My Sun-Bathing and Fresh-Air System

By J.-P. Müller

This unusual book details a system of health and is extensively illustrated with full and text page photographs. This system comprises instructions regarding a few simple physical exercises (without dumb-bells or any other implements), a method of skin-massage and the use of water baths, and ample fresh air. Contents Include: Fresh Air and Bad Air; How to Get More Sunlight and Fresh Air in Old England; Sun and Air-Baths in Everyday Life; More About Sun-Bathing; Sun, Air and Ample Room for the Feet; How to Eat Sunshine; Sun and Air-Baths in Public Institutions; The Great Opportunities for Sun and Air-Bathing in England; Fresh Air Schools; Rational Physical Culture and Open-Air School Gymnastics; Skin Gymnastics with Air-Bath as a Means of Beauty; Which Exercise do I Consider the Best?; Sun and Air-Baths for Open-Air Workmen; The Hardening of Children; Tuberculosis Prevented and Cured by Sunlight, Fresh Air and Correct Breathing. This book contains classic material dating back to the 1900s and before. The content has been carefully selected for its interest and relevance to a modern audience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781447492719

Book preview

advice.

CHAPTER I.

THE NAKED CULT MOVEMENT.

Can we escape Civilization?—The Nature Cure in Europe—The Argument of the Naked Cult Teachers—The Family Sun and Air Bath—The Naked Cult overdone—What is meant by Health.

WHAT a lot civilisation is responsible for! Not least amongst these things is bad health. But we cannot get away from civilisation—we are part of it—and, besides, even if we left it now, we probably should not regain our lost physique as a whole.

Man is subject to more bodily ills to-day than he has ever been before, and it is only natural, when you come to consider it, that the descendants of a race who had to hunt their food before they could eat should not be able to work in a factory or an office without suffering for it in some way or another. I know the cave man age is thousands of years ago, but evolution is slow. If it were not, none of us would now be on earth to tell the tale.

Then the life was open if hard, free if precarious.

Now turn the searchlight upon ourselves to-day. Clothed to the hilt, hats to protect our heads, bald at fifty, gouty, liverish, and—well, I’ve said enough. We don’t need a looking-glass to tell us when we are out of sorts.

Yet I doubt if the cave man ever had chronic liverish complaints or heart disease, or even those people of much later times.

Now, I am not going to suggest that to return to a desirable state of health we should all go to Salisbury Plain and live in caves, and don bearskins. But I do say that, as we have changed our mode of life, we have not kept pace in the matter of fitness. Even to-day, with so many different forms of physical culture and training about, few—very few—of them aim at the real sources of fitness.

Please remember, fitness does not necessarily mean brawn; the possession of a good digestion, sound lungs, a well-regulated heart and an active skin being the first essentials to good health.

We cannot get away from civilisation, but we can keep pace with it, and this keeping pace process I can sum up in just one word—exercise.

There is no doubt we have allowed ourselves to become slack. So many conveniences are to hand for one thing, and for another the necessity for bodily exertion is becoming less and less.

What are we doing to counteract this slackness, that is in danger of making us a flabby race?

To-day we may roughly divide ourselves into two classes, those who do exercises, and those who don’t.

The first class seems to aim at getting muscular. Never mind how strenuous the exercise, how exacting the instructor. The object is muscle—there you have something to show for your pains. That is how they appear to look at it.

The Author on the Waldhaus Ice Rink, St. Moritz. Inside Forward Spiral.

Now, long experience and study has proved to me that in a great majority of cases, Nature exacts a penalty for trying to force her hand by this kind of training. The internal organs are strained through carrying out such a policy, and this weakens them. It may not go so far as to result in a breakdown, and the person who is doing the exercise may feel no ill effects, but it does have an effect in the long run. It is not necessarily the most muscular people who live the longest!

The object we should pursue is the health of the vital organs, above all of the lungs, heart, intestines, and, last but not least, of the skin. Then we shall possess the real, lasting strength which keeps us active and happy also in old age. How this should be done, and how we may escape overdoing our efforts, will be explained in this book.

Outside Forward Spiral.

During the last 25 years a vigorous movement has been making itself felt throughout Europe, the watchword of which is Back to Nature. Advocates of the Nature-cure, numbering hundreds of thousands, are working with tireless zeal towards the introduction of vegetarianism, absolute abstemiousness in the matter of stimulants, and against the use of medicine, serum, vaccine, etc. Bitter strife has been caused for many years between orthodox and Nature-cure practitioners, This conflict of opinion has been the means of doing both harm and good. Good, because many doubtful questions have been threshed out; evil, because both parties have gone to extremes and extravagances, thereby overlooking the golden mean of truth. That Nature-cure doctors without proper training—in other words quacks—are able to practise, is certainly objectionable, and leads, naturally, to a deal of disgust. This rule does not apply to men such as Kneipp, Friessnitz, Schroth and Rikli, who were exceptions. That more than half a century elapsed before atmospheric cure by means of sun and air-baths was recognised and adopted by the official medical authorities as a restorative and preservative of health lies simply and solely in the fact that it was invented by laymen, and because of this long delay mankind has had to bear untold suffering and