1896: DANGERS & BENEFITS of the BICYCLE

DANGERS & BENEFITS of the BICYCLE

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OTHER HOT TOPICS of THE TIME

…The benefits of the bicycle are to be noted particularly in the case of women who have passed the heydey of youth and have not yet reached the calm of middle life, but who are passing through a period of mental fermentation and physical irritability of varying degree according to their social sphere, temperament and habits.

…It may be an open question whether the bicycle is destined, as some enthusiasts claim, to revolutionize the social life of our people.

…The bicycle is more than a vehicle: it is almost as much of a companion as a horse or a dog.

…Few men have urgent need either of a new machine for enforcing exercise or occupying the mind; yet there is many a middle-aged or elderly professional man who is exchanging flabby fat for firm muscle, is increasing his breathing space, toning up his circulation, and putting old age five or ten years further ahead, by discarding the carriage, buggy or street-car for the bicycle.

…The half-grown boy who formerly thought it manly to fuddle his brain with liquor or weaken his heart with tobacco has changed his ideal to the not very lofty but certainly more innocent one of maintaining a reputation for speed or endurance, and while in training he proudly forgoes bad habits that he would be ashamed to abandon as a mere matter of principle.

…All this means not that the bicycle is to be used by everybody, nor that it is to be the physical and moral salvation of the age, but that it is aiding in a tangible manner in the solution of many problems, social, economic, moral, and hygienic.