The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-02-01 00:00:00

DR. RICHARDSON ON HEALTH AND
RECREATION.

In London, on Monday evening, Dr. B. W.
-Richardson gave his second lecture on "Health
and Recreation" at the London Institution. The
lecture was chiefly devoted to the subject of the
recreations of the young. He spoke strongly against
the holding of children's parties at too late an hour,
and recommended careful discrimination in subject.
ing children of different physique and mental dis-
position to the same kind of recreation. To illustrate
the harm that was frequently done for want of such
discrimination, he described the effects which he
had witnessed of requiring a number of lads to re.
main in a swimming bath for the same period of time,
and to go through the same amount of exertion. The
continuance of such a system would result in the case
of the feebler boys in the setting up of perhaps fatal
disease. He condemned the " hardening " theory,
and stated that a clever rearer of cattle once quarrelled
with his wife for sending out their delicate son to
skate with his legs well covered, and five minutes
afterwards discharged a groom for taking out a colt
for exercise without a horse cloth. The young must
be led into physical health—they could not Ise forced
into it. Three things, said the Caliph Omar, eame not
back—the sped arrow, the revengeful thought, and the
spoken word. Had he been a vital physicistOe would
have added the stroke of the heart.

The lecturer proceeded to deprecate the attempt to
make the timid do feats from which they shrank, by
force or surprise, or the use of opprobrious terms,
such as "coward." Physical courage depended on
the strength, perfection, and steadiness of the heart.
The phrases "lion-hearted" and " chicken-hearted
exactly expressed the difference, and there existed no
method by which a chicken could be made to be a lion.
Shocking tyranny was often practised in this respect
on gentle and loving, but timid, natures; which.
however, by judicious means could be rendered
morally brave, though physically brave they could
never become. He denied that any games which
called forth in an intense degree the passion of
individual or self interest were recreative in the
proper sense of the term; they were destructive. Such
were games of chance in which heavy stakes were
played tor ; but when played at for really trifling
stakes, or for none at all, he recognised the recreative
value of cards, billiards, and the like. The physical
harm of playing for exciting stakes was greater even
than the moral harm; and the Government had never
done a wiser, healthier, more rational, or more
national act than in forbidding the mad project of
establimhing a public lottery for the relief of the
sufferers by the Glasgow Bank failure, A craving
for the repetition of any gratification was a sign of
evil, in regard to recreation as well as in re-
gard to drinking, smoking, taking narcotics,
or over-eating. Debating on difficult and great
subjects by the young and inexperienced was one of
those causes of injury peculiar to modern times, and
was often exceedingly hurtful, both to the present and
the future of the debatet. Cricket, croquet, dancing
(not necessarily conventional, but in figures as various
as the changing sky), the gymnasium, swimming,
skating, lawn tennis, and bowls were amongst the
recreations commended by Dr. Richardson; but foot-
ball he denounced, without qualification, as a brutal,
savage, and insane pastime. He also severely repro-
bated the practice of mountain-climbing by the middle-
aged. He spoke of the Kindergarten as being
worthy of general adoption. Now that by the School
Board system the recreation of the young as well as
their education might be attended to he strongly
recommended the teaching of music MC-mg with the
teaching of reading, so that a child should read a tune
as it would read a tale. For the industrial classes, he
pleaded for shorter hours of labour, the removal of
temptations to lowering pleasures admission to
museums of science and art, a more wholesome litera-
ture, and colleges in which they could be systemati-
cally and practically taught. For those of the other
classes who could afford it, he advised riding, espe-
cially as a means of exploring the too-little known
beauties of their own country.