present century, and many
of its enlightened professional writers tried to give to them a proper
direction by combining them with anatomy and physiology, Ling must be
considered as the founder of the rational system of movements." We have
all seen deformed gymnasts, with square shoulders and lank loins, or
with some particular group of muscles projecting in ugly prominences
from the violated outlines of nature. All this the followers of Ling
claim that he avoided or overcame. His gymnastics were introduced years
ago, not only into all the military academies of Sweden, but into all
town-schools, colleges, and universities, and even orphan-asylums and
country-schools. Three objects are asserted to be obtained by his
disciples: development of muscular fibre, increased arterialization,
and improved innervation. Increase of function promotes the growth and
capability of organic structures, and causes an augmented afflux of
arterial blood and nervous influence to the part.

The ambitious reformer of the gymnasium did not pause here; but,
pursuing a still bolder course, undertook "to make gymnastics not only a
branch of education for healthy persons, but to demonstrate them to be
a remedy for disease." The new science was called _Kinesipathy_, or the
"motor-cure." The curative movements were first practised in 1813,
while Ling remained at Stockholm. A motor-hospital was established in
connection with the gymnasium; and to accommodate the invalid and the
feeble, new exercises, called "passive movements," were devised. These
were executed by an external agent upon the patient,--that agent being
usually the hand of the physician. The sick man, too weak for violent,
voluntary effort, was stretched and champooed, the muscles of his trunk
and limbs alternately flexed and extended by another person, until he
gradually acquired strength to use active movements. As he gained power,
he increased the voluntary resistance which he made to the operator, and
thus, at the same time, the amount of his own muscular exertion. It is
claimed that volition is thus called forth to neglected parts, and their
innervation and vascularity increased; and that so at length the normal
fulness of life and function is restored. This system confines itself
mostly to chronic diseases. In the paralysis of the young, in defective
volition from hysteria, in impaired local nutrition, in local
deformities dependent on muscular contraction, and in lateral curvature