These new thinkers have got hold somehow of the notion that there is great virtue in holding the breath a long time. So they pump themselves full of air and batten down that poor little trap door and keep it down until they get red in the face, and their hearts thump tempestuously and then go pit-a.pit.

Have you gone shopping recently in some big department store arid had your ears assailed by a dreadful nasal wailing the while your eyes rested upon the legend “Don’t laugh—the pigs are dying?” And then you spied the pigs blown full of air and plugged up, or plug out and cater­wauling themselves away. Whilst the pig is full and plugged up, the membrane of which it is made is stretched to the utmost. Now take him up between your two hands and squeeze him harder and harder. If there happens to be a weak spot he will burst.. Or the plug may fly out. At any rate, you will stretch his skin, and it will take more air to make him plump again.

Now, that is just the way the wrong kind of holding the breath acts on your lungs. You stretch all time tissues of time lungs and batten down the epiglottis. Then time natural, untrained tendency of the chest and abdominal muscles being to straightway expel the air, all these muscles contract about your lungs, just as your fingers contracted about the skin pig, and the entire lung tissue and air passage, as well as the little trap door, are strained severely. And this straining interferes with time circulation of time blood, reacting upon the heart, and, if there does happen to be a weak spot in time lungs, you invite a hemorrhage. To cap all this, you make time lung tissue flabby and lazy.

The lungs should never, in ordinary breathing exercises, be forced to hold air—not for one instant.

The lungs are a pair of bellows, which fill as the muscular walls are expanded.

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