And whether they have been right or wrong in choosing him is more than they can say, until the experiment has been tried, and the mischief has been, in many cases, irretrievably done.

How many of them are aware of the important physiological truth, that the muscular power of a man is no fair guarantee of his vital power?
How many of them know that we all have (as a great French writer puts it) two lives in us--the surface life of the muscles, and the inner life of the heart, lungs, and brain?
Even if they did know this--even with medical men to help them--it would be in the last degree doubtful, in most cases, whether any previous examination would result in any reliable discovery of the vital fitness of the man to undergo the stress of muscular exertion laid on him.

Apply to any of my brethren; and they will tell you, as the result of their own professional observation, that I am, in no sense, overstating this serious evil, or exaggerating the deplorable and dangerous consequences to which it leads.

I have a patient at this moment, who is a young man of twenty, and who possesses one of the finest muscular developments I ever saw in my life.

If that young man had consulted me, before he followed the example of the other young men about him, I can not honestly say that I could have foreseen the results.