Dr. Peter Macdonald (York) said that it was with extreme diffidence that he ventured to take part in this discussion, and his sole excuse was the connexion made by Dr. Cameron, in his opening address, between postural defects and the other defects of the "nervous child," and between postural defects and other defects in the adult. He was going to put unorthodox view before the Section and, in particular, was going to take the unorthodox step of recommending to the Section the study of the work of a man who was not a medical man; and he did this solely with the hope that he might interest sufficiently some members of the Section, who were far more competent to have an opinion than he, to induce them to investigate his work. His name was F. Matthias Alexander and Dr. Macdonald knew of his work through one of his books, Man's Supreme Inheritance, through another Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, which was at present in the press, and through his personal services to Dr. Macdonald himself and others; and he regarded his work as epoch making.

As relating to the subject of this discussion, Dr. Macdonald had learnt from him or, rather, through him, three things: (1) That man did not know the erect posture, and possibly he had never learnt to acquire it consciously; (2) what the co-ordinated use of the muscular mechanism was, to secure the posture best for the moment; (3) and this was the important thing ­ he had learnt how to acquire knowledge of the co-ordinated use of such mechanism.

As to (1), members of the Section would readily convince themselves if they would note, in observing their friends, that few of them who had reached the age of 50 had an abdominal girth which was less than their chest measurement, and that in those of their friends who were older they might observe a curvature of the top of the spine with the head carried downwards and forwards, which was usually considered to be the effect of old age. In all seriousness he asked the Section to consider if this might not be, not the effect of old age, but the cause of it.

He, said nothing about (2) at the moment, except that he denied point blank that the drill sergeant's chest, which Dr. Cameron seemed to approve of, was a sound posture; and, indeed, in his out-patient department he took every opportunity, when the old soldier appeared, of pointing out his rigid protruding chest to his house-surgeon as the "characteristic military deformity."

As to (3), it was an impossible task in a few minutes to do more than indicate Mr. Alexander's methods. Put shortly, however, by manipulation with his own hands he placed his pupil or part of his pupil ­ his neck and chest, for example ­ in the posture he wanted him to learn; he painstakingly taught his pupil to allow him to do this passively; the pupil thus acquired a sense impression of the posture he wanted him to acquire; by repetition the pupil was enabled to register that impression and, once registered, he was able to reproduce it for himself. The reason for this method was that man learned a new thing only from experience, or, to speak paradoxically, he could not teach anyone anything except that which fundamentally he knew.

Mr. Alexander's thesis was that man's control of his musculature, thinking processes, life functions generally, so far as they were subject to volition, was ordinarily an in instinctive one; that instinct was a sound guide only in a stable or slowly changing environment, that in the rapidly changing environment of our developing civilization it broke down, and that for instinctive must be substituted conscious control.

The effect of his training on health and disease was astounding, though he in no way professed to treat disease at all; he professed solely to be a trainer. Flat-foot became a trifling disability which simply disappeared. Asthma became ameliorated or removed: stammering was overcome; and Dr. Macdonald had seen a "nervous child," with much of the postural deformity Dr. Cameron had so ably shown in his slides, become a relatively supple, normal child.