Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/145

Rh mechanical for chemical remedies has been paraphrased in the apothegm that "patients might walk away from a good many diseases." Pedestrianism is, indeed, the readiest of all forms of active exercise—doubly effective to burden-carriers, though a health-seeker need not take up his whole bed to walk. A stout overcoat in winter and a market-basket in summer are enough to outweigh the influence of habit which in the course of years might otherwise modify the efficiency of the prescription. An old physician of my acquaintance often repeats his assertion that the best advice a doctor could give to a friend (as distinct from a fee-paying patient) would be to choose his dwelling on some out-of-the-way hill-top, or similar location, at a safe distance from the temptation of the street-car lines, and to readopt the good old democratic habit of doing his own shopping.

"Where street-cars reach," he says, "there will be always a pretext for using them, in spite of solemn pledges to the contrary. It will be storms in winter and heat in summer, or special hurry, where meteorological excuses fail. But in the form of Hobson's choice an excellent movement-cure remedy will get a chance to prove its