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.

Cleanliness has been classed as akin to godliness. It certainly takes high rank in equalizing the circulation. The jockeys appreciate its importance. How regularly and carefully they groom their horses! Is not man as precious as the horse? Every man should groom himself every morning—sponge himself from head to foot with water of the temperature of the room in which he sleeps. The purpose of wetting the surface is merely to make the friction of a rough towel more effective as it is rubbed over the person. You should not sleep in any garment that you wear by day, and the room in which you sleep should be perfectly ventilated by a fireplace and a partly opened window if possible.

If, after you have observed the rules of hygiene to the extent indicated you have cold feet and limbs and indigestion and a tendency to vertigo, plunge your feet into water as hot as you can bear it, and keep them there five minutes. Then put them into cold water for a second.

“Cool head, free bowels, warm feet and a good-salary” is the old aphorism. If you suffer your feet to get cold you are in danger of apoplexy of the brain or of the lungs. Cold feet are very likely to be associated with a sluggish state of the bowels. The feet are cold because there is too much blood in one place and too little in another. Cold feet follow the breaking of an equilibrium of the circulation. Sedentary occupations are provocative of cold feet. If you keep the skin clean and the bowels free and take moderate exercise you will maintain an equilibrium of circulation, and this equalized circulation will keep the feet warm. When the feet are cold it is better to warm them with exercise than at a fire. Look at the wood chopper, swinging his arms so that his hands slap his sides. Thus he carries the blood to his hands, and it warms them. That is the best warmth for either. There is a vast difference between the longevity of men who take care of themselves and of those who do not. It is, as the life insurance companies’ tables show, as thirty-five is to about seventy. The man who bows to all the known laws of hygiene not only lives longer, but is able also to enter into all the joys of life without the aches and pains.