Temperate Endurance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 8, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 18.

Temperate Endurance.

WESTON'S great walk of 5,000 miles in 100 days was completed March 15. The task was undertaken under the auspices of the Church of England Temperance Society, and began on November 21, after which day and up to the conclusion of the walk, he covered fifty miles every day, except Christmas day, and then the necessary miles were made during the ensuing week. Weston suffered from a severely blistered heel, but struggled on for the first 3,000 miles, when the sore healed over. The last 300 miles were covered at the Victoria Palace, where he made a spurt of one mile in 9:17. Dr. W. B. Richardson states that the feat which Weston has accomplished is entirely new in the history of the world. When first proposed he had some doubt of its propriety, as any accidental failure would have discredited the principle that total abstinence from stimulants was the best guaranty for endurance; but now all friends of temperance were extremely satisfied that the feat had been done, of a man walking for four months at the rate of fifty miles a day without having the least resort to what the people of this country had for centuries believed to be a staminal support for all mankind.

All might be satisfied now that stimulants were perfectly useless for sustaining great physical efforts, whether under tropical heat or polar cold. He, in the interests of medical science, had been watching Weston for the last week, and Mr. Green, a most accomplished observer, had never left Weston, recording his pulse, breathing, weight, height, and every circumstance that could ultimately be of use in making this great experiment of benefit to the world. The conclusion was that he was in a perfectly healthy condition, both of body and of mind, and if examined for insurance would be returned as a first-class life. Nothing in the shape of fatigue, or strain of any sort was apparent, and that was to be attributed to his having lived so perfectly healthy and natural a life during this long period of exertion, and to his having taken nothing which had strained the heart, or confused the brain, or interfered with the natural process of waste.—Sel.