ABOUT SWIMMING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14835, 11 November 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

ABOUT SWIMMING.

BY TOHtTSGA.

To those who hare a sense of the fullness of Life and of the pleasure to be drawn from the physical, mental, and emotional satisfactions, there must always be something lacking in. any existence to which these satisfactions do not come. The blind excite our sympathy always because sight gives to us never-ceasing pleasures from which they are debarred; and if a man, not blind, deliberately closed his eyes and shut sight out from himself we should be amazed at his folly and regard him as insane. let by neglect of tho art of (swimming many thousands debar themselves from ono of the greatest and most wholesome of pleasures, and we hardly regard them as foolish because this negligence is so common. Yet as the days lengthen and the heating power of the sun plays upon shore and sea, stream and lake and land, the peasant coolness of the unchilled water draw young and old with magnetic force. At once we begin to hear of those pathetic drowning accidents which are usually such needless tragedies, for few indeed would happen if boys and girls learned in childhood the science of floating and the art of swimming. Never a summer passes in New Zealand but mothers givo their lives in desperate endeavouring to save their drowning little ones, fathers perish before wifely eyes, sisters sink hand-in-hand with brothers, comrades die for comrades, strangers sacrifice themselves for stragglers whom they never saw before. The normal boy or girl has only a passing fear of water, a fear due solely to its comparative strangeness and passing completely with a very little familiarity. The reason for this is obviously that the human body can sustain itself indefinitely in water sufficiently high to breathe with comfort, provided it becomes habituated to certain exceedingly simple and automatic movement's; more than this, any ordinary human being, with normal chest development, can float without movement and with the nostrils exposed as long as the circulation of the blood is not affected by chill, Little children who, by example, have lost all fear, will often learn to float in smooth water before they learn to swimfor floating calls for confidence and passivity only, j while swimming demands the ' acquisition of distinct though simple muscular movements. To see the toddling' members of swimming families turning on their backs to rest themselves between the two or three strokes which is their utmost capaoity i$ a revelation upon the true relation of i mankind and water. The human body without air-filled lungs is somewhat heavier than water* and will sink; but when the lungs are filled with .air it i*. somewhat lighter than either salt or fresh"water, and will float in either with a few cubic inches to spare. Every swimmer knows the difficulty of, getting under water unless downward impetus is gained by throwing up arms or legs; and anybody , can see that if bathers with air in their "lungs . simply lie without movement on their faces s their body does not go entirely below the , surface. But it does no good to lie in the water with the back and the back of the [ head showing. ' One must turn the other ' way. " " * ' " • '■ • \ _ The trick of floating is simply to keep every part underwater excepting the face, . and to breathe gently through the nostrils. To let the legs riso or to thrust the hands up weighs down the chestwhich is a natural buoy for the nostrils—and forces the face below the surface ; but the legs i will not.rise unless the muscles are stiffened I and the arms similarly lie outwards of j their own accord if t}ie muscles are relaxed, j | In "the dead men's float," which is as old as humanity and common to all swimming j peoples, the legs gradually sink until'the ! body slants downwards, while the head rests on the water as on a pillow, with ; mouth, nostrils, and eyes above the surface and with ears below. There are many variations of floating, j but the principle of " the dead man's float " is under them all. It can be acquired in smooth water by anybody .who is not afaid of a little wholesome fluid leaking in by inexperienced mouth or nose, and the feeblest swimmer is immediately heartened by practically realising that' for a time, at any rate, the body won't sink, and that always only a little swimming motion is required to assist its' natural flotation power. , Those who think that floating is a difficult accomplishment and can only be acquired by experts do not. know anything at all about it. It is the primitive thing. •Walking is a difficult art, as every parent knows: floating and swimming is "an easy art. Science tells us that wo came from the waters in forgotten ages, and still our bodies are mostly water, while we cannot live many hours without a drinknot/ even in prohibition districts. Where waters are warm and adjacent, as in tropical islands, babies commonly swim long before they walk, and men and women swim joyfully for hours in the rollers and the surf. Not the length of the Channel swim, but the endurance for so long of exposure to chilling water is the wonder of the Webb and Burgess feats. A sixteen-year-old Australian girl floated and swam for over thirty hours in the warm waters of Torres Straits after the sinking of the ill-fated Quetta, and was picked up by searching rescuers. As a matter of fact, a human being who knows the art of floating and swimming is as much at homo in fairly smooth water as on landfor just as long as the blood circulates freely. Not muscular exhaustion but heart weakening sets the limit to tl*e powers of the swimmer. Which brings us to crampwhich arises from nothing more and nothing less than the tardy circulation of the blood. . The old granny's remedy of a warming-pan— in the modern form of a hot-water bottle— I is a sovereign cure for the nightly cramp- | ing from which so many suffer. For the j heart has a limit as well as an oil-engine, ! and if it cannot keep the warm blood pumpin to the extremities against chilling conditions it rings its alarm bell, and you've got to jump up and get some more fuel on. That's bad enough in bed, but it's worse in the water, where there is no solidity to press or kick against. Cramp in feet, calves, or hands will make the strongest swimmer wish himself where he could give it, his whole-hearted attention. Cramp that doubles you up in the water is what boxing men call a "knock-out." You can't swim, you can't lie passively to float, you lose control of the swimming machine—and down you go. If abdominal cramps were common or inevitable it would be well to let swimming carefully alone; the art would not be good enough even for pro- ] fessionals. But in nine cases out of ten, probably in | ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, possibly i in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of j a thousand, dangerous crampings in the | water arise from bathing too soon after meals. The reason is so plain that if it were not for sorrowing friends and relatives those who are stupid enough to go • swimming 011 a full stomach might be considered fittingly paid for their stupidity. Everybody knows, or should know, that I the act of digestion draws heavily upon the i circulation of blood through the body; if 1 the body that -holds an actively-working and consequently super-heated and superblooded digestive system is plunged into water which is relatively chilling the circulatory system is disorganised and severe cramps are likelv to follow, affecting particularly tho chilled regions. Cramp-drown-ings are almost invariably associated with recent meals, and for these "accidents" there is positively 110 excuse. There is much more excuse for those who do not realise that swimming in cool water necessarily throws some strain upon the heart, which is the motive power of the circulatory system and that may find out heartweaknesses which' have escaped the doctor. But although, like the noblest virtues and the greatest exercises, swimming may bo carried to excess, if we could all becomo fair swimmers many lives would be saved, many happy homes would be preserved unbroken, and a wholesome pleasure would be opened to aIU -v.