The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-09-12 00:00:00

muscles of the belly too, which assist in the act of re-

spiration, promotes the peristaltic motions of the intes-
tinal canal, and in this natural way supersedes the use
of that host of pills and potions with which the seden-
tary and inactive are constantly drugging themselves.
It is altogether an error to suppose that the right con-
duct of health demands the oft-repeated administration
of purgatives. Where the rules of Hygiene are attended
to, the need of such medicines is at once obviated ; but
where these rules are slighted and disregarded, the ali-
mentary canal may be oppressed and overloaded in dif-
ferent parts, so as to give rise to an apparent necessity
for artificial means for its relief. Yet the use of such
means only tends to increase the inconvenience against
which they are administered; since the excessive stimu-
lation of the medicine cannot last, it is sure to be suc-
ceeded by augmented torpor and inaction. In a similar
way, regular muscular exercise serves to prevent head-
ache, and those numerous affections of the brain, which
perhaps constitute the most grievous afflictions of hu-
manity. A ready interchange of blood in the brain
gives a healthy impulse to the agreeable exercise of its
functions ; whilst a languid or stagnant state of the
circulation in the head occasions all kinds of nervous
symptoms, a tendency to disorganization in the brain
itself, frequently resulting in apoplexy, palsy, and other
serious maladies. The torpid state of the digestive canal
has been considered highly instrumental- in the produc-
tion of such effects ; and in the human body, where all
parts and functions are connected by such a linked chain
of harmony, it is frequently difficult to fix on the pre-
cise point where derangement takes its first stride ; but
begin where it may, exercise, gradually commenced and
uninterruptedly continued, is the chief remedial measure
against these serious evils. The distressing sufferings
of hypochondriacal, nervous, and sensitive people, who
are generally of the upper classes, whose circumstances
impose no need for bodily labours, arise from the accu-
mulation of nervous power in the system, for the want
of a sufficient vent or drain to keep down the supply of
nervous force more nearly to a level with its expendi-
ture. Such persons bid adieu to all their morbid feelings
and impressions the moment their minds are engrossed
with a sufficiently animating subject, that shall call
forth an adequate exertion of their limbs. Their exci-
tability is thus dissipated, and they enjoy ease and
comfort in vigorous exercise. Again, the chest, the
chief seat of that master malady, consumption, is sti-
mulated to a healthy discharge of its functions by mus-
cular exercise. The blood is not allowed to distend the
yielding tissue of the lungs, and remain almost stagnant
in their swollen vessels ; a state, where it exists, ex-
ceedingly prone to occasion chronic inflammation, and,
being conjoined with torpor and feebleness of action in
the digestive and nervous systems, very much disposed
to run into that kind of vegetative degeneration which
results in the production of tubercles, or true tubercular
consumption of the lungs. In fine, the effects of mus-
cular action are to feed the lamp of vitality with a full
supply of fuel, and to make the flame burn brighter and
higher, whilst those of muscular inaction are to turn the
living frame into a lump of senseless clay, more truly so
as it gives rise to diseases which are usually fatal in
their termination. The real degenerative consequences
arising from muscular inaction cannot be more clearly
illustrated than by the condition in which the muscles
are found in club-foot and similar malformations, or
diseases, which deprive them of action. They are con-
verted into whitish, fatty masses, possessed of no one
property of muscular fibres, without it be their external
striated form. Having been long interdicted from
all use, that law of organised matter previously explained
comes into operation, and their red, fibrinous, and fleshy
particles are removed, to he replaced by cellular tissue
and fat. The process of this fearful change, which re-
sults in the destruction of one of the finest functions of
animal fibre and the annihilation of all self-originating
motion, proceeds through a regular gradation of stages
before it arrives at its completion. Where a muscle is
deprived of its office, as is the case with some of those
executing the complicated movements of the spine, when
the trunk is encased in tight stays and busks, its fibres
become pale, and waste materially ; their power of con-
tractility is greatly diminished, and they scarcely ac-
knowledge the authority of the will in calling them into
action ; indeed, when the process has proceeded so far,
unless the attention be directed expressly to exciting
natural or artificial motions in the part, and a powerful