constructions of levers, pulleys, and weights, designed to exercise special groups of muscles, as in the Sargent system of apparatus. These reward effort, however, with depressing monotony, are devoid of most of the beneficial general effects of exercise, and appear to the writer to lack the elements of a coherent system.
The old gymnastic idea, in the endeavor to accomplish certain feats and to pile up large masses of muscle, ignored the intimate co-operation between muscle and nerve, and the delicate balance between co-operating and modifying muscular groups necessary to build up a clear-sighted, well-balanced mind, in perfect and harmonious but largely unconscious mastery of the bodily movements. The wise teacher and physician have small interest in gymnastic feats, but direct muscular activity into those channels best suited to promote harmonious mental and bodily development and adjustment.
"With the Swedish system of exercises, devised by Ling and elaborated by his pupils, totally different ground is reached. Peter Henrik Ling was a fencing master, who became interested in exercise as a stimulus to development and as a remedy from observing its beneficial effects on his own health. He never took a medical degree, but developed remedial exercises into a system, which remains to-day as the basis of the most valuable procedures in therapeutic kinesiology. He also devised systems of educational, military, and aesthetic exercises. These exercises are based on the physiological actions of the different muscle groups and their relations to each other, and consist in free voluntary movements executed by the patient in different positions and in a determined order. The remedial movements include, in addition, passive movements executed by a manipulator, and assistive and resistive movements, in which the operator opposes resistance to the movements of the patient, or vice versa. To these are added the various manipulations of massage.
The Swedish therapeutic exercises emphasize strongly the local effect of movements, and hence have been called localized movements, and are largely used for specific local purposes. They proceed from the simple to the complex, aiming to establish correct fundamental attitudes and relations, and to invigorate and develop deficient parts through exercises adapted to the particular condition and situation. The value of gentle and passive exercise in conditions of debility, and of the systematic progressive adaptation of the exercise to the strength of the patient, is recognized and practiced.
The Swedish system avoids the abnormal development of special parts and the gratuitous feats of ordinary gymnastics, and produces normally acting viscera, a graceful carriage, and good muscular and mental control. One school of the Swedes, led by
