HOW TO GET STRONG
by a man, already healthy, at once tone him up and invigorate him, until he begins to have something of the feeling of the sturdy pioneer, as described by Dr. Mitchell.[1] And if the delicate person tries the same means, using them judiciously and carefully, it is but natural that he should find similar results.
Some years ago, Dr. G, of Boston, showed us a picture of himself taken several years previously. The shoulders were warped forward, the chest looked flat, almost hollow, and the face and general appearance suggested a delicate man. He said he inclined to be consumptive. Well, by practising breathing, not on an ordinary "blowing-machine," where you empty your lungs of about all that is in them, but on an in-spirometer, from which instead you inhale every inch of air you can; and by practising vigorous working of his diaphragm, he had so expanded his lungs that he could inhale three hundred and eighty cubic inches of air at one breath! Certainly the depth of his chest at the later period was something astounding, it being, as nearly as we could judge without calipers, all of twelve inches through, directly from breastbone to spine; while it was a strikingly broad chest as well.
But an even more astonishing feature was the tremendous power of his voice. He said that at the end of half an hour's public singing with the opera-singers (for he was skilled at that), while they would be hot and perspiring, he was only just warming up, and getting ready for his work. One thing all who ever heard him sing would quickly concede; namely, that seldom had they anywhere heard so immense a voice as his. He said that he had also run two blocks in one breath.
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