it exercise? Then why is it that so many day laborers are poor, weak, anemic creatures, forced to lay off from one to three months every year on account of sickness? They get plenty of exercise and fresh air. Why is it that so many athletes die of tuberculosis or of weak hearts? They get the most scientific exercise year in and year out.
Just the other day I read of the sudden death of Martin A. Delaney, the famous trainer, known all over the country as a physical director. He taught thousands how to be strong, but “Athletic Heart” killed him at 55. Passersby saw him running for a car, then suddenly topple over dead.
“Exercise as a panacea for all human ills is dangerously overrated,” Dr. Charles M. Wharton, in charge of health and physical education at the University of Pennsylvania, said today (March 20, 1926), according to an Associated Press dispatch.
Dr. Wharton, who has been a trainer of men for thirty years and was an all-American guard on the Pennsylvania football team in 1895 and 1896, declared the search for the fountain of youth by exercise and diet has been commercialized to a point of hysteria.
“Someone should cry a halt against this wild scramble for health by Unnatural means,” said Dr. Wharton. “This indiscriminate adoption of severe physical training destroys the health of more people than it improves.”
Dr. Wharton said he was appalled by the amount of physical defects and weaknesses developed by overindulgence in athletics by students in preparatory schools.
“I know I am presenting an unpopular viewpoint, and it may sound strange coming from a physical director.
“In gymnasium work at the University of Pennsylvania we try to place our young men in sports which they will enjoy, and thus get a physical stimulation from relaxed play.”
Is it diet? Then why is it that so many people you know, who have been dieting for years, are still such poor, flabby creatures? Doesn’t it always work, or is it merely a matter of guess-work-and those were the cases where no one happened to guess right? Why is it that doctors disagree so on what is the correct diet? For years we have been taught to forswear too much meat. For years we have been told that it causes rheumatism and gout and hardening of the arteries — and a dozen or more other ailments.
Now comes Dr. Woods Hutchinson — a noted authority, quoted the world over — and says: “All the silly old prejudice against meat, that it heated the blood (whatever that means) and produced uric acid to excess, hardened the arteries, inflamed the kidneys, caused rheumatism, etc., has now been proved to be pure fairy tales, utterly without foundation in scientific fact.
“Red meats have nothing whatever to do with causing gout and rheumatism, because neither of these diseases is due to foods or drinks of any sort, but solely to what we call local infections. Little pockets of pus (matter) full of robber germs — mostly streptococci — around the roots of our teeth, in the pouches of our tonsils, in the nasal passages and sinuses of our foreheads and faces opening into them;... Our belief now is: ‘No pockets of pus, no rheumatism or gout.’ Food of any kind has absolutely nothing to do with the case.
“On the other hand, the very worst cases on record in all medical history of hardening and turning to lime (calcification) of the arteries all over the body, and in the kidneys and intestines particularly, have been found in Trappist and certain orders of Oriental monks who live almost exclusively upon starch and — that is, peas, beans, and lentils, and abstain from meat entirely.”
Then what is right? Is it the combination of diet and exercise? But surely the patients in sanitariums and similar institutions would have every chance to get just the right combination, yet how often you see them come out little, if any, better off than when they went in.
No. None of these is the answer. As a matter of fact, the principal good of either diet or exercise is that it keeps before the patient’s mind the RESULT he is working for, and in that way tends to impress it upon his subconscious mind. That is why physical culturists always urge you to exercise in front of a mirror. If results are achieved, it is MIND that achieves them — not the movements you go through or the particular kind of food you eat.
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