Part 5
If thirsty, one or two oranges will quench that, and be most agreeable to the stomach, as well as being of more benefit than anything else. When in-doors, light dumb-bells and the skipping-rope may be used vigorously to improve the wind, but nothing heavy or too violent, as in this branch of athletics the muscles to be controlled are those of the legs instead of the arms; change of flannels, socks, shoes, a salt water sponge-bath, rub down; then apply a little bay rum, mouth rinsed out, and a pleasant chat with a friend will make you feel like a new man, and after meals, before alluded to, ready and willing to tackle hard work again. If the pedestrian’s appetite falls off, whether from nervousness, sleeplessness or whatever causes, a preparation of iron and gentian may be taken, say a teaspoonful about ten minutes before eating, until his natural appetite returns, when it should be discontinued. If, on the other hand, the food taken does not digest readily, and symptoms of dyspepsia follow eating, then a tablespoonful of wine of pepsin a quarter of an hour after meals will soon bring that trouble over, discontinuing when it does. When sickness at the stomach succeeds, a tablespoonful of prepared lime water, taken in a little milk, when the feeling comes on, acts like a charm. When the bowels are lax, thickened flour and milk are good. If costive, rhubarb preserves, or prune tea, or a mild injection of soap and warm water will be found to answer every purpose.
Some enterprising Knight of St. Crispin, with a view to increase their trade by working on the feelings of pedestrians and others, introduced the old-fashioned piece of steel under the instep, between the welt and the sole, and designated them spring walking-shoes, for which there used to be quite a demand. Experience, however, has proved that the only spring likely to lead to the winning-post is what nature gave, and that all artificial appendages are more likely to do harm than good. The shoe best adapted for a walker of from one to ten miles is a low-cut shoe, laced nearly to the toe, with low heel, broad instep and plenty of room for the toes, and light as possible and of the best seasoned leather. Ordinary shoemakers can no more make professional running or walking shoes than an ordinary blacksmith can turn out a razor or set of chicken-gaffs, and, therefore, the business should be entrusted to those who make a specialty of it.
The most successful and tractable of modern pedestrians, Charles Rowell, has made more money in his two six-days’ contests in New York than he would have in fifty years at a trade or in his own country. Here we are carried away with almost anything of an international character, both press and public. When Rowell made his 500 miles in the first visit and 524 on his second, it was generally conceded that he performed the distance on the square, and hence the patronage bestowed. Other six-day contests have been given with nearly 40 more miles tacked on to the winner ahead of Rowell’s time by the black-board, but the receipts were as quarters to dollars in comparison. There appears to be a weakness for figures not altogether warranted by the financial results at the end of the week.
To all, therefore, who compete in long distances for love or money, do not worry about the score, but _keep ahead all the time_. A gain of ten miles on the first day, when honestly made, and with the intention of staying on the track through the competition, will be pretty sure to find the leader far enough ahead to carry off the lion’s share, for, as the veteran Jack Goulding’s logic proves, if there is a dollar at the end of every mile it is surprising how many miles a man will go. The practice of the crack flyers competing on the first day, with no idea of going the week more by preconcert, may suit the betting ring and the book-makers, but it has hurt the business more than can ever be patched up again by the most adroit, self-interested parties.
In addition to Rowell, Brown, Hazael and others have been brought out, but they either went wrong or could not be managed by their trainers. Self-reliance is very well, but an ungovernable temper or dissipated habits are sure to be left behind when opposed to tractability and abstemiousness. The English peds used to say there were lots of better men than Rowell over there, but John Astley knew he was unapproachable and as honest as they make them, and, whether the best or not, he carried off the belt against all competitors.
The advantage of an intelligent, capable trainer cannot be over-estimated, and, one who can satisfy his protege of his superiority in his business, as well as a man of nerve, is what is required. When Dan Donnelly, the champion pugilist of Ireland, was trained by Capt. Kelly for his fight with George Cooper, he was in magnificent condition, but when he met Tom Oliver, having had men to look after him whom he considered only his equal or perhaps inferior, he was in no condition at all. We are of the opinion that John Ennis but for James Cusick would never have got second place to Rowell, or Nick Murphy, Steve Brodie, Hart, Panchot, etc., made the time they did but for men of superior qualification.
It will be interesting to the young athletes to know the length of time taken for rest by the six-day men, and therefore supply this information so as to be easy of reference. We allude to the contest from April 5th to 10th, 1880, inclusive: Hart, 23 hours 2 minutes 59 seconds; Pegram, 31 hours 30 minutes 53 seconds; Howard, 30 hours, 50 minutes 39 seconds; Dobler, 22 hours 37 minutes 12 seconds; Allen, 34 hours 24 minutes 49 seconds; Krohne, 27 hours 18 minutes 15 seconds; Williams, 28 hours 52 minutes 33 seconds, and Hanwaker, 27 hours 58 minutes 21 seconds. Hart’s actual time on the course was 118 hours 20 minutes and 1 second, and his average walk in that time was at the rate of 4 7-10 miles per hour.
Rowell’s regular food when on a six-days march is beefsteak, chops, bread, vegetables, tea and coffee; occasionally he takes a little pudding and cheese. Guyon feeds on beef tea, chops, potatoes, toast, tea and coffee, but no stimulants. Weston, beef tea, custard, lime water and tea, beefsteak and no stimulants. Ennis, oatmeal, beef tea, rare beef and oysters. Hazael, chops, steaks, crackers, toast and lemon soda. Merritt feeds on jellies, fruits, beef, mutton and vegetables, with tea and coffee. Hart eats chops, chopped eggs, toast, corn bread, tea and coffee.
TRAINING FOR BASEBALL.
It is well known that an athlete desirous of excelling in any special sport or game must be trained only to the extent to suit the requirements of the sport he desires to become an expert in. To train young men in a gymnasium alike for rowing, running or for field work in baseball, cricket or lacrosse, putting them through the same routine of exercises, is simply to unnecessarily overwork them for one particular sport, and to give them insufficient exercise for another. Of course, to a certain extent, all kinds of gymnastic exercises, if moderately engaged in, tend to develop a healthful physique, if gone through with under the rules of an intelligent system; but the indiscriminate way in which baseball players enter a gymnasium and go through with what they call their training is ofttimes worse than useless work in preparing them to sustain the fatigue incident to their game. What is necessary for a baseball player in gymnastic exercise is to take only that exercise which makes him agile and quick of movement, and which trains the eye to judge the ball, or the arms and chest to wield the bat, or the legs to run the bases. Lifting heavy weights or exercise which is calculated to develop strength for such purposes is useless. Swinging clubs, if carried to excess; jumping is unnecessary; work on the parallel bars, the trapeze, etc., is needless. In fact, a ball player can find far better training for quick movements, gaining keen sightedness and endurance in a handball or racket court than is possible in a gymnasium. Exercise in short-distance running is good, and all exercises which tend to strengthen the muscles of the ankles--such as skating, for instance--help to train a ball player. But what is particularly required in the system of training for professional ball players is that very activity which handball yields. This game strengthens the hands, trains the sight, and especially gives a player endurance in the very fatigue he has to undergo on the ballfield. A skillful handball player, when he be comes accustomed to baseball field work, will always excel in picking up hard-hit ground balls.
ADVICE TO BUSINESS MEN AND OTHERS.
The majority of our readers are doubtless young men having in view perfecting their frames for some muscular feat, and the bulk of this work was written principally for their benefit. There is still another and larger class for whom no author seems to have troubled his head about. We allude to those compelled by circumstances to spend their time in sedentary occupations, and are not likely to get time or means to pursue a regular course of training.
It would be simply ridiculous to advise a letter-carrier to take exercise after going his rounds of forty or fifty miles a day, as physicians sometimes do without being aware of the calling of their patient, or to suggest fasting forty days and nights for dyspepsia because Dr. Tanner did it, giving no impossibilities or absurdities, but such as we are willing to practice and carry out. As a general thing, to keep down flesh, if inclined to corpulency, avoid sugar, salmon, eels, herrings, pork, potatoes, beer, bread, butter, milk, champagne, port and anything calculated to create bile. It would be well to dispense with fat meats, eggs, pastry, new bread, cheese and whatever else may produce nausea or indigestion after eating.
Before making your morning toilet, a sponge saturated in tepid salt water should be applied to all parts of the body, and then rubbed dry with a Turkish towel. If too much of a shock to the system, apply a flesh-brush or the palm of your hands vigorously to the skin, after which the sponge bath, and when dry the brush or hand, as before. When the shower-bath is used, and a person feels exhilarated from its effects, it is better than the sponge bath; but when it produces a shiver or weakness, it should be discontinued until strong enough to indulge in this great summer luxury.
The mere fact that millions of human beings are strong and healthy upon a purely vegetable diet should of itself suggest that, although animal food, as more concentrated, and yielding more force with less expenditure in its digestion, is superior to vegetable food, yet there is excellent nutriment to be extracted from vegetables. The anatomical indications of man, being omnivorous, should also point in the same direction, and the need of vegetable acids, no less than the advantages of variety, at once disclose the error of banishing vegetable food. The chief mistake lies in the cooking. The water in which green vegetables are cooked is poisonous. There is not one house in fifty where the vegetables are not cooked in small vessels, containing very little water, which is never _changed_, and where the greens are sent to table with the water properly squeezed from them. Let any person unable to eat broccoli, or greens cooked in a quart of water, try the effect of having them cooked in a gallon of water, or of having the quart changed three or four times during the process, and he will soon discover the difference. If potatoes are “watery,” it is because they are ill-cooked. No Irishwoman serves up watery potatoes.
Veal and pork are rigidly excluded by the trainer, which some will hear it with amazement, and will ask how it was that the ancients gave the athletes nothing but pork. Would the old hen be thought nutritious, and the chicken injurious? Would the sheep be tender, and the lamb tough? And why is the calf to be blooded, and the ox not? Yet, so long as this practice continues, no one should indulge in veal, unless his digestion be vigorous. Fried dishes, rich gravies and pastry should also be avoided, because of their tendency to develop fatty acids in the stomach. Some cannot endure fat; others cannot get on without it. Some cannot touch mutton; others are made ill by eggs. Let each find out his own idiosyncrasy. The only thing the trainer teaches us is to take abundant exercise in the open air, and to be simple and moderate in our diet, with regularity in hours. If neither time nor strength permits our abundant exercise, and if our avocations prevent regularity, what remains but moderation in diet?
The effects of exercise are two-fold: on the one hand a stimulus is given to the action of the heart and lungs, which enables the blood to be more thoroughly oxygenated and more rapidly circulated; on the other hand, there is an expenditure force, accompanying the increased activity of the organic changes. Exercise strengthens the parts exercised, because it increases the nutrition of those parts. When any organ is inactive, the circulation in it becomes less and less, the smaller ramifications of its network of blood vessels are empty or but half filled, the streams gradually run in fewer channels, and the organ, ceasing to be thoroughly nourished, wastes away. When the organ is active all its vessels are filled; all the vital changes, on which depend its growth and power, proceed rapidly. The force expended is renewed, unless the expenditure has been excessive, in which case there is a disturbance of the mechanism, and depression or disease results. But unless there has been excess, we see that the great advantage of exercise consists in keeping up a due equalization of the circulation, an equable distribution of nutrition to the various organs. Perfect health means the equable activity of all the functions; not the vigor of the muscular system alone, nor of the nervous system alone; not the activity of this gland or that, but the equable vigor of all. Remember that when life makes great demands upon the muscular energy, the demands upon the brain must be less; and when the demands upon the brain are energetic, there is less force disposable for muscles and glands. The advantage of exercise to a student or any other brain-worker, is that it _lessens_ the over-stimulus of his brain, distributes the blood more equably, calling to his muscles some of those streams which would impetuously be rushing through his brain. And understanding what this advantage is, he should be careful to avail himself of it; but he should be careful to remember at the same time that within certain limits all the force with drawn by his muscles is withdrawn from the brain or some other organ. He must not burn the candle at both ends.
It is certain that sedentary men, and men of hard-worked intellects, are greatly in need of some means of distributing the circulation through the muscles. Exercise is the means. When the avocations are such as to render continuous exercise in the open air difficult or impossible, we should seek to compensate for this by variety of gentle activities distributed throughout the day. No error is more common than that of supposing open-air exercise to be indispensable to health: we may have no time for walking, rowing, riding or any of the ordinary modes of out-door activity, yet--as the excellent health and strength of domestic servants, who scarcely ever stir out, will show--the mere activity of the body, in various occupations, suffices for the equalization of the circulation. Let the sedentary stand as well as sit, changing the posture frequently, and using back and arms as variously as possible. A variety of gentle activities is more beneficial to the student than bursts of violent exercise. Above all things, remember that in exercise, as in diet, the grand rule is moderation. Avoid fatigue; as you would cease eating when appetite abates, cease muscular activity when the impulse to continue it abates.
In general, the healthy man may eat almost anything in moderation; but it is wiser for all to avoid meat twice cooked, rich gravies and fried dishes. Nature tells us very plainly that that pleasure is a means no less than an end. The exercise which has in it the element of amusement is ten times as beneficial as a listless walk; and the meal which is eaten with a relish is far more nutritious than a meal eaten only as a periodical necessity. Solitary walks along familiar or uninteresting roads, or solitary meals on dishes unstimulating to the palate, are not to be compared with rambles through interesting tracts, or with stimulating companions, and meals where the guests, no less than dishes, add their pleasurable excitement.
There is one point of regimen to which attention may be called, and that is, never to attempt severe mental or bodily labor after a full meal. If possible, let all such labor be got through in the early part of the day, after breakfast, but before dinner; not only because the bodily vigor is then greatest, but also because the restoration of that vigor through dinner should not be interfered with. We know that in many cases this advice is impracticable. Night-work is inevitable in some lives, and is fancied to be so in the lives of students and literary men. In such cases, there is, at least, this mitigating resource--not to commence hard work until the labor of digestion is over. Thousands ruin their digestion by disregarding this simple advice. If work after dinner be inevitable, let the dinner be a very light one, and let a light supper be eaten.
In order to prove the facts above cited, a physician of our acquaintance tried the experiment upon two healthy dogs. They were both fed alike and in similar quantities, one being allowed to rest in quiet an hour after feeding, and the other permitted to run around and frolic for a similar length of time. Both dogs were then killed, and the food of the one allowed to rest was quite digested, while that of the other was scarcely digested at all.
No better general advice can be given in conclusion than that furnished us by the greatest physician of the present time, Dr. Willard Parker, now enjoying rugged health at the advanced age of eighty, and being a living example of the truth of his reasoning.
The blood will be either good or bad, according as the material or food is good or bad. The character of blood made depends on the kind of food taken. In this country, as a rule, too much meat is eaten; meat once a day is sufficient, especially for brain workers. The waste matter from a meat diet is eliminated through the kidneys. Too much labor thrown upon those organs produces disease. An overloaded stomach is unfavorable to active brain work. Man is like an engine with two service pipes, one for the brain and one for the body, and no man has the requisite force to work both at once. Generally Americans bolt their food. It should be cooked. The first process of cooking a steak is on the range; the second is in the mouth, and this is done by working the saliva into the food by chewing. Thus is the food prepared to be acted upon by the juices of the stomach. Infants in nursing move the jaws to obtain the milk, and the working of the infant’s jaw mixes the milk with the saliva, and thus fits that milk to go into the stomach. After being subjected to the action of the stomach for two or three hours the food becomes fitted to pass into the circulation by absorption. To have good food, therefore, it is necessary that it be made of proper material properly prepared. We are furnished with milk to start with as we enter the world. Had meat been the best diet, we should have been born with beefsteaks in our hands. But we are given milk. Milk and blood are nearer alike than any other two fluids; a large proportion of each is water. After milk, breadstuffs and vegetables are the best diet, and in warm climates fruit. Then meats. Sugar and fat go into the body not so much to nourish it as to be a fuel to give it warmth. Meat contains much nitrogenous matter.
A limited quantity of spirits at the principal meal, especially for persons advanced in life or of weak digestion, may aid in the combustion of the food. Spirits aid digestion in feeble and aged persons; but only the feeble or the aged require such a stimulus. The young and vigorous do not need it, and are better off without it. Middle aged persons may perhaps drink a little spirit with their meals without danger; but they cannot safely make it a beverage. In small quantities alcoholic drinks stimulate, and if not enough is taken to coagulate the pepsin and the albumen in the food they promote digestion in proper cases, and thus help to repair the system. But whenever more alcoholic liquor is taken into the stomach with the food than is demanded it passes into the circulation, disturbs the action of the heart, flushes the face and confuses the brain. When so much fermented or distilled liquor is taken into the system that the functions of the organism are disturbed positive harm is done--the system has been so far poisoned. An irritation has been set up instead of the desired healthful stimulation of the stomach.
The human system contains water, fat, starch, sugar, nitrogenous substances, iron, sulphur, phosphorus, animal quinine, sodium potassium and chlorine; but no alcohol is found. It has no like in the system, hence there is nothing that it can repair, and it cannot, therefore, be ranked as a food of any kind. It possesses an inherent deleterious property, which, when introduced into the system, is capable of destroying life, and it has its place with arsenic, belladonna, prussic acid and opium. Like these, it is to be employed as a medicine, and has its true position in works on materia medica. It is both a poison and a medicine.
It has been settled by science that alcohol, which passes into the blood when more is taken than can be employed as a condiment or tonic, undergoes no change in the blood, but exists there as a foreign substance, creating irritation; and the excitement involved in the effort to throw off the irritating substance wastes the energy and life of the system. After alcohol has produced disease of the stomach it next expends its force upon the neighboring organs, inducing disease of the liver and dropsy or Bright’s disease, both of which are fatal to health, if not to life.
The life insurance companies understand it. Their figures show that while a temperate young man at twenty may reasonably look forward to forty-four years and two months of life, the young man of the same age who poisons his system with drink can expect not more than fifteen years and six months. He who uses alcohol becomes an easy prey of epidemics; his system cannot resist the poison of diphtheria, cholera and fevers.
To make good blood we require good food, pure water, pure air, sunlight and exercise. Either foul air or impure water poisons the blood. If you don’t throw off two pounds and three-quarters of effete matter every twenty-four hours through the lungs and two pounds through the pores you must expect sooner or later to fall. Nothing is more essential than pure air. Impure air is the source of our ship fevers.