PHYSICAL CULTURE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3078, 24 December 1908, Page 3

PHYSICAL CULTURE.

(By R. 0. JARRETT, Physical Culturiot).

Late Supervisor of Physical Culture to Wanganui Education Buard; originator of breathing exercises in New Zealand Public Schools, etc. Write enclosing penny stamp for my tree book of CO pages—Exercise for Health and Brain. I take this opportunity of wishing my readers a Happy and a Healthy Christmas. "Sacred thy body even as thy soul.

A PLEA FOR PHYSICAL ADVANCEMENT. In my first paper on this subject, published in last week's gWairarapa Age, I quoted Dr. D. *\ Robins, an actuary and insurance examiner of many years' experience, on the evils of smoking. The same writer tells us: "Those persons whashorten their lives by known bad habits, or cut themselves off in youth or middle age by the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other narcotic drugs, are morally as culpable as though they had ended their career by the pistol or the rope. The tobacco habit causes a physical, moral and financial deterioration of our race, second ,„,only to the one great destroyer, alcohol. "iD3 -^ For nearly forty years this authority has-been examiner to old line and fraternal insurance companies. Amongst many applicants he has examined, he finds four-fifths of them use tobacco, and more than half of the tobacco users are perceptibly injured by it. One-fourth of tobaccousers are' dangerously poisoned by nicotine and at least one-eighth have irregular or intermittent valvular action, commonly known as "smoker's heart." This weakened condition of the human pump allows slight regurgitation of the blood through the improperly-closed valves, preventing complete ozydization inj&the lungs, and thereby retaining the poisonous gases in the system. This eventually results in dropsy or some other systematic break down. Deleterious effects increase with continued use, and in time many who are, slaves to nicotine become physical wrecks, unless sooner removed by acute diseases, to which the weakened vitality predisposes. As is wellknown to all chemists, nicotine is a deadly poison, and it is truly wonderful that the human system with this, as in tne case of alcoholic opium, strychnine and other drugs, v. ill tolerate more from time to time, until the constant user may take, with apparent impunity, what would inevitI ably produce death in a much stronger person who had not gradually I been brought under its deadly influ- ! ence.

This immunity, however, is only apparent, for the excessive ar.d continued use of any narcotic must, with certainty, undermine the vital powers, exhaust the nerve forces, and make the user an easy prey to a host of diseases. The point more particularly claiming the attention of medical men. is the intense strain and waste upon the physical system, which in time not only destroys the user, but, prior to complete impotency, makes him unfit to beget progeny.

Dr. ttnoins advances so many powerful arguments against the tobacco evil, that I make no excuse for using the above extract. What I wish to emhasise is this: We are fast getting a bigger population in our Dominion, our cities and towns are getting more densely packed together, facto.ies are springing up, our girls, as well as our young men, are living and working under far worse hygenic conditions than many of our parents before us, and it is a recognised fact that as our cities grow greater the : stature of its citizens grows less. (Tobacco, and especially the cigar--1 ette habit, is a contributing cause, ! also the excessive use of ale. ho!, plus our unhygenic ways of living. | Like begets like. Of recent

years our shores have been partly j peopled with new arrivals from the j older countries. 1 have noticed | the class of assisted immigrants | and others who are settling in our I midst. Sterling citizens, many of , them well educated, and men who j are not likely to become a drag on j the community. But the fact remains j that the major portion are from the I manufacturing towr.s and cities and aca undersized, compared wit i our older settlers of the 'forties, I 'fifties, "sixties, and 'seventies. The 1 greater number of the earlier s-jttle. s . were from the farming com-i.unitit g of the countries from which they came. In those days it required a consid- j crable amount of courage and deter- I rnination for an individual, especially a woman, to determine they would , risk the clangers of a long t.oa voy • ; age, in many instances, in a r-rnail sailing vessel, taking from three j months (considered a very quick ; voyage) to sometimes six months?. Often, also, they came out with a family of you*g childrer. Certainly j a marked difference to the present j day of floating palaces, with eveiy ; modern convenience, which describes ' the up-to-date ocean liner. i I have in recent years met many i new arrivals, the majority of whom i have come from the manufacturing towns of the Old Land, and wh . are mostly of medium size an ; under. Mirny of these, when com- | paring the Home with colonial life, ' bewail the difference, almost invari- ' ably saying that had they known ; New Zealand life was like this they j would never have left the land ot j their'nativity. Of course, I have i met others w*ho are ot a totally ' different calibre. These are rare, ' and the exception proves the rule. Compare these with the settlers of twenty, thirty, or forty years age. .Whose off-spring, think you, are physically the best, the old or the new? Add to these the many consumptives and other invalids who have arrived in search of health — happily, for the general health sake of uur young nation, this latter type has been refused further admission — and we have another contributing cause.

This subject will be concluded in the issue of Thursday, 31st inst.