Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/233

 the briefest dimensions; as, for example, when in conversation we catch ourselves saying, "I'd 'a bought it," for "I would have bought it." So, in another sphere, physicians notice that if a medicine is prescribed, it is gulped with alacrity; if a diet is ordered, it is observed with no inordinate grumbling; but when it comes to exercise, regular, vigorous, daily exercise, it is the hardest task in the world to persuade any body to take it.

Yet it is this which is so essential to increase the rapidity and volume of the circulation, to aid the digestion, to give roundness to the form, and to dash the blood in rapid and ruddy waves, seventy, eighty, ninety a minute, all over the body. If the local circulation of the skin is increased by friction, so must the general circulation be improved by regular exercise.

Let us sum up in a few words the prescription for those who, without suffering from any disease, are yet disfigured by a colorless skin, pale lips, and a general want of red blood: A diet, or dose, or both, well supplied with carbon and iron, a lukewarm bath (75° to 85°) every morning, followed by thorough friction with a rough towel, active exercise in the sun and air, and the avoidance of alkaline and astringent soaps and washes.

"But the diet—what diet do you mean? How are we to eat charcoal and iron—dirty things?"

Not, certainly, in the shape of soot or spikes, but as