Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 Excerpt: ...one's children. Fig-I. Per, aged M months, doing open air exercises in the month of April. For older children all kinds of games, especially open-air games, are the best physical exercise. It is not well to tax their brains and nerves by compelling them to understand explanations of how gymnastic exercises are to be performed. But if you let them watch, while you are doing them yourself, their imitative faculty will lead them to attempt something similar in their turn. You can then encourage them and direct their attempts. The exercises in themselves will be immensely good for them. Exercise 3, which is an especially beneficial one, can be adapted for children as follows: let a grown-up person, seated on a chair, take the child on his one knee sideways, with its two feet under his other knee, and then let it lean backwards and pull itself up again. Many parents--mothers especially--will assuredly cross themselves and vow that the treatment I am recommending for children will kill them. I, on the other hand, think that indolence, stupidity, ignorance or mistaken tenderness renders many parents actually criminal towards their children, while the mode of procedure I advocate will really give them vital force. That by far the greater number of children are absolutely stunted in comparison with what they might have become had they been brought upon a plan conformable to nature, is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by the tables of the general weight, height, and chestmeasurements of children of various ages, which have been drawn up bv the Danish Medical Union. It is quite possible that the figures are correct, but in that case, that people may not be lulled into a sense of false security, it should be added that the result is uncommonly poor, and both ought to ...
