A daily system of muscular contractions, most of them performed lying in bed, rebuilds the aged body and restores it to a youthful condition, as in Bennett's own recovery between his fifties and his seventies.
Bennett’s central claim was that his system of muscular contractions, set out first in Exercising in Bed (1907) and then in Old Age (1912), had reversed the physical decline of his own middle age and restored his body to a youthful condition. The supporting evidence was his own case, presented through the before-and-after photographs of himself at fifty (1889) and seventy-two (1912) that illustrate the 1912 book. It is classified as testimonial: the demonstration centred on a single self-selected subject, the promoter himself. It is recorded as unreplicated because no controlled study, and no independent follow-up, ever tested whether the regimen rebuilds an aging body or merely maintains it. That exercise benefits older bodies is not in dispute; that it restores them to youth, as Bennett claimed, was never demonstrated, and the evidence for it is insufficient.
Appears in
Sources
- Old Age: Its Cause and Prevention: The Story of an Old Body and Face Made Young — Bennett S. Old Age: Its Cause and Prevention: The Story of an Old Body and Face Made Young. New York: The Physical Culture Publishing Company; 1912.
- Exercising in Bed: The Simplest and Most Effective System of Exercise Ever Devised — Bennett S. Exercising in Bed: The Simplest and Most Effective System of Exercise Ever Devised. San Francisco: The E. Hilton Co.; 1907.