This is the Back Matter section of the previous “Doc Savage at 90” review, for April, 1933’s The Land of Terror. Although he wouldn’t introduce it until Quest of Qui in July, 1935, I’d like to talk about the Doc Savage Method.
The Doc Savage Method is Dent, with suicidal overconfidence, trying to define Doc’s mysterious two-hour daily exercise regimen, the source of his physical and sensory powers. But it was one of Dent’s fixations, and with either masterful cynicism or genuine idealism, he wrote up a series of “modified” exercises that readers could practice at home to hone their own bodies, intellects, and senses.
What sets the Doc Savage Method apart from modern (or even contemporary) workout regimens is the focus on the last two elements of those. Integral to the exercises aren’t just the dynamic tension of your biceps and triceps, but reciting the times tables and Kipling’s “Gunga Din” as you do so and cataloguing all the green items in the room with your eyes closed while you do it. Far beyond Kim’s Game and layered listening, Dent goes into comparative taste-testing and a variety of progressive subtle discernments. Far beyond Roman rooms and funny pictures, Dent demands raw memory power.
Arnold’s Education of a Bodybuilder this is not.
Let’s take a few examples:
Exercise II:
This exercise Doc Savage usually takes immediately on rising in the morning. Standing before an open window in shorts, feet wide apart and body relaxed, he breathes deeply and slowly eight or ten times.
Then, still relaxed, he reaches down to the right foot and, bending from the hips only grasps an imaginary hundred-pound weight. Slowly and without jerking, muscles tensed, the imaginary weight is lifted above his head. It is held there while Doc inhales and exhales deeply, having held his breath while lifting.
The weight is heavy, and requires tremendous exertion of every muscle of the body. Doc’s legs are tense and quivering, and his back muscles stand out as they aid the arms and stomach tendons. This is accomplished by opposing the pull of the muscles with mental resistance.
After reaching the top of the lift, Doc sets the imaginary weight down beside his left foot, straightens up and relaxes.
At the same time while taking the above exercises, Doc also trains his powers of observation by looking out the window and mentally cataloguing everything that comes within his range of vision. He then turns his back and repeats the physical exercise, lifting the imaginary weight up from the left foot and lowering it to the right, reviewing in his mind all the while that which the eye had photographed through the window.
This exercise is usually repeated five times by Doc, and at its conclusion he lists on paper all the objects he can remember seeing outside the window.
Only at the end of seven days does Doc check one list against the other…and sees much improvement after that period; for the mind is grasping more details each day.
When possible, Doc completes these exercises in a room with four windows, using a different one each week for the test, and for the fifth week goes back to the first window. Again list-checking shows him much improvement over the first week.
(Of course he’s in his shorts, one of Dent’s other fixations was unconscious homoeroticism)
The physical aspect of Exercise II is what we now call “mental imaging,” which enjoys an occasional revival in fitness science (and “science”) every few decades or so (in the 1960s/70s among the human potential movement, in goal-setting in the 2000s). I sometimes pretend at such things myself, though usually for writing purposes. The sensory aspect here is old as the hills – Robert-Houdin would take his son in front of shop windows to do exactly this in the 1880s and 90s. Combining them is the real innovation here – and it’s why I listen to audiobooks and podcasts when I work out, or count cars out the window when I’m standing in the company gym doing my karate kata.
Let’s try another.
Exercise VI
One of the first taste exercises ever used by Doc Savage was the attempted identification of individual solutions of coffee, tea, salt water, sugar water, diluted vinegar, and mustard water. He prepared six one-ounce bottles and, after sterilizing them, filled them three-quarters full with drinking water.
Into each bottle he poured a teaspoonful of each of the beforementioned Iiquids. Each bottle was labeled, naming the contents within. Then he closed his eyes and sipped from each bottle in turn, noting on paper what he thought the flavor to be.
After reaching the stage where he could differentiate correctly, he added water to the bottles until the flavor was barely perceptible…and then tried identifying them.
During this exercise, Doc recited aloud John McRae’s poem “In Flanders Fields.”
This is a fine example of one of Dent’s many ‘discernment’ exercises. I’m given to understand the like was fairly common among the nascent self-help culture in the 1930s, but the Doc Savage Method is the only place I’ve encountered them directly. This is also a great example of Dent (either with a fig leaf or without even bothering) adapting Doc’s no-doubt highly scientific exercises to items the average 11-year-old boy would find around the house in 1935. This is also how I memorized “In Flanders Fields,” practicing a variant on this back in China in the Learning to Think days.
Exercise CVII
Through his many adventures in the far places of the world, Doc Savage has come to a complete knowledge of all countries, their climates, whether mountainous or plain, whether hot or cold, the accessibility and the means of getting there.
A study of his youth helped to gain this information, for Doc played at times a game with himself. It might have been called “expedition going.”
Doc would sit in front of a globe of the world and spin it. While the globe was turning, Doc would close his eyes and then reach forward and stop the whirling with his finger. Where the finger rested, there would be the country which Doc would visit mentally.
For example, if the country were Tibet, Doc would trace the means of getting there and the transportation to be used. This would mean a perusal of steamship schedules across the Atlantic, railroad maps, and times of train departures in India…if entrance to Tibet were to be made that way. Passing through the Khyber Pass in northern India would give Doc historical background of that bloody gash through the hills.
Study of the climate was necessary, for Doc would have to prepare mentally the clothing he would take on the trip. The topography of Tibet would come in for study, for upon that would hinge the method of transportation…whether pack mule, on foot, or by modern motor car equipped to cover the rugged country.
Study of the nature of the people would tell if guns to any number would be needed for protection. If permission from the local authorities would be necessary before entrance to the country, Doc would be called upon to study the political situation and gain knowledge of what personages to approach.
Since he was going to Tibet, Doc had to look up in archeological books that which he might search for that would be of value to mankind in explaining past civilizations.
While on these mental expeditions, Doc would name the States or provinces of the country to which he was going, the capital of each, and its present ruler.
This is my favorite one. I have a globe on my desk right now. And looking up geographic and travel information is mind-bogglingly easier now when compared to the 1930s.
It beats “memorize the names and capitols of the countries of the world in alphabetical order” absolutely hollow.
In the course of researching for your mental expedition, each nation takes on a flavor and a color, and you discover a few salient facts to hang your hat on (putting my thumb on India many years back is how I discovered Vikram and the Vampire and the existence of the Blue City of Jodhpur and the noble knightly class of Rajputs). It becomes a place in your head.
My daughter will be practicing this for her geography lessons, when I homeschool her. Fantastic writing practice, too.
My finger landed in the Philippines. A splendid place to expedition in my mind.
This is a longer entry on the back matter than usual, but that’s because this is what first drew me to Doc Savage – this eerie, alien way to Learn to Think (and tone my body at the same time). A lot of it is nonsense. But there are some real jewels in the Doc Savage Method. For reference, I’ve included the complete Method in a document, here, as originally listed on The Eighty-Sixth Floor.
Doc Savage at 90
Introduction – The Man of Bronze
Bonus post: The Doc Savage Method of Personal Development
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