Therapeutics of Activity

Chicago: Covici-McGee. Very Good- in Fair dj. 1923. First Edition. Hardcover. [modestly shelfworn, non-authorial gift inscription on front endpaper, some deterioration to cloth along top edges, a number of pages have small closed tears at the fore-edge due largely to cheap pulpish paper employed in the book's manufacture; the jacket is somewhat tattered, worn, soiled, and age-tanned, with paper loss along the bottom edge, at the spine ends and at several corners, pieces missing from corners of rear panel (but no loss of jacket text) (now in mylar to prevent further damage/loss)]. (B&W photographs) Rare-ish book from the days when exercise and fitness had not yet become the obsession it is for many today. This is "a book in which all activities, whether work, play, sport or gymnastic, are considered and discussed from their curative aspects. It is freely illustrated with about five hundred photographs and is in every way the most complete handbook on the purely hygienic and healing side of activity that was ever printed." The rear jacket panel presents Dr. Gour's bona fides: "Readers of the Chicago Daily News know something about Dr. Gour's work. For more than four years he has been contributing feature articles on gymnastics, games, sports, dancing and various health topics [and] there has been a growing demand for some of the articles in book form." It goes on to detail some of the various teaching positions he had held, including having been Professor of Gymnastics and Orthopedics at the Chicago College of Osteopathy for the preceding seventeen years. He also famously designed a "high integrity" hernia support belt, and in 1942 founded Chicago's Outdoor Physical Fitness Club (known today as the Forest Trails Hiking Club). .