Andersonville Willows

A student recently shared this excerpt from a book on the Andersonville military prison during the American civil war:

"His early demise was an example of a general law, the workings of which few in the army failed to notice.  It was always the large and strong who first succumbed to hardship.  The stalwart, huge-limbed, toil-inured men sank down earliest on the march, yielded soonest to malarial influences, and fell first under the combined effects of home-sickness, exposure and the privations of army life.  The slender, withy boys, as supple and weak as cats, had apparently the nine lives of those animals.  There were few exceptions to this rule in the army--there were none in Andersonville. I can recall few or no instances where a large, strong, "hearty" man lived through a few months of imprisonment.  The survivors were invariably youths, at the verge of manhood,--slender, quick, active, medium-statured fellows, of a cheerful temperament, in whom one would have expected comparatively little powers of endurance.

The theory which I constructed for my own private use in accounting for this phenomenon I offer with proper diffidence to others who may be in search of a hypothesis to explain facts that they have observed.  It is this: a. The circulation of the blood maintains health, and consequently life by carrying away from the various parts of the body the particles of worn-out and poisonous tissue, and replacing them with fresh, structure- building material. b. The man is healthiest in whom this core process goes on most freely and continuously. c. Men of considerable muscular power are disposed to be sluggish; the exertion of great strength does not favor circulation.  It rather retards it, and disturbs its equilibrium by congesting the blood in quantities in the sets of muscles called into action. d. In light, active men, on the other hand, the circulation goes on perfectly and evenly, because all the parts are put in motion, and kept so in such a manner as to promote the movement of the blood to every extremity.  They do not strain one set of muscles by long continued effort, as a strong man does, but call one into play after another. There is no compulsion on the reader to accept this speculation at any valuation whatever.  There is not even any charge for it.  I will lay down this simple axiom:  No strong man, is a healthy man from the athlete in the circus who lifts pieces of artillery and catches cannon balls, to the exhibition swell in a country gymnasium.  If my theory is not a sufficient explanation of this, there is nothing to prevent the reader from building up one to suit him better." 

McElroy, John (1879). Andersonville, a Story of Rebel Military Prisons

It is interesting how much this resonates with the goals of Tai chi training, though I wouldn't want to have  to test it in prison.  It is also reminiscent of the metaphor of the willow and oak trees.  The greater pliability, yielding capability, and resilience of the willow often gives it greater endurance and survival ability compared to the oak.