Medicina Gymnastica: or, A treatise concerning the power of exercise, with respect to the animal oeconomy; and the great necessity of it in the cure of several distempers — John Shaqi
Medicina Gymnastica: or, A treatise concerning the power of exercise, with respect to the animal oeconomy; and the great necessity of it in the cure of several distempersFuller, Francis
Science
Medicina Gymnastica: or, A treatise concerning the power of exercise, with respect to the animal oeconomy; and the great necessity of it in the cure of several distempers
Fuller, Francis
Exercise therapy -- Early works to 1800
To procure this good Effect I propose the first of those Exercises,
which I shall consider more amply in its proper Place, which is Moderate
Riding. This Exercise is undoubtedly the most likely to cause an equal
Exaltation of the Fluids, to restore the Tone, and Elasticity of the
Ducts, so that the hot fretting Particles may be cast off; some of ’em
by insensible Perspiration at the Skin, others by the Kidneys, others
by the many _Salival_ Glands, others by the Glands of the _Intestines_,
where the very acrimonious Particles, forc’d out by that Exercise, which
in a special manner acts upon those Parts, may be very much alter’d while
they lye in the _Intestine_, undergo a sort of _Cohobation_, and in all
likelyhood may some of ’em become inflammable, and so dispos’d, as to
prove Nutritious, when suck’d up into the Blood, as some of the Contents
of the Intestines always are. This is communicating, _ab extra_, a Power
to Nature to act upon her self; which must needs be more agreeable than
to put a Force upon her, when she is Languid, and not able to master both
the Drug and the Distemper.
It would be of great Consequence, to People Afflicted with this
Distemper, if they would be brought to consider seriously the Distinction
of the Oeconomy into the Parts containing, and the Parts contain’d,
that is the Solids and Fluids, and the happiness of being able to Exert
the Strength of the Solids, and make the Muscular and Nervous Parts
assist the Blood and Spirits. There are Distempers wherein a Man is so
Unhappy, as to have one Part of himself only Passive; as in Fevers, the
Intenseness of the Heat, affects the Spirits and Nerves to that Degree,
that all Power of Standing or Going is taken away. In a Palsey, the Hopes
lye all in the Fluids or Liquor Contain’d: In other Cases, the larger
Glands are so much alter’d in themselves, that the Motion of the Body
would be to no Purpose; but here in this Distemper, we are Treating of,
the Case is quite otherwise, if the Sick Person will but Entertain a
Resolution to help himself, will employ all the Springs and Fibres of his
Body, and by that means take the Labouring Oar from lying always on the
Blood alone, he will have no Reason to despair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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