Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/170

Rh and restoring health—Indeed, it ought to be called the first means. The air is a great and cheap doctor.

Many leading authorities are of opinion that the best way to learn deep-breathing is to inhale slowly as much air as you can get into the lungs without discomfort, and then exhale again just as slowly. A clever physician, however, and one of the best athletes in America, told me a better way, which I have tried and recommended with unfailing success. It is to inhale slowly and fully, without straining, and then shoot the air out of the lungs with a sudden gust, by a collapse of shoulders and chest. Then slowly fill the lungs again (through the nostrils),—and gush! out it goes (through the mouth) with a sound like a small locomotive. In the street, you may be noticeable, by the noise, perhaps; but you can get through your twenty or thirty puffs twice a day without much trouble.

The effect of this practice is almost incredible. Take two or three spells of thirty breaths each day for one month; and you will increase your chest-measurement in that time from two to four inches! And this is not like the trainer's increase: it is permanent. And, besides, you will