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PHYSICAL CULTURE FOR CHILDREN
durance in a weak-lunged person; that big lungs are better than a big chest.
Checkley has met with great success with both sexes, a lessening of the waist-girth by nine inches being not uncommon among his pupils; and a marked change in their bearing and carriage. Dr. Emerson, of Boston, a clergyman, at one time delicate and feeble, so exercised that he became vigorous and fine-looking as a teacher of both oratory and physical culture. He has won high reputation and done good to many. In reducing weight especially. He says that:
"There is no such thing as a sound mind in an unsound body; that his system comprises about three hundred movements, some of which are repetitions; that it will take a close student about four years of daily study and practice to attain perfection in execution of the movements required by the system. He promises them increasing health and beauty as a reward; that the primary object is vital supply. He means exercises which help the body get nourishment from food; that this is accomplished first by securing the proper position of the vital organs; that any exercise when they are not in a proper position is harmful to those organs; that—and this is his fundamental and most important teaching—the greater the altitude of the cited organs, other things being equal, the greater is their vigor; that the heart beats with a more perfect rhythm when lifted high in the chest than when it is low; that when the vital organs are high, the lungs consume more air, the stomach properly secretes gastric juice; the liver secretes bile from the blood; the alimentary canal is healthy in the production of what are called the peristaltic waves; that the moment these vital organs are lowered from their normal attitude, that moment their tone of power is lowered; that there is no physical defect so general as this—that the vital organs are from one to four inches too low among adults and among children down to the age of five or six years; that before this time the vital organs are high. As the lungs are lifted they throw the shoulders apart and broaden the back as much as they fill the chest; that the first step in curing dyspepsia is to lift the vital organs sufficiently high in the body;
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