10752 system 36

3G

outside the door. And you ncarly all get enough exercise, even if it bc only partial. Among the factory workers and the poor in large towns illness can be excused, but not among you. You get poisoned and out of sorts because you neglcct your skin. And instead of seeking health by washing, grooming, and hardening it every day (which you do for your horses and cattle, and in places even for your pigs), you gorge yourselves with still morę poison in the shape of medicine, and mufie yoursclves up in still morę unnecessary clothing. The result, of course. is that illness will seize hołd of you stiil morę readily ncxt time. One of your greatest inflictions, so much discussed and written about just now, 1 mean Consumption. owes to tliis its extraordinary dissemination in the country. Dr. Dettweiler, the celebrated tuberculosis specialist, said : " The tuberculosis patient is as much skin-sick as lung sick.” Neglect of the skin destroys a man's powcr of resisting bacilli.

Dr. P. Niemeyer says: “ Drcad of fresh air is the chief cause of tuberculosis. He who combats this dread does as much for the preven-tion of the disease as he who fighls the bacilli.”

What hotbeds of disease the smali, overcro\vded, and practically unventilated village schoolrooms are ! The air is cither supersaturated with the varied emanations arising from crowds of dirty children, often mingled with steam from wet clothes, and greased boots. or else it is heavy with smoke and dusi from the stove. If a sensible schoolmaster attempts to open the Windows during a lesson, he gets all the parents down upon him.

The gymnastics pursued in many places with such ardour might be of benefit to the health of you country people ; but as things are. they tend to do morę harm than good. by reason of your vory deficient com-prehension of the care of your skin and the need for fresh air. I have frequcntly witncssed roluntary gymnastic exercises of the sort in the country. Those participating in liiem would be inlialing vigorouslv the air of the little room, fuli of dust and ladcn with noxious emanations and tobacco-smoke. The perspiration would pour off them, but not one of them would take a bath afterwards They would put on their clothes again, and allow the perspiration to drv on them and deposit still anothcr cake of poisonous matter on the body. on the top of all the old layers from previous lessons. When I reniarked to the most active of the gymnasts that I wondered at the constitutions they must have, not all to fali mortally ill together, he admitted that he ccrtainly very often did feel unwell afterwards.

For Travellers

I have often heard commercial travellers and others, whose occu-pation obliges them to be away from homo for long together, complain that they had simply no opportunity of strengthening their bodies by gymnastics or sports, and that they often came to provincial towns where it was difficult and entailed waste of time to get a bath, which, as eeeryone knows, one stands in speeial need of after a railway joumey. Here I belieye that " My System " will supply a want. Tiiere is iio apparatus to be carried about or set up. As soon as you come from the railway station into your room at the hotel, you uńdress, stand on a carpct, and slap the body all o\ er with a wet towel—or you can without any inconvenience carry a smali india rubber bath with vou—dry your-