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358
IV. EDUCATION AND MENTAL CULTURE IN SWEDEN.
In this way equipped, the Zander gymnastics have been much and
variously applied in the service of medicine and hygiene. They are thus
employed with great advantage to develop the powers of children who
cannot on account of weakness take part in the ordinary pedagogic gymnatics.
They provide a wonderful dietetic remedy for persons who lead a
sedentary life or have an occupation conducive to onesided development;
and it may with reason be affirmed that when people grow too old for
active sport, the Zander method of gymnastics offers a substitute for it.
In the province of therapeutics it is employed like manual
gymnastics; first of all in affections of the heart and in nervous troubles,
in which, as is well known, gymnastic treatment is superior to any
other. In scoliosis, it is of the greatest importance; and in many forms
of gastric trouble, such as constipation, no other treatment can be
compared with it. In co-operation with the medical therapeutic treatment,
it is of great value in affections of the lungs, in uterine complaints,
in hemorrhoids, in general constitutional disorders, such as anaemia,
abnormal accumulation of fat, diabetes, etc. In muscular and articular
pains, whether from traumatic or from rheumatic causes, it is employed
with great advantage. The gymnastic treatment is a remarkably
suitable accompaniment to the ordinary treatment at watering places and
hydropathic establishments and has, therefore, been introduced at
several — in Europe as well as in America — of the larger continental
watering places.
In Germany the Zander gymnastics have been largely employed
where there is a question of treating on a large scale the consequences
of bodily injuries caused by accidents at work. The injured workman
is in that country insured by the law of 1884 and receives a certain
compensation, proportioned to the permanent diminution of his ability
to work. In order, if possible, to diminish the amount of this
compensation, which must be paid for the duration of the disabled workman’s
life, such cases have been submitted to gymnastic treatment after
recovery, partly at establishments specially appropriated to this purpose
and furnished with Zander apparatuses, partly at special times at most
of the larger institutes. The results have been splendid: in most
places the compensation for disablement has been reduced to about 40 %.
Even allowing that such injuries are equally well treated by both
our methods of gymnastics, the mechanical method must from the
economical point of view have the preference, because the hand powei
requisite to replace this, would, even if it could be obtained, prove sc
costly that the profit would be simply illusory.
In Stockholm there are two complete institutes, and one furnished
with a selection of apparatuses. The Zander Institute was between the
spring of 1865 and the end of 1898 visited by 14,332 male and 5,93f
female patients, or each season on an average by 596 patients. Th<
Östermalm Institute, has since 1885 been visited by 3,157 male and 1,311
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