Muscular Exercise¹

Abstract

Introduction.—Muscular exercise is a subject in which most people are interested. It is fortunate therefore that, in this direction, physiology has made greater progress into the intimate working of the body than perhaps in any other. The means by which bodily movements are carried out is muscle. Muscle is the red meat. There are three kinds of muscles: the voluntary muscle of the trunk and limbs, governed- or at any rate governable-by the conscious will of the individual; the involuntary muscle of the bloodvessels, of the alimentary and excretory, the so-called vegetative, system; and the cardiac or heart muscle, the muscle which pumps the blood round the body.