The Indianapolis journal., 1890-06-08
ATHLETIC AND MENTAL ACTIVITY.
The Man Who Cultivates His Muscles Does
Not Increase His Intellectual Power.

The Man Who Cultivates His Muscles Does
Not Increase His Intellectual Power.
A. B. Kardin. in the Epoch.
man cannot come in from q sharp run
or a half-hour's punching of the sand-b bag
and sit down to profitable intellectual ex-
ertion, and when such severe physical ef-
fort is made habitual the mind becomes
less and less ready to respond to the de-
mand made upon it. For it takes one-fifth
of mans blood to nourish his brain alone,
and when that amount is withdrawn to cir
culate in the parts of the body that are sub
that must suffer. The greater part of the
best work put forth in literature and jour-
nalism to-day is accomplished by dyspep-
tics and men who are guiltless of any sys-
tematic physical exertiOn, and the same
proposition will be found to hold true of
the great proportion of famous scholars and
thinkers the world over in this and In
former times. Instances like that of Carlyle
and Pope, De Quincy and Cicero, Emerson
and Charles Lamb, whose physical devei-
ceptional in literature. They are the rule,
and we may count on the fingers OF hand
the names of men great in literature who
were possessed of athletic bodies. This
has been especially true of the worlds ora
tors. Demosthenes was a weakling in his
Pitt was SO fragile physically that he need
ed two bottles of port wine day to suS-
tain him. Patrick Henry, John Z. Calhoun
and Alexander H. Stephens had unusually
weak bodies Stephens, indeed, had so
feeble a frame that 1t was regarded as q
marvel that it could support his massive
head. And 1t is to what a nineteenth
century physician would call acute gastritis
that we owe Dantes sublime pictures OF
hell. There have been instances, it is true.
of Oxford and Cambridge rowing men TAX
ing high rank for scholarship, but this dis
tinction appears to have been attained
rather in spite of than by the aid of their
athletic work. and their names have not
been famous in after life.
AS for the likelihood of exercise to pro-
long life, it may be said that according to
statistics of NJ. De Solaiville there are more
people living in France to-day who have
passed the age of sixty than there are in
England, the home of athletic sports. And
averse to muscular cultivation for its own
sake than the French. Great athletes die
young, and mortality list of Oxford row.
ing men published a few years ago showed
that comparative ely small percentage OF
them lived out the allotted lifetime. DR..
elaborate statistics that men OF thought
live on an average three and q half years
longer than men in the ordinary vocations
of life and nearly eight years longer than
the athletes. And it is a noteworthy fact
that women, who until recent years have
taken no physical exercise at all, die at q
more advanced age than men. But doubt
less their superiority in regard to tenure Of
life will come to an end if they follow the
advice of DIR. Richardson, who, in a lecture
before the Ladies' Sanitary Association of
London, is reported to have declared it
essential. as a matter of principle, that
eitht hours day should be devoted to ex-
ercise."
There is hardly space here to consider the
theory that the shortness of life among
athletes is induced by the great drain on
the vitality occasioned by the continued
necessity of producing new tissue to take
the place of that consumed in muscular
effort. 1t seems certain, however, that one
cause may be ascribed to the constant and
tremendous strain exerted upon the heart.
In all physical exercises it is the heart that
is most directly affected, and it is on that
organ, the pumping station for the blood
vessels, that the consequences of muscular
exertion are most telling. The tendency,
when exercise is persisted IN, is for the
heart to increase in size. and in every ath-
lete it becomes much larger than in the
ordinary man. Consider, then, what the re-
sult must be when the tyro begins to take
violent exercise without long continued
previous training suitable to adapt the
heart to its changed conditions. An or.
ganic weakness is sure to ensue, and the
ultimate result. if the severe exercise il
continued, is likely to prove disastrous.