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CHAPTER V
MOTOR-CARS AND HEALTH
By Sir Henry Thompson, Bart., F.R.C.S., M.B.Lond., &c.
It gives me particular pleasure to contribute to a book on automobilism, inasmuch as I am old enough to remember the steam coaches which were running in London in the third and fourth decades of the last century, and, at the age of nearly eighty-two, I am taking part in the revival of automobilism, and am in the habit of making journeys almost daily in my automobile.
I am asked to write concerning the relation of driving motor vehicles to health. Personally, I have found my drives to improve my general health. The easy jolting which occurs when a motor-car is driven at a fair speed over the highway conduces to a healthy agitation; it 'acts on the liver,' to use a popular phrase, which means only that it aids the peristaltic movements of the bowels and promotes the performance of their functions; thus accomplishing the good in this respect which arises from riding on horseback. Horse-riding has, however, the advantage of necessitating exercise of the muscles of the legs. This is one of the disadvantages of motoring, but I have found that it may be to some extent overcome by alighting at the end of a drive of twenty miles, and running smartly for about two hundred or three hundred yards. I make this a practice in relation to my motor drives. Remaining seated in one position, with little or no opportunity of moving the lower limbs, renders them very liable to
