rse be given to those for whom
gymnastics are out of the question. Yet such rubbing may fatigue a very
weak patient, and care must be taken not to carry it too far at one
time. There should also never be any hurting of the skin. Where the
hands are felt too rough, the back may be covered with a soft cloth,
oiled with olive oil. All _strong_ strokes in rubbing the limbs should
be directed _inwards_ to where the limb joins the body. The lighter
strokes should be outwards. It is always well to have a light and heavy
stroke, as a joiner has in sawing.

As an instance of how to squeeze, let us take an arm that has got wrong
somehow. If you take this arm between your two hands very gently, you
feel that it is harder than it should be. The large muscles, even when
the arm is at perfect rest, have a hard feeling to your hands, and not
the soft, nice feeling which a perfectly healthy arm has. Probably the
muscles have been over-stretched, and sprained, or they have been
chilled, and so have lost their elasticity and softness. Well, it will
be so far good if you can bathe this arm in hot water. It will be
better still if the hot water used is full of SOAP (_see_). You can
make this bathing ten times more effective, if you only know what is
meant by a proper squeezing of the muscles. You use your two hands in
the water of the soapy bath, and taking the arm between them, gently
press the muscles between your hands, with a sort of working upon them
that makes the blood in the stiff parts rush out and in, according as
you press or relieve the pressure. If you can only get hold of the
idea, it will not be difficult to do this right. It may be that the
cords of the arm are not only hard, but also contracted, so that the
arm cannot be straightened or bent as it ought to be, but it is still
so squeezable that you can squeeze the blood out of it, and it is still
so elastic that when you relieve it of the pressure of your hands the
blood rushes back into it. If this squeezing is kindly and slowly done,
it will feel very pleasant, and very soon its good effect will be
perceptible.

[Illustration: Massaging the Arm.]

It is sometimes thought that there is some "magic" in one person's
hands that is not in another's. Here is a case in which one person has
rubbed, he thinks, perfectly right, and no relief has come. Another
brings relief in a few minutes. It is concluded that some mysterious
"gift" is possessed by the latter. This may do well