BREATHING EXERCISES

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 20, 1900

BREATHING EXERCISES.

The London Globe.

If during the coming winter the observant pedestrian should notice innumerable excited persons striding through the streets with a stick across their backs and between their elbows, he must not jump at the conclusion that London has suddenly lost its senses. For this form of exercise is part of a treatment which is now rapidly becoming popular—the cure for asthma, bronchitis, and all the other pulmonary diseases which trouble and distress the dwellers in our foggy, smoke-laden cities. Hitherto, the asthmatic person has kept indoors as often as possible, carefully shutting windows and doors, and keeping a roaring fire in the grate. Now, he is bidden to fling his windows open, to sleep even with his windows open, and, moreover, to keep in the open air as much as possible. But this is not all. He is taught that it is not so important what he breathes as how he breathes. Breathing exercises, then, are part of the cure; and here not only the sufferer from bronchial catarrh is concerned, but even the woman of fashion anxious to maintain her good looks. For fifteen minutes twice a day women of fashion, asthmatic patients, and indeed all the world, are bidden to stand outdoors, preferably in the sunshine, and, holding the chest up, to inhale slowly through the nose, and then as quickly exhale the breath through the mouth. Of course, everyone knows that it is through the nostrils he should inhale, and it is quite probable that many of humanity's illnesses are due to improper breathing, but at the same time it will be an almost superhuman feat to make mankind breathe through the nostrils.