Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Health Exhibition Literature, Vol. 10: General Hygiene; Handbooks; Athletics, or Physical Exercise and Recreation; Athletics, Part II; Dress, and Its Relation to Health and Climate; Fermentation; Public Health Laboratory Work; London Water Supply
Games do not, as a rule, do more than exercise certain muscles, the bicycle is perhaps the form of gymnastic apparatus which trains the largest proportion of the muscles, but a rational system of free exercises, practised for a very short time daily, without gymnastic apparatus of any kind, is sufficient to secure the free use of the limbs, the development of the chest and of other organs, and generally militates against deformity.
But the unequal training of various parts of the body leads us to this further consideration certain classes, accustomed to continual brain work, have an inherited capacity for it; and the standard of mental toil attainable by them cannot be compared with that attainable by generations of manual labourers. A true knowledge of the laws of Hygiene would teach us to apportion the teaching of those classes whose vocation is and has always been rather that of manual labour than brain work, more equally between brain work and the learning of handicrafts, or other physical training, than is now allowed in our Elementary Schools. And further, might not the hereditary tendency of the children of criminals to lapse into crime, be eradicated by directing into healthy channels the nerve and brain power which will otherwise act in criminal directions? The child of the forger might become an accomplished draughtsman, the child Of the pickpocket might employ his delicate touch and deft fingers in watchmaking, or other similar trade, and so on. These are considerations which follow legitimately from the treatment of Athletics as a branch of Hygiene.
But when the, Hygienist has rendered the human body perfect in shape by judicious exercise, his next object is to construct and decorate a covering for it which shall be healthy and beautiful. The very interesting Handbook by Mr. Godwin shows how the building of a dress or a costume demands just as much thought as the building a house, and that the subjects of heating and ventilation are as important to health in the case of the dress as of the house.
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