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Muscular activity must also be included in treatment by occupation. It as frequently
satisfies the indications of psycho-therapeutics as it does those of physical
therapeutics. Here also the individuality of the patient must, of course, be
taken into account. All kinds of physical sport belong here, such as cycling,
riding, skating, tennis, gymnastics, and likewise
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386 HYPNOTISM.
ordinary walking exercise. We need not hesitate to recommend rough work occasionally,
and too great attention should not be paid to the question of its suitability
to the patient's station in life. It is the man engaged in head-work who so
often derives great mental benefit from physical labour—treefelling, sawing,
grass-mowing, for instance. Cutting down trees did the English statesman, Gladstone,
an immense amount of good. The way in which muscular activity influences the
patient's mind must be judged from the stand-point of psycho-therapeutics. Cycling,
for instance, from both the mental and physical standpoint of therapeutics.
The speed with which long stretches of ground are covered and the relatively
small amount of muscular energy expended have a salutary effect on the consciousness.
Fiirbringer lays great value on the way in which the work is divided among the
cerebral centres. "The cyclist whose attention is chiefly directed to the
road and the surrounding country is compelled to make very great calls on the
lower centres, the organs of sense, and as the heavy thoughts which cloud his
brain disappear cuts off those factors that were depriving him of mental rest."
To be able to rest from mental labour of an exhausting nature is certainly an
essentially remedial factor in many cases. On the other hand, Monnier has rightly
pointed out that many kinds of work—e.g., turning the ergostat, the "
hygienic promenade," the use of dumb-bells, knitting and the like are not
to the purpose, because they only exercise the lower cerebral centres. It is
far better to attempt the cure of habitual abnormal activity of the brain by
diverting the activity into centrifugal paths, and we should therefore select
some kind of work that requires constant application of the attention and can
only be carried out by the primary consciousness. Both authors are correct in
their advice, though they seem to contradict one another somewhat. They entirely
agree that a form of muscular activity should be chosen which has some definite
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