History is resplendent with artifacts that help us better understand what life was like in bygone days. The object to the left looks like a chair… but it isn’t. It is a ‘chamber horse.’
For those of you who are fans of Jane Austin, you may have run across this line and wondered… ‘what does it mean?’
“…and I have told Mrs Whitby that if anybody enquires for a chamber horse, they may be supplied at a fair rate (poor Mr Hollis’s chamber horse, as good as new); and what can people want more?”
The chamber horse was sort of a forerunner of today’s modern gym…. and critics say that it was used as infrequently then as many home gyms are today. The ‘horse’ was developed by a doctor named George Cheyne in the early 1700’s. The poles are for hanging onto as you bounce on the series of padded springs… yahoo!
A nice article appears on NEW Scientist which I leave for your reading entitled: “Dr. Diet’s recipe for Health.” Dr. Cheyne’s call for chicken and vegetables no hard alcohol except for wine was well ahead of his time. I also checked out the used booksellers to see how Dr. Cheyne’s works were trading… and since I don’t have several thousand dollars to spend…
I passed… but the write ups in ABEBOOKS.COM are worth repeating:
“First edition of this celebrated book in which Cheyne discusses, among other subjects, the tendency towards suicide and the causes and cures of corpulence. His account of psychopathological disorders was probably the most read and widely influential English language psychiatric book published in the eighteenth century.”
“Cheyne’s struggle with corpulence and excess became the subject of his popular later works on health and nutrition, Essay of Health and Long Life and The English Malady.”
“Cheyne’s term “English malady” refers to depression, the causes of which Cheyne listed as moist air, the variable English climate, too much meat and alcohol, sedentary habits and overcrowding. Among the clinical illustrations Cheyne included his own case, which he cured by purges, a milk and vegetable diet and the study of religious writings. Cheyne’s work inspired an interest in England in exploring the metaphysical relationship between mind and body.”
Like Dr. Cheyne, many of us who control our ‘afflictions’ through diet do fall off the wagon a few times now and again… it’s natural to change your diet back when you start to feel better… and then the diet cycle repeats itself. It is important to know that Dr. Cheyne was still able to live to 71 years of age in spite of his yoyo approach to dieting and although he may not have been able to scientifically explain to today’s audience why his diet worked… it is a diet that resembles many which are effectively in use today.
I was impressed with how similar his diet was to my own. Thank you , Dr. Diet, you were definitely ahead of your time!
Roger Freberg