Personal hygiene and physical training for womenGalbraith, Anna M. (Anna Mary)
Science
Personal hygiene and physical training for women
Galbraith, Anna M. (Anna Mary)
Physical education and training; Women -- Health and hygiene
A horse cannot gallop as many hours as it can walk, and the daily
task should be the sum-total of what man or beast can do compatibly
with health. To combine a day of toil with a second of amusement in
one twenty-four hours does not give the proper allowance for sleep,
and cannot be done without injury to the individual.
Fun and laughter are the most efficacious remedies in the
pharmacopeia, and tired humanity owes a debt of gratitude to the
guild of humorists, be they writers, comedians, or musical composers.
=The Physiologic Necessity for Laughter.=—The attitude of the
individual varies with age, temperament, and the perspective of life.
Grave adults are apt to think of laughter and smiling as something
occasional, a momentary lapse once in a while from the persistent
attitude of seriousness. Healthy children, on the contrary, consider
that a state of laughter is the normal condition of humanity, and
that seriousness is a tiresome necessity, which must be tolerated
from time to time. But very few people have any idea that there
exists a well-defined physiologic necessity for laughter, and the
greater the intellectual labor and the mental strain, the greater is
this necessity.
The deep forcible chest movements increase the rapidity of the
circulation, the force of the heart’s beat, and secures a more
complete oxygenation of the blood.
It is not improbable that this accelerated circulation produces
remote effects on the organism. One of the immediate effects of a
good laugh is that it relieves the brain by the rapidity of the
movements of the blood through the capillary circulation.
In addition to the immediate physiologic effects which result from
laughter it is highly beneficial, by relieving the brain and nervous
system from the intense strain and tension of the daily affairs and
occupations of life, and gives relief to the severely congested
capillaries, which otherwise involve considerable risk to the
individual.
Physiologists hold that pleasurable feelings tend to further the
whole group of organic functions, and that laughter produces a
considerable increase of vital activity by the heightened nervous
stimulation. There is a sense of increased energy, of a high tide of
the fulness of the life current.
=Vacations and Health.=—The secret of success of the old Romans in
conquering the world lay as much in their ability to maintain the
health of their troops in their various campaigns as by the courage
and organization of those troops; or, rather it may be said that
courage is but the coefficient of a good physique and a general
mental vigor.
A rest one day out of seven, with an occasional outing for the
week-end, is good but not sufficient. If one would keep up to her
highest standard of physical and mental efficiency, she must have at
least one month of absolute change of environment and outdoor life in
the year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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