BENJAMIN GOUGH.

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EXERCISE, AIR, AND SLEEP.

(Abridged from Mr. Richards’s “Treatise on Nervous Disorders.")

The generality of people are well aware of the vast importance of exercise; but few are acquainted with its modus operandi, and few avail themselves so fully as they might of its extensive benefits.  The function of respiration, which endues the blood with its vivifying principle, is very much influenced by exercise; for our Omniscient Creator has given to our lungs the same faculty of imbibing nutriment from various kinds of air, as He has given to the stomach the power of extracting nourishment from different kinds of aliment; and as the healthy functions of the stomach depend upon the due performance of certain chemical and mechanical actions, so do the functions of the lungs depend upon the due performance of proper exercise.

Man being an animal destined for an active and useful life, Providence has ordained that sloth shall bring with it its own punishment.  He who passes nearly the whole of his life in the open air, inhaling a salubrious atmosphere, enjoys health and vigour of body with tranquillity of mind, and dies at the utmost limit allotted to mortality.  He, on the contrary, who leads an indolent or sedentary life, combining with it excessive mental exertion, is a martyr to a train of nervous symptoms, which are extremely annoying.  Man was not created for a sedentary or slothful life; but all his organs and attributes are calculated for an existence of activity and industry.  If therefore we would insure health and comfort, we must make exercise—­to use Dr. Cheyne’s expression—­a part of our religion.  But this exercise should be in the open air, and in such places as are most free from smoke, or any noxious exhalations; where, in fact, the air circulates freely, purely, and abundantly.  I am continually told by persons that they take a great deal of exercise, being constantly on their feet from morning till night; but, upon inquiry, it happens, that this exercise is not in the open air, but in a crowded apartment, perhaps, as in a public office, a manufactory, or at a dress maker’s, where twenty or thirty young girls are crammed together from nine o’clock in the morning till nine at night, or, what is nearly as pernicious, in a house but thinly inhabited.  Exercise this cannot be called; it is the worst species of labour, entailing upon its victims numerous evils.  Good air is as essential as wholesome food; for the air, by coming into immediate contact with the blood, enters at once into the constitution.  If therefore the air be bad, every part of the body, whether near the heart or far from it, must participate in the evil which is produced.