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MY BREATHING SYSTEM

One of the most comraon rcgulations for soldiers is: Chest outwards, “stornach” inwards!—the tight belt, or the officer’s corset, helping considerably to secure this un-natural posturę. Soldiers drilled, they are exhorted to arch the chest morę and morc, and to keep this up pennanently. Tliat is called deep-breathing exercise! And the officers think it their duty to set the soldiers an example. They hardly dare to make a fair exhalation, for fear the chest should sink. This foolish practice continued for ycars, the ribs becomc fixcd and rigid, the vesicles slack and pcrma-nently distended, like old misused indiarubber; in other words, the lungs are ruined.

Herc is illustrated two distinct faults : firstly, the strongly indrawn abdomen, as a rcsult of which the viscera prcvent the diapliragm from sinking and, thcrcforc, the breath front bcing a fuli one ; secondly, the lack of dccp cxhalation, the effect of which may be the above-named lung and lieart troubles. It is, therefore, not only wrong, but in the long run also dangerous, always to walk about with the chest too highly arched and the abdomen too much rlrawn in. The natural casy bearing of the bod}^- secn in the ancient Greek statues is the healthicst and most beautiful—at all events in the cyes of those who have a properly developed taste. But 1 am surę that if a Swedish gymnastic teacher or a military drill sergeant were to visit the museum and contemplate, not from the front, but in profile, an Apoxyomcnos, a Doryphoros, or an Apollo Belvedere, they would declare these sttperb ligures round-backed and flat-ehested.

Samples of the third class, the “ strong men,” are found antong those who pose and are photographed in the most unnatural and ovcrstrained attitudes. As mentioned on p. 7z, it becomes ąuite habitual to performers of ” feats of strength ” after inhalation to arch the chest and brace all the muscles of the trunk, especially the abdominal, while

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