p. 247 | Round Shoulders

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 15, 1878

Round Shoulders.

I SPEAK of round shoulders, hollow chests, and stooping forms. There are, perhaps, not three persons in any school of fifty pupils, but have them. It is so among the people of nearly all professions and occupations, sexes and ages. Indeed our whole arrangement of society could have been no better calculated if on purpose to produce them. Military men and sea-captains are usually exempt, and so are Indians and those peasant women of Italy and other countries that carry burdens on their heads. School teachers are often exempt, though not always.

Now what are the causes of this deformity, the consequences, and the remedy? First, and in general, round shoulders are caused by the prevailing practice of doing everything in a bent-over position from childhood up, so that like pumpkins growing between two rails, we grow into bad forms. The low desks in our school-rooms, and the habit of placing our books upon them and bending over to study, produce round shoulders. I never saw a school-house with desks high enough, and I do not believe there is one high enough in America—perhaps not in the world. They ought to be so high that bending over them would be impossible, and the top adjustable, so as to be set at an angle of inclination. The desks we use in all offices, shops, and places of business are constructed as if a man were hardly yet metamorphosed from some lower order of four-footed beings to what God made him—upright. The positions which we assume in our work, tend to produce stooping.

The chairs we sit in are mostly made for deformed people. Persons with square shoulders are pained and made uneasy by sitting in them. It is even questionable whether our chairs were not better without backs—I mean those in which we sit to write and do work, and not our chairs for parlor and sitting-room use—than that they should, as they now do, crowd the shoulders forward and cramp the chest; and those with backs should be made after a normal and not abnormal standard.

The way in which we lie in bed, helps to produce round shoulders. High bolsters and higher pillows on top of them make many a bed look very fine, but if we wish to preserve an upright form, we must not seek it by such means. True the head should be kept higher than the feet, but not by bending the neck or back. Let the foot of the bed be a little the lowest; and if we lie on the back, lie without a pillow; or if on the side, with one high enough to keep the head in line with the body.

But enough of causes which may vary for different persons. Let us look at the effects. First, round shoulders and stooping forms, detract from a fine personal appearance, either when standing, sitting, or walking. Women like a beautiful face, eyes, feet and hands, and take great pains, often run great risks of life, to obtain them. Why not work as hard for fine forms?

But laying aside all thoughts of good looks, and turning a moment to our ability "to do and to dare," we find that a truly graceful posture is the only easy one; that where the bearing of the body is not correct, as in stooping, we wear ourselves out by spending strength to support ourselves in an unnatural position; that those who go about their business gracefully, do more and do it easier than the awkward.

Stooping is unhealthful. The lungs are cramped, and do not fully inflate. This brings on consumption; and besides, the blood being only half oxygenized, we only half live. Nothing is so important in securing good health and good feelings as thorough breathing.

The cure lies in higher desks in our school-houses, better chairs, smaller pillows on our beds, less work in bad positions, and vigorous training of the muscles of the chest, back, and sides, in proper positions, and for counteracting the effects of sedentary habits and of work.

Plato said no republic was complete without its gymnasiums. This is true of all schools, and more so in all cities and towns. The gymnastic hall, well ventilated, lighted and warmed, where the sedentary and studious, those confined much in-doors, both male and female, can in appropriate costume, throw off the restraints of a confined life, and take vigorous body-training under a master, with music, is full as important as was the gymnasium in the days of Plato.—Home Journal.