Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/160

148 much below their own possibilities of development, and suggests what might have been done for them in this respect years before, had similar advantages been offered them earlier in life. The tests taken of "lung capacity" on the spirometer before and after the course, as well as measurements of the chest circumference, tell by their marked improvement the same story.

Apropos of the lack of muscular vigor in city-bred subjects, we may note that oculists believe that the very marked increase in myopia among Americans during the past few years, which is especially noticeable in city life, is partly due to muscular relaxation, which deprives the tissues of the eye of their proper support and permits the degree of bulging of the globe which is an essential condition of this disease.

But granting the fact that her physical development is not perfect, what can we say of her general health? Passing by serious diseases, it is evident that our city girl has a variety of functional complaints which should have no place in the physical history of young people. Headaches, backache, dyspepsias, neuralgias are far more common than they should be. Nervously she is not stable, as the increasing number of nervous difficulties, neurasthenias, etc., would indicate. The emotional strain of conventional city life, which is felt more by the society girl than by the schoolgirl, is not an ideal atmosphere in which to cultivate the perfect flower of a stable character, and those who apparently bear it well do so at some expense of strength and nerve.

This hasty glance at the features of our city girl would lead us to believe that she requires not necessarily less attention for her brain, but more for her body than has hitherto fallen to her lot. She shows the lack of influences that will grow muscle and sedate nerve and promote functional health—in a word, some definite physical training. Her functional complaints are such as the experienced physician treats with exercise and pure air, and her narrow chest and unsymmetrical body will find their only rectifiers in these same influences.

Given the limitations of a town environment, where and how shall she gain these things? All intelligent persons agree upon the necessity for exercise, the manner of taking it being perhaps the possible point of controversy. As for the amount required, physiologists have agreed that in general terms a man requires exercise equal to a walk of nine to ten miles daily, and we may therefore estimate that a woman should have not less than an equivalent of five miles to maintain her in good health. Our city girl can not run wild in the fields to obtain this exercise, or live the life of a gypsy. She must be educated mentally as well as physically, and the problem evidently resolves itself into providing some means which will give in our rather limited winter