Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/330

316, and ignore the bilious temperament, we have in this class only the nervous, while in the first group we have both the sanguine and lymphatic, with no means of separating them, except that the national characteristic shows an excess of the sanguine over the lymphatic, probably about the ratio of three to one.

 . Based upon the examination of 190,621 American-born white men accepted; expressed in ratios of 1,000.

Table II. shows the relation of chest-expansion to complexion. The range of chest-movement, while it cannot be deemed an absolute measure of vitality, which must be regarded rather as the sum of organic and functional action than the degree of perfection in any one set of organs, yet may be fairly assumed to bear a close relation to the general vigor of the system that defines the quality of vital activity. A free chest-expansion implies a large consumption of oxygen, a corresponding degree of force and activity in the. circulation of the blood, and this, in its turn, calls for a large demand for food, with a proportional muscular vigor. In the table, a chest-expansion of over three inches is taken as the basis of comparison, for the reason that, at an expansion less than this, men of impaired strength may be included. It is but necessary to glance at the table in order to understand all that is implied by it—that size and muscular vigor of the sanguine and lymphatic greatly exceed these conditions in the nervous.