Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/491

Rh should be made of every person, to determine the best kind of exercise for that particular person. And these examinations ought to be made by a thoroughly educated physician. It will not do to trust such an important agent in education as physical culture to a man or woman who has only a smattering of knowledge.

Systems of exercise are not half as important as the person who exercises. Systems are only important in what they can do for that person. The systems studied apart from the individual may be perfect. Applied without judgment to particular individuals they may prove disastrous failures. The persons exercising must be studied first, last, and all the time; next, their environment; and then the kinds of exercise suited to their condition and needs.



PECULIARITY common to all nations is the fact that not until the industries of peace and the armaments of war had been well developed was attention paid to procuring safeguards against conflagrations; and when it was at last realized that means for the extinguishing of fire were necessary, so little was attempted that the results were entirely inadequate. Even in the United States, noted the world over for advanced methods of fire-fighting, the marked improvements have been so long in coming that half the men alive to-day can remember the time when the most marked changes were made.

It is believed that the first hose used for the extinguishing of fire was made from the gut of an ox. This was attached to a bag filled with water, which, being pressed, would force out a jet. Charles F. T. Young, C. E., the author of Fires, Fire Engines, and Fire Brigades, considers it probable that some mechanical devices capable of squirting water existed in Nineveh, Tyre, Babylon, etc. Ctesibius, of Alexandria, who flourished in the second century during the time of Ptolemy, is said to have invented a fire engine. Philadelphus and Euergetes are also said to have worked in the same direction.

Certain it is that Hero in 150 invented and had made a fire engine that was provided with an air chamber, and therefore played a continuous stream. During the darkness of the middle ages fire engines seem to have been forgotten, and it is doubtful if syringes were kept in use. The Chronicles of Augsburg, 