Trump has a theory about exercise that would fit well in Victorian Britain | Vanessa Heggie

Donald Trump allegedly believes that exercise is bad because the body has a finite store of energy: exactly the logic used to warn 19th century women off education

A piece in this month's New Yorker magazine has drawn attention to Donald Trump's alleged views on exercise: "... he considers exercise misguided, arguing that a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy."

While this may be a joke or a weak excuse for being one of the least active Presidents in living memory (if we don't count golf), as a theory about the human body it actually has a fairly long pedigree. In the late nineteenth century ideas about industry, fatigue, thermodynamics and evolution came crashing together, producing some over-cautious advice for athletes, and some terrible advice for women.