The Pedestrian's Record

112 the pedestrian's record. pains across the shoulders, by muscular spasms occurring to the abdominal walls, to the muscles of the chest, the legs, and the arms, which rest, with careful and moderate living, will soon dispel. As the nervous system is primarily attacked it will be seen how necessary repose as a curative process must be, and thorough quiet to the nerves can be best insured by sleep ; consequently a nap after the midday meal, with cushions so arranged as to support the affected parts, will do much to insure rapid reparation. There are numerous maladies afflicting the human body which owe their cause to defective nervous action, but further exposition of such belongs to the province of physiological research, and would not be of any use or practical value to the general reader, and conse­ quently we will pass on to the consideration of dis­ asters likely to happen to the athlete's circulatory and respiratory systems. The heart, the centre from which arterial blood is distributed throughout the body, even to the minutest capillary, and to which the venous current returns, has perhaps the most important function to perform of any living organism; as its labour is incessant, its beats never ceasing from the moment of birth to the instant of death, any intermittence in its pulsation is ominous, and sometimes denotes the existence of organic disease. The most baneful affections to which flesh is heir to are those of the heart, for once out of repair it seldom ever again regains its previous integrity. To heart-disease no class of men are more