Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/809

Rh to the suffering statements of these men, is obliged in his own mind to differentiate between the assigned and what is often the real cause of that train of evils to which it is his duty to lend an attentive ear.

Thus, among the most intelligent part of the community—among the part that can help itself—there is no systematized scale or class of recreations that can be relied upon to afford the change really demanded for health. Nor are matters much improved when we take up the kind of change that is sought after by the same classes in the matter of physical recreation. When the Volunteer movement first came under notice, and for some time after it first came into practice, it was the hope of all sanitary men—I believe without any exception—that the exercise, and drill, and training, and excitement which would be produced by the movement would prove most beneficial to the health of the male part of the people at a period of life when the training of the physical powers is most required and often most neglected. I remember being quite enthusiastic at that change and its promises, and I recalled the other day an often-quoted paper or essay which had sprung out of that enthusiasm, and which I dare say at the time it was written seemed common sense itself. I can but feel now that the hope was begotten of inexperience. The movement has been a success, I presume, in a national and political point of view, but a careful observation of it from its first until this time has failed to indicate to me, as a physician, that it has led to any decided improvement in the health generally of those who have been most concerned in carrying it out by becoming its representatives. Certain it is that nothing affirmative of good stands forth in its favor, and I wish I could stop with that one neutral statement. I can not in order of truth and fairness so stop, for I have seen much injury from the process. To say nothing of the expense to which it subjects many struggling men, to the loss of time it inflicts on them, to the neglect it inflicts at the fireside and home, to the spirit of contest of mind and fever of mind which it engenders; to say nothing, I repeat, of these things—all of which, nevertheless, are detrimental, indirectly, to the health of the men themselves and of those who surround them in family union—there is a direct harm often inflicted by the service, call it recreation if you like, which is not to its credit. The man who has advanced just far enough in life to have completed his development of growth, and to have lost the elasticity of youth, the man who has rather too early in life become fat and, as he or his friends say, puffy, the man who has, from long confinement in the office or study, found himself dejected and dyspeptic, each one of these men has passed into the ranks of the Volunteers, in order to regain the elastic tread, to throw off the burden of fat, or to find relief from the dyspeptic despondency. For my part, I have never been able to discover a good practical result in any of these trials; but I have seen many bad practical results. I have seen the partly disabled men, in the conditions specified, striving to do their best to keep alive and