The Value of Exercise¹

Abstract

THE value of exercise for the purpose of maintaining mens sana in corpore sano has been recognised from the remotest antiquity. Exercise, however, in its entirety seems to be divided into two sections which, though springing from the same cause, have led to different results: professional exercise or the training and maintaining of a body of athletes, and what may perhaps best receive the name of domestic exercise. The former appears to be one of the many instances of what was originally a means of becoming an end. Professional athletics doubtless took their origin in the use of exercise as a means; the perfect development of body and mind being the end. The huge muscles and small heads of professional athletes show us that the original means has finally become the end. This result from the point of view of the hygienist must be regarded as grotesque, and to the physician the professional athlete is neither more nor less interesting than the macrocephalic dwarf. The fainting and sickness of the over- or under-trained schoolboy, and the insomnia of the over-crammed student are essentially phenomena of the same class, and due to the same cause—viz. pathological plethora of some vascular areas, and pathological anæmia of others.