, he would enter upon his half
hour’s walk with spirit and alacrity, and welcome his sleep at the end
of the day.
=Business Men.=--Who does not know, among his business acquaintances,
men whose faces show that they are continually overworked? They have no
time for systematic physical exercise, but go dragging through their
duties as well as their low physical condition and tired brains will
permit. The noonday lunch is bolted, or is omitted entirely, for want
of time.
Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, a specialist in nervous disorders, speaks of
the numerous instances of nervous exhaustion among merchants and
manufacturers. He says: “My note books seem to show that manufacturers
and certain classes of railway officials are the most liable to suffer
from neural exhaustion. Next to these come merchants in general,
brokers, etc.; then, less frequently, clergymen; still less often,
lawyers; and, more rarely, doctors; while distressing cases are apt to
occur among the over-schooled young of both sexes.”
Few business or professional men do anything to secure and preserve
health and strength, and they go through life far less efficient and
useful than they might be.
Pre-eminent business success can be achieved only by turning over to
subordinates the numerous details which occupy so much time, and which
any trustworthy and experienced secretary or assistant might do. By
this arrangement, time would be saved for necessary recreation and
rest, thus keeping the physical systems of the employers and managers
in the best possible condition, and securing to the mind that alertness
and vigor which the sharp competition of the times demands.
=Professional Men.=--Looking over a list of eminent divines, it is
surprising how many of them were men of rugged frames and sturdy
physique. It required a man with the physical vigor of Luther to
declare he would attend the Diet of Worms “though the devils there
were as numerous as the tiles on the houses.” How much of the success
of Spurgeon, and Beecher, and Dr. John Hall may be fairly ascribed to
their splendid outfit of vital organs, and to the glowing health which
each enjoyed. Nor were Phillips Brooks, and Joseph Cook, and Dwight L.
Moody lacking in these physical qualities which count for so much in
influencing the minds and hearts of men. These knew nothing of “blue
Mondays” or “ministers’ sore throat,” and needed not to be sent abroad
by their congregations, every summer or two, in order to recruit their
health, and keep them up to their work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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