Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/500

486 the inhumed celery-plant or the wide-spreading, spindling sprout of a cellared potato. Here in New York, and in London, Paris, and Berlin, the typhus sick are removed from the hospitals and placed in tents open to air, and purified by the radiance of the health-giving sunbeams. If thus potent for cure, how irresistible for prevention!

Exercise.—The Greeks made exercise a part of education, and the athlete, if not also a philosopher and a poet, or a tragedian and orator, was at least esteemed as highly by the community. Exercise was a part of every one's life, a business, a pleasure, and a necessity.

Till quite recent days, there were no lazy people, no gentlemen, none inactive. War and its martial exercises, labor and its attendant fatigues of the body, the chase and its toils, housewifery, the fabrication by hand of all the necessities of life—these healthy exercises have been done away with by excessive wealth, the fashion of indolence, and steam appliances. Work being now denounced by fashion, and delegated to servants, the women of the country have no severer toil than playing the piano and dancing, with an occasional saunter in the street on a very fine day. Consequently, the languid blood flows through unstimulated veins, resembling the stagnant, slime-covered waters of an undisturbed canal.

The city man, if very vigorous, priding himself upon his powers, walks down to his business from 8 to 10, and occasionally back again, in a gentlemanly manner, which means not fast enough to be ungraceful, or to moisten his shirt-collar. During the interval between these periods, he sits or stands at a desk or behind a counter. If there is a box to be opened, a bale of goods to be sent aloft, or put into a cart, he calls the porter. Possibly he takes a half-hour turn with some Indian clubs or dumb-bells, in the house, and, of course, where fresh air is tabooed. If he has means, he gets a trotter in a motionless buggy, and over a level road he walks six miles, and then trots fast two miles in great excitement, using his arms and possibly his lungs with some vigor. This is the exercise of the modern athlete, philosopher, and business-man.

Clothing.—The anti-imaginative character of the nineteenth century sets aside the fanciful ideas of the origin of clothing being due to a sudden outburst of modesty. It undoubtedly originated from the exigencies of climate; it was a shelter from the burning sun and a protection from cold and wet. By degrees, this original design became forgotten, and fashion, driving out both original necessity and created modesty, usurped the control of dress, and, like most conquerors, has endeavored to eradicate every possible trace of its original design. Health and comfort and life are disregarded as much as possible. The young child is so dressed as to expose its dimpled arms and its sweet amplitude of neck, and sent to walk, no matter how chill and blustering the weather, with its plump legs unstockinged [sic] and bare.

But the improvement in manufactures and the general adoption of