Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1874 — Physical Life. [ARTICLE]

Physical Life.

It is popularly supposed that we change our constitutions once in seven years; but practically every decade makes a turning point in life. It is not too much to say that, barring accidents, a man can at certain dates decide what manner of death and from what class of disease he shall die. The formation of the constitutien in early life—say from the age of five to fifteen—devolves on the htirse, the mother, and the training in the nursery and school-room. In the nursery, at any rate, over-feeding is a cardinal vice; but the over-fed children who eat flesh meat three times a day become so gross and unwieldy as to be a burden to all concerned; while tight stays, tight boots ana high heels develop every evil under the sun, from bunions downward. At this point two years of gymnastics, or a couple of years spent on board of one of our training ships, does wonders for our boys, who get the use of their arms and legs to an amazing degree. The athletic work performed by schoolboys and university men is perhaps at its best in these days, though most happy is the man who is never over-trained, because he is perpetually in condition. From fifteen to twenty-five a man has to prepare for - that legitimate enjoyment in life which should by rights be his. He has in all probability chosen his profession, memory is at its best, ambition at its highest, and his temptation to burn the candle at both ends—to be a brilliant boon companion, a man whose good tales are remembered, and whose witty sayings are everywhere quoted—is almost irresistible; facility does not come with age and the best stories grow stale. Of the number of prematurely exhausted intel ects and shortened broken down in this way there is no need to tell. Every man’s memory will furnish him with a list of names more or less well known.-'

From twenty-five to thirty-five is the true time for all the enjoyment of a man’s best powers, when physical vigor is at its highest, and human passion is at its full strength. During the last half of this decade a man should be assiduous to construct a system of philosophy by which to rule his life, and to contract a chain of habits intelligently, so’that they should not sit too tightly upon him, and yet cautiously, so that he should neither be their slave nor too easily cast them aside. The exaet proportion of physical and intellectual strength should be gauged, and the constitutional Weakness, or, in other wards, the disease toward which a tendency exists, should be ascertained. Preserve, if possible, the absolute necessity for exercise, and have your place of business two or three miles away, over which let nothing tempt you to an omnibus or carriage save rain. The day on which a medical man gives up riding to see his country patient, or the use of his own legs to see his patients in town, and takes to a close brougham, fixes the date when sedentary diseases are set up—indigestion, liver, kidney disease and so on; while if, to utilize his leisure, he reads as he drives, his eyesight becomes seriously affected. From thirty-five to forty-five a man should arrange with his food and square hypochondria. He cannot, it is true, change his diathesis, but he can manage it. The habitual character of food, no less than its quantity and quality, begins to tell whether it charges the system with fat, muscle, sinew, fiber or watery particles. —Pall MaU Gazette.