Concerning the _Power of Exercise_ With Respect to the Animal Oeconomy. That the Use of Exercise does conduce very much to the Preservation of Health, that it promotes the Digestions, raises the Spirits, refreshes the Mind, and that it strengthens and relieves the whole Man, is scarce disputed by any; but that it should prove Curative in some particular Distempers, and that too when scarce any thing else will prevail, seems to obtain little Credit with most People, who tho’ they will give a Physician the hearing when he recommends the frequent Use of Riding, or any other sort of Exercise; yet at the bottom look upon it as a forlorn Method, and the Effect rather of his Inability to relieve ’em, than of his Belief that there is any great matter in what he advises: Thus by a negligent Diffidence they deceive themselves, and let slip the Golden Opportunities of recovering, by a diligent Struggle, what could not be procur’d by the Use of Medicine alone. Whether this proceeds from the Customs of these Northern Nations, so different from those of the Ancients, and of more Southern Countries, who seem to have plac’d almost as much in their Methods of Exercise, as in their internal Physick; or whether from the narrow Notions most People have conceiv’d of the Art of Physick, as if it imply’d little more than Internals only, without considering that External, Mechanical, and all other Means whatsoever, that give Relief, properly belong to it; this I shall not pretend to determine, but this I think I may venture to affirm, That most Men indulge themselves in the Expectation of more sudden Relief, than the Nature of the Case will admit of, as if they thought that Medicine was always to take like a Charm, without putting ’em to the Expence of much Time or Pains; they do not consider the wonderful Variety of the Disorders of Nature, and the Stubbornness of some Cases, which will not permit the Sick to be wholly passive, but indispensably oblige him to conspire with his Physician, and strive indefatigably to exalt his Constitution to a degree requisite to supply the Defect of internal Physick; which industrious striving on the part of the Sick, being what is here meant by Exercise, and which it is my purpose to represent, as more efficacious than it is generally believ’d to be; I think it proper, first to explain what I mean by it in this place. By _Exercise_ then, I understand all that Motion or Agitation of the Body, of what kind soever, whether voluntary or involuntary, and all Methods whatsoever, which without the Use of Internals, may (or without which Internals alone may not always) suffice to enable Nature to expel the Enemy which oppresses her; confining my self to the Consideration of it only as it may prove Curative, not as Palliative, or barely Preservative.