Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/200

194 Benjamin Rush's constant advice to sufferers from injuries that began to threaten tetanic complications.

Exercises Nos. 16 and 17 are modifications of the foregoing, and the best "vivacious exercise" for invalids temporarily deprived of the use of their lower extremities. Soldiers with their shoulder-joints cramped by the straps of a heavy knap-sack and with their arms hanging idle, can be kept in a fair state of health by pedestrian exercise alone, and, vice versa, the total inactivity of the lower motive organs may be compensated by a persistent use of dumb-bells in the manner described in the two last paragraphs.

Exercise No. 18 is a movement cure for invalids, but also a first-class aid to digestion under circumstances making other forms of exercise unavailable. It is a last resort kind of motion cure and affords a fair chance to test the difference between the simplest sort of exercise and no exercise at all.

The choice of any special form of movement cure should be decided by the exigencies of their purpose to compensate the deficient opportunities of daily life. Persons engaged in sedentary occupations, alternating with domestic chances