Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/566

546 maintained are simple: exercise of various kinds, in alternation with rest, cold water, and strict attention to diet. One of his maxims was, that "work and tiring exercise are universal panaceas."

Between the years 1756 and 1786, Tronchin, a scholar of Boerhaave's, was in great repute in Paris; he was physician to the Duke of Orleans and to Voltaire, and it was owing to his advice that Voltaire went to live at Ferney. People came to consult him from distant countries; his success was extraordinary. His system consisted in ordering friction, movements of various characters, exercise, long walks, and certain precautions in diet.

Fuller wrote, about the same period, on the value of exercise in the cure of various illnesses, and especially in hypochondriacal and hysterical affections. He also laid great stress on riding; indeed, be established a riding-cure, which had great success among very distinguished persons. Tissot, of Lausanne, wrote a treatise on the health of the learned, strongly impressing on the studious and sedentary the duty of exercise; he advises games of billiards, ball, shuttlecock, hunting, shooting, swimming, wrestling, dancing, leaping, riding, walking, traveling, exercising the voice, speaking, reading aloud, declaiming, and singing. Here Dr. Hünerfauth remarks that many great physicians in old times considered reading aloud, declaiming, and singing highly beneficial to the general health. Plutarch mentions that daily exercise of the voice conduces greatly to health.

A system of gymnastics was established in Sweden by Peter Ling, between 1805 and 1839. He was the son of a pastor, and devoted his life to the study of exercises for the development of the human frame. Swedish exercises are much used now in England.

Massage and gymnastic exercises have more votaries in France than in England. The love of sport that seems inherent in English people is supposed to have obviated the necessity for a widely extended system of gymnastics. Now, however, gymnastic exercises and musical drill are being introduced largely, and have been much appreciated, not only by men and boys, but by women and girls.

The system of massage practiced by Dr. Metzger has drawn crowds to Amsterdam, and has afforded relief to great numbers of sufferers, several reigning sovereigns—among others the Empress of Austria—being among his patients. Dr. Hünerfauth carries out the same system at Homburg with equal success, and a member of his family devotes much of her time to relieving from charity the sufferings of the peasants.

It is necessary to beware of masseurs who have no real knowledge of the art, as disastrous results follow from the violent treatment to which ignorant persons subject their patients. Dr. Hünerfauth deprecates massage by machinery, as he considers that much delicacy is necessary in treating the complicated nervous system of the human frame. It is curious to find how much benefit many sufferers derive