Curvatures of the spine / by Noble Smith.

  • Smith, E. Noble (Eldred Noble), 1847-1906
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Curvatures of the spine / by Noble Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    and even when standing or walking—and by most men and women, too, for that matter. FIRST CHEST EXERCISE. Directions.—1. Take a dumb-bell in each hand, and stand with the chin as high as you can. 2. Do not bend the knees at all. 3. Curl the dumb-bells. 4. Then push them high up over your shoulders. 5. Hold them there a moment. 6. Breathe a deep and full breath. 7. Hold your chest out full, and gradually lower the dumb- bells far out sideways, without bending the elbows, until your arms are level with your shoulders, as in fig. 26 [in original]. 8. Hold them there till you count ten. 9. Keep the chin up high all the time. 10. Then raise them overhead again. 11. Eepeat this five times. Do this exercise five times daily the first week, eight times daily the second week, and ten times each day after that. This is excellent work to enlarge and raise the chest itself, as, for instance, to take a flat or hollow chest and make it high and full, and to build up and strengthen the muscles across the front of the upper part of the chest—and these are, to most of us, very important things. SECOND CHEST EXERCISE. Directions.—1. Take a dumb-bell in each hand. 2. Stand erect. 3. Face the ceiling right overhead. 4. Breathe slow, deep breaths. 5. Curl both dumb-bells, not in front, but as far out at each side of you as possible, and without touching the elbows to the sides. 6. Eepeat this six times. There is no need of urging you to hold the chest out in this exercise, because you cannot help doing so, if you practise the exercise as directed. With light dumb-bells, beginning with a few strokes daily, and gradually doing more as the muscles in use get stronger,