Note 59 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS: (continued 2)

Dr. Fuller’s “Medicina Gymnastica, or, a treatise concerning the power of Exercise, with respect to the Animal Œconomy, fifth edition, 1718,” is useful to remind the student of what he is apt to forget; for the object of this volume is to substitute exercise for medicine. He wrote the book before he became a physician. He considers horse-riding as the best and noblest of all exercises, it being “a mixed exercise, partly active and partly passive, while other sorts, such as walking, running, stooping, or the like, require some labour and more strength for their performance.” Cheyne, in his well-known treatise of “The English Malady,” published about twenty years after Fuller’s work, acknowledges that riding on horseback is the best of all exercises, for which he details his reasons. “Walking,” he says, “though it will answer the same end, yet is it more laborious and tiresome;” but amusement ought always to be combined with the exercise of a student; the mind will receive no refreshment by a solitary walk or ride, unless it be agreeably withdrawn from all thoughtfulness and anxiety; if it continue studying in its recreations, it is the sure means of obtaining neither of its objects—a friend, not an author, will at such a moment be the better companion.

The last chapter in Fuller’s work contains much curious reading on the ancient physicians, and their gymnastic courses, which Asclepiades, the pleasantest of all the ancient physicians, greatly studied; he was most fortunate in the invention of exercises to supply the place of much physic, and (says Fuller) no man in any age ever had the happiness to obtain so general an applause; Pliny calls him the delight of mankind. Admirable physician, who had so many ways, it appears, to make physic agreeable! He invented the lecti pensiles, or hanging beds, that the sick might be rocked to sleep; which took so much at that time, that they became a great luxury among the Romans.

Fuller judiciously does not recommend the gymnastic courses, because horse-riding, for persons of delicate constitutions, is preferable; he discovers too the reason why the ancients did not introduce this mode of exercise—it arose from the simple circumstance of their not knowing the use of stirrups, which was a later invention. Riding with the ancients was, therefore, only an exercise for the healthy and the robust; a horse without stirrups was a formidable animal for a valetudinarian.