-
Chapter 2. In Praise of Exercise
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
C H A P T E R 2 In Praise of Exercise I had from a child been ever delighted with this exercise [swimming], had studied and practis’d all Thevenot’s motions and positions, [and] added some of my own. —Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Despite his emphasis on staying healthy in addition to becoming wealthy andwise, Poor Richardsaysalmostnothingabouttheimportanceof exercise. Yet Franklin, like other well-read people in the eighteenth century, knew that some exercise should be a part of any regimen for maintaining good health. In fact, although Franklin is usually portrayed as an overweight man reading or writing behind a desk, he was an expert swimmer, lifted weights, and tried to make exercising a part of his daily routine. Franklin exercised from youth into old age, often setting a striking example for others to follow. Unsurprisingly, he tried to approach exercising, even in his formative years, with the mindset and creativity of an experimental natural philosopher. And although Poor Richard remained surprisingly silent about the need to abandon an old and comfortable chair, his accomplished publisher found other means to spread the word on the subject. SWIMMING, SCIENCE, AND HEALTH Throughout his life, Franklin looked upon swimming as the best of all exercises for several reasons. It kept one fit by using many muscles, was a means of keeping clean, and was thoroughly enjoyable. Whether in a lake, a river, or an ocean, or whether one swam alone or with other people, swimming was the ideal exercise. Yet very few people knew how to swim at the start of the eighteenth century . This was true not only for the large numbers of farmers and shopkeepers that practiced their trades on land, but also for the crews on military ships and even for most men who whaled and fished for a living. Historians 38 THE COLONIST AND MEDICINE Lawrence Brockliss and Colin Jones note that “frequent immersion in water was socially and medically frowned upon. Even aristocrats washed infrequently , for body odour was considered a protective cocoon and sexual stimulant.”1 Franklin, who would help to change this negative opinion about swimming , learned to handle himself in the water when he was very young. He went with his boyhood friends to Boston Bay and the neighborhood ponds and, weather permitting, waded or jumped in. But he was also bigger and more muscular than the other boys his age, and unlike his childhood friends, he was already thinking about useful new tools and inventions that could be used by people drawn to the water. “When I was a boy,” he relates, I amused myself one day with flying a paper kite; and approaching the bank of a pond, which was near a mile broad, I tied the string to a stake, and the kite ascended to a very considerable height above the pond, while I was swimming. In a little time, being desirous of amusing myself with the kite, and enjoying at the same time the pleasure of swimming, I returned; and, loosing from the stake the string with the little stick which was fastened to it, went again into the water, where I found, that, lying on my back and holding the stick in my hands, I was drawn along the surface of the water in a very agreeable manner. Having then engaged another boy to carry my clothes round the pond, to a place which I pointed out to him on the other side, I began to cross the pond with my kite . . . with the greatest pleasure imaginable. Franklin concluded this short narrative: “I have never since that time practiced this singular mode of swimming, though I think it not impossible to cross in this manner from Dover to Calais.” He added wryly, “The packet boat, however, is still preferable.”2 Franklin described this episode from his childhood to a French physicianfriend , Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg, who had written to him about learning to swim.3 His correspondent did not know how to swim and could find little on the subject in Diderot’s otherwise authoritative Encyclopédie. To learn more, he asked Franklin to answer ten pages of questions about swimming, ranging from the ideal water temperature to what the ancients had written on the subject. Replying from London, Franklin did his best to make swimming sound like fun, provide clear answers to his friend’s questions, and recommend additional sources of information. He even told Barbeu-Dubourg that, while still a lad in the colonies, he came...