where he needs his resistive forces to throw off disease, he finds that
he cannot command them.

Still another change is continually taking place; as the man goes on in
life, little by little the control of his muscles leaves him. Instead of
running about as does the youth, recklessly and with never a thought of
being tired, he begins to favor himself by walking in the easiest
possible way, until soon he is balancing on one foot and then tilting
forward on the other, making no muscular effort and preferring the
motor-car or the trolley whenever it is at hand. As an inevitable
result, some of the muscles atrophy, and even those that do not
deteriorate speedily discover that they have no master, and they act
when and how they please.

The man who is continually giving orders to subordinates and having
other men do things for him, soon finds that he is unable to accomplish
things for himself; then, if he is thrown on his own resources, he is
helpless. Take a group of men, executives, who for a dozen years have
been ordering other men about instead of obeying orders, and you will
find that for the most part these captains of industry have lost 50 per
cent. of their muscular control. On the other hand, the man who is
taking orders retains command over all his muscles, for he is daily and
hourly training them to instant obedience. A group of privates will snap
into "attention" at the word of command with splendid muscular control;
the same number of officers would find great difficulty in doing this.
Now as the man loses muscular control he loses poise and carriage. His
head rolls about in a slack way on his neck, and has a tendency to drop
forward; the muscles of the neck and the upper part of the back grow
soft from lack of use and control and he begins to become
round-shouldered; his chest falls in as the shoulders come forward and
the chest cavity is reduced. This means a gradual cramping of lungs,
heart, and stomach.

By way of compensation he lets out a hole or two in his belt and starts
in to carry more weight there. In other words, he exchanges muscle for
fat, and as the fat increases he has less and less muscular strength to
carry it. It is as though in a motor-car one added hundreds of pounds of
weight to the body and reduced the horse-power of the engine. Pretty
soon the man becomes so heavy around the waist that he notices his
discomfort, and it produces exhaustion; now he becomes more and more
averse to exer