Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/202

196 same, and the patient, who would have made a popular neighbor of certain Australian stock-farmers, was publicly recognized as a boy with a stomach that could not digest mutton. And practice is almost equally unavailing to overcome the disinclination of some gymnasium pupils to special kinds of exercise—heel over head evolutions on a trapeze or horizontal bar, for instance. I have known gymnasts who complained of sick headaches whenever the routine of the educational programme obliged them to conquer that aversion, and a good rule in such cases is to accept the verdict of nature as final, if the repugnance should continue to assert itself after the tyro has mastered the technical difficulties of the exercise.

But it is also certain that habit develops an association of ideas between special ailments and their appropriate gymnastic remedies. I have mentioned the expedient of sailors who "work off" qualms of seasickness by volunteer exercise in the rigging and an old teacher of my acquaintance occasionally leaves the class-room to nip an incipient attack of asthma with a pair of dumbbells.

Hay-fever, I think, could often be knocked out