Now let us see what happens when the intellectual organs are put over-long on the stretch, and when moral causes, such as heavy responsibilities and over-anxiety, are at work.
When in active use, the thinking organs become full of blood, and, as has been shown, rise in temperature, while the feet and hands become cold. Nature meant that, for their work, they should be, in the first place, supplied with food; next, that they should have certain intervals of rest to rid themselves of the excess of blood accumulated during their periods of activity, and this is to be done by sleep, and also by bringing into play the physical machinery of the body, such as the muscles,--that is to say, by exercise which flushes the parts engaged in it and so depletes the brain. She meant, also, that the various brain-organs should aid in the relief, by being used in other directions than mere thought; and lastly, she desired that, during digestion, all the surplus blood of the body should go to the stomach, intestines, and liver, and that neither blood nor nerve-power should be then misdirected upon the brain: in other words, she did not mean that we should try to carry on, with equal energy, two kinds of important functional business at once.
If, then, the brain-user wishes to be healthy, he must limit his hours of work according to rules which will come of experience, and which no man can lay down for him. Above all, let him eat regularly and not at too long intervals. I well remember the amazement of a distinguished naturalist when told that his sleeplessness and irregular pulse were due to his fasting from nine until six. A biscuit and a glass of porter, at one o'clock, effected a ready and pleasant cure. As to exercise in the fresh air, I need say little, except that if the exercise can be made to have a distinct object, not in the way of business, so much the better. Nor should I need to add that we may relieve the thinking and worrying mechanisms by light reading and other amusements, or enforce the lesson that no hard work should be attempted during digestion. The wise doctor may haply smile at the commonplace of such directions, but woe be to the man who neglects them!
When an overworked and worried victim has sufficiently sinned against these simple laws, if he does not luckily suffer from disturbances of heart or stomach, he begins to have certain signs of nervous exhaustion.
As a rule, one of two symptoms appears first, though sometimes both come together. Work gets to be a little less facile; this astonishes the subject, especially if he has been under high pressure and doing his tasks with that ease which comes of excitement. With this, or a little later, he discovers that he sleeps badly, and that the thoughts of the day infest his dreams, or so possess him as to make slumber difficult. Unrefreshed, he rises and plunges anew into the labor for which he is no longer competent. Let him stop here; he has had his warning. Day after day the work grows more trying, but the varied stimulants to exertion come into play, the mind, aroused, forgets in the cares of the day the weariness of the night season, and so, with lessening power and growing burden, he pursues his purpose. At last come certain new symptoms, such as giddiness, dimness of sight, neuralgia of the face or scalp, with entire nights of insomnia and growing difficulty in the use of the mental powers; so that to attempt a calculation, or any form of intellectual labor, is to insure a sense of distress in the head, or such absolute pain as proves how deeply the organs concerned have suffered. Even to read is sometimes almost impossible; and there still remains the perilous fact that under enough of moral stimulus the man may be able, for a few hours, to plunge into business cares, without such pain as completely to incapacitate him for immediate activity. Night, however, never fails to bring the punishment; and at last the slightest prolonged exertion of mind becomes impossible. In the worst cases the scalp itself grows sore, and a sudden jar hurts the brain, or seems to do so, while the mere act of stepping from a curb-stone produces positive pain.
Strange as it may seem, much of all this may happen to a man, and he may still struggle onward, ignorant of the terrible demands he is making upon an exhausted brain. Usually, by this time he has sought advice, and, if his doctor be worthy of the title, has learned that while there are certain aids for his symptoms in the shape of drugs, there is only one real remedy. Happy he if not too late in discovering that complete and prolonged cessation from work is the one thing needful. Not a week of holiday, or a month, but probably a year or more of utter idleness may be absolutely essential. Only this will answer in cases so extreme as that which I have tried to depict, and even this will not always insure a return to a state of active working health.
I am very far from conceding that the vehement energy with which we do our work is due altogether to greed. We probably idle less and play less than any other race, and the absence of national habits of sport, especially in the West, leaves the man of business with no inducement to abandon that unceasing labor in which at last he finds his sole pleasure. He does not ride, or shoot, or fish, or play any game but euchre. Business absorbs him utterly, and at last he finds neither time nor desire for books. The newspaper is his sole literature; he has never had time to acquire a taste for any reading save his ledger. Honest friendship for books comes with youth or, as a rule, not at all. At last his hour of peril arrives. Then you may separate him from business, but you will find that to divorce his thoughts from it is impossible. The fiend of work he raised no man can lay. As to foreign travel, it wearies him. He has not the culture which makes it available or pleasant. Notwithstanding the plasticity of the American, he is now without resources. What then to advise I have asked myself countless times. Let him at least look to it that his boys go not the same evil road. The best business men are apt to think that their own successful careers represent the lives their children ought to follow, and that the four years of college spoil a lad for business. In reality these years, be they idle or well filled with work, give young men the custom of play, and surround them with an atmosphere of culture which leaves them with bountiful resources for hours of leisure, while they insure to them in these years of growth wholesome, unworried freedom from such business pressure as the successful parent is so apt to put on too youthful shoulders.
Somewhat distracted by the desire to be brief, and yet to tell the whole story, I have sought, in what I fear is a very loose and disconnected way, to put in a new light some of the evils which are hurting the mothers of our race, and those which every day's experience teaches the doctor are gravely affecting the working capacity of numberless men. I trust I have succeeded in satisfying my readers that we dwell in a climate where work of all kinds demands greater precautions as to health than is the case abroad. We cannot improve our climate, but it is quite possible that we have not sufficiently learned to modify the conditions of labor in accordance with those of the sky under which we live.
No student of the nervous maladies of American men and women will think I have overdrawn any part of the foregoing sketch. It would have been as easy, had such a course been proper, to tell the individual stories of youth, vigorous, eager, making haste to be rich, wrecked and made unproductive and dependent for years or forever; and of middle age, unable or unwilling to pause in the career of dollar-getting, crushed to earth in the hour of fruition, or made powerless to labor longer at any cost for those who were dearest.
[2]In 1871.
[3]See, now, "Brain-Work and Overwork," by H.C. Wood, M.D.; also, "Mental Overwork and Premature Disease among Public and Professional Men," by Ch. K. Mills, M.D.; also, "Overwork and Sanitation in Public Schools, with Remarks on the Production of Nervous Disease and Insanity," by Ch. K. Mills, M.D.,--Annals of Hygiene, September, 1886.
[4]I asked two citizens of this uneasy town--on the same day--what was their business. Both replied tranquilly that they were speculators!
[5]Forty-ninth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education, p. 204 (John T. Prince).
[6]Witness Richardson's heroine, who was "perfect mistress of the four rules of arithmetic"!
[7]In the city where this is written there is, so far as I know, not one private girls' school in a building planned for a school-house. As a consequence, we hear endless complaints from young ladies of overheated or chilly rooms. If the teacher be old, the room is kept too warm; if she be young, and much afoot about her school, the apartment is apt to be cold.
[8]Miss Pendleton.
[9]Philadelphia.
[10]The new emigrant suffers in a high degree from the same evils as to cookery which affect only less severely the mass of our people, and this, no doubt, helps to enfeeble him. The frying-pan has, I fear, a better right to be called our national emblem than the eagle, and I grieve to say it reigns supreme west of the Alleghanies. I well remember that a party of friends about to camp out were unable to buy a gridiron in two Western towns, each numbering over four thousand eaters of fried meats.