Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/139



The sanitary influence of active exercise is so unmistakable that it has never been altogether disputed, though its importance is still strangely underrated.

Nearly two thousand years ago the medical philosopher Asclepiades substituted gymnastics for drugs, and Dr. Boerhave repeatedly called attention to the remedial effect of outdoor labor in cases where medicine had failed to bring relief. "When I reflect on the pathological immunities of hard-working people," he says, "I cannot help thinking that most of our fashionable diseases might be cured mechanically, instead of chemically, by climbing a bitterwood tree, or chopping it down, if you like, rather than swallowing a decoction of its disgusting leaves."

The organism of the human body has, indeed, been aptly compared to a vessel moved both by