Emerson College - Emersonian Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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reach the results, so that we may have a chance to repeat those exercises. Each exercise is so arranged as to attain the sum of the results of several exercises. According to observations, it will take a close student about four years of daily study and practice to attain perfection in execution of the movements required by the system. One need not divide it up and say, H I will stay so long on one part, and I will stay so long on another 3 but if he practises faithfully, in a reasonable length of time valuable results will appear in his person 3 for increasing health and beauty will continue to reward his perseverance. His endurance of hard- ship and fatigue will be correspondingly augmented. This system of physical culture provides always for an ideal, therefore, there is no such thing as reaching the end, because the exercises are in their nature with- out limitation. Something better can be done each day as long as they are practisedg that is, they are ever leading out and leading onward rather than coming to any point of limitation. There is always the possibility of education toward something beyond what we have attained. This system of exercises is entirely unique- entirely unlike as a system and in its methods, any other in the world. Be it a right one or a wrong one, it stands upon its own merits, and not upon the merits 7

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should be taken until the organs are given their proper position. Any exercise taken when the vital organs are not in a proper position is harmful to those organs. The normal positions of the vital organs are secured by the proper contractions of the muscles that sustain these organs. The greater the altitude of the vital organs, other things being equal, the greater is their vigor. The heart beats with a more perfect rhythm when lifted high in the. chest than when it is low. Wlien the vital organs are high, the lungs consume more air, the stomach properly secretes gastric juice, the liver secretes bile from the blood, the alimentary canal is healthy in the production of what are called the peristaltic waves. The moment these vital organs are lowered from their normal altitude, thatmoment their tone of power is lowered. There is no physical defect so general as this, - that the vital organs are from one to four inches too low among adults, and among chil- dren down to the age of five or six years. Before this time the vital organs are high. As to the consequences, all physiologists will agree that no vital organ below its normal altitude can per- form its functions properly. It is a requirement and a provision of our method of physical culture that these vital organs should be kept in position. This Zvfting of the organs does not necessarily consist in throwing the 9 .