Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/168

162, a change from bad to worse, for the sweat- box misery of a prayer conclave may prove as baneful as a course of blue-pills. Peering desperately for a sign of dawn, the patient at last becomes impatient, and procures an anodyne, or takes other measures to travel the dark road as swiftly as possible.

Movement-cures, on the other hand, reveal their benefit after the end of a week or so—at first by improvements in the facility of the exercise itself, but soon also by indisputable physiological changes for the better. The appetite revives, sleep becomes quieter and more protracted, till the depressing feeling of helplessness gives way to the buoyancy of self-confidence.

In that way Dr. Winship of Boston recovered his lost self-respect. The "crime of weakness" had obliged him to submit to the insults of a bully, and he resolved to become a man in the ancient heroic sense of the word or renounce an existence whose blessings had ceased to outweigh its evils. Lifting weights and swinging a pair of ring-weighted Indian clubs soon began to improve his appearance and inspire him with hopes he would not have bartered the wealth of a sick boodle magnate, but he continued his exercises,