Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/498

490 it is natural to associate their fine physiques with their passionate fondness for swimming, which is one of the best of known exercises for giving one an all-round development.

The Cubans, as a class, have been reported by different American authors to be uncleanly, and some of the Cambridge people feared that this personal neglect might prove troublesome during the Northern sojourn of their visitors. Passing over the right of the Americans to make this criticism, who were themselves criticized by Dickens and other English travelers, not so many years ago, for this same defect, and who are not even now a water-loving people—I wish to say that bathing for cleanliness, with free use of perfumed soap, etc., is of little value from a hygienic point of view, compared to the bathing that follows a profuse perspiration produced by physical exercise. If, in connection with the use of water in the summer season, the skin is frequently exposed to the direct rays of the sun, and immediate contact with the air, it will be greatly improved in its functional power. In my personal contact with young men in the examining room, I am more and more impressed with the importance of keeping the skin in good condition, not only as a means of maintaining health and preventing disease, but of adding to one's nervous and muscular power. Since custom has decreed that the body shall be altogether covered, even in the tropics, the skin has lost much of its beauty, as well as its health-preserving qualities.

A dark complexion is the result of living for a long time in a tropical climate, and is not indicative of racial inferiority, as is too frequently assumed where the white and black races come together. The habit which many Cuban women have of plastering their faces with rice powder until they look almost ghastly, seems to us very singular, in view of the fact that so many of our own well-bred youth of both sexes spend their summer vacations at the seashore or in the mountains, earnestly endeavoring to acquire a tanned skin and a bronzed or olive-brown complexion.

Another custom which prevailed among many of the Cuban women who were in Cambridge was that of wearing narrow-toed, high-heeled shoes. The Cubans have naturally small hands and feet, and perhaps it is pardonable for a people to affect to exaggerate a little the thing upon which they pride themselves. Here, again, we see something of Spanish blood and the traditions of slavery. Those who toil for a living have large hands and feet: slaves toil for a living; therefore, slaves have large hands and feet. Those who do not have to work for a living have small hands and feet: ladies do not have to work for a living; therefore, ladies have small hands and feet. It is only necessary to carry this line of reasoning a step farther to see why the Chinese aristocrat bandages the feet of his daughter until they become so small