1. Introduction

While only too often neglected and even rejected in the past by many orthodox practitioners as being correct procedures to be employed in the treatment of the sick or as valuable tools capable of hastening restoration of health during periods of recuperation, the many possible forms of exercise are now receiving increasing popular and professional acceptance.

Where once patients recovering from surgery were often kept confined to their beds and permitted only limited movement, they are now often encouraged to leave their beds and to walk up and down the hallways or about their rooms. Physical therapists are frequently called into service when the physician in charge deems it advisable as in cases where paralysis constrains movement.

We understand that both the arthritis and muscular dystrophy foundations now pay for hydroexercises for persons suffering from these ailments. Groups of patients, under the guidance of a therapist, perform certain movements while immersed in a swimming pool. They report feeling much improved following these planned exercise sessions. Hydrotherapy was much employed during the last century by hydrotherapists, most of whom were devoted practitioners of Natural Hygiene. Modern orthodoxy was reluctant to adopt it but is now utilizing hydrotherapy to a limited extent.

However, even now for the most part, invalids and the elderly, especially those confined in nursing homes, languish in their beds. Individuals and practitioners alike have not as yet learned to appreciate fully the value of exercise and activity in sickness and in the restoration of health to those persons who are no longer, suffering deeply from some ailment but who, as yet, have not made a full recovery.

Hygienists have long recognized that exercise is essential both in sickness and in recuperation. In fact, George S. Weger, M.D., believed that positive exercise was contraindicated only in profound states of enervation or in cases of inflammatory fever, or cardiac depression." Dr. Weger had his fasting patients do tensing movements for periods of from ten to thirty minutes, depending upon the vitality and muscular vigor of the person.

Hygienists contend that rest and exercise are twin requirements of a healthy life, one being dependent upon the other and of equal importance. In sickness they are often far more important than food. This latter concept is the exact opposite of the prevailing notion that weakness requires feeding and that both the quality and the quantity of food should be increased. As a result, patients are fed much and often while activity is neglected.

Strangely, orthodoxy does not seem to learn from the fact that, more often than not, those patients that are fed the most, if they progress at all, recover more slowly than those who either are fed abstemiously or fast altogether, assuming, of course, similar circumstances and conditions.

Orthodoxy fails to realize that just because a certain quantity of food is eaten does not necessarily mean that the same amount has been assimilated and utilized by the body for reparative and healing functional activites. While the sick can perhaps digest a certain amount of food and absorb it into the system and then even transport it through its many channels, there is no guarantee that it will be assimilated by the cells and put to constructive use.