like, produce directly diseases of the nervous system, and are also the
fertile parents of dyspepsia, consumption, and maladies of the heart.
How often we can trace all the forms of the first-named protean disease
to such causes is only too well known to every physician, and their
connection with cardiac troubles is also well understood. Happily,
functional troubles of heart or stomach are far from unfrequent
precursors of the graver mischief which finally falls upon the
nerve-centres if the lighter warnings have been neglected; and for this
reason no man who has to use his brain energetically and for long
periods can afford to disregard the hints which he gets from attacks of
palpitation of heart or from a disordered stomach. In many instances
these are the only expressions of the fact that he is abusing the
machinery of mind or body; and the sufferer may think himself fortunate
that this is the case, since even the least serious degrees of direct
exhaustion of the centres with which he feels and thinks are more grave
and are less open to ready relief.
When affections of the outlying organs are neglected, and even in many
cases where these have not suffered at all, we are apt to witness, as a
result of too prolonged anxiety combined with business cares, or even of
mere overwork alone, with want of proper physical habits as to exercise,
amusement, and diet, that form of disorder of which I have already
spoken as cerebral exhaustion; and before closing this paper I am
tempted to describe briefly the symptoms which warn of its approach or
tell of its complete possession of the unhappy victim. Why it should be
so difficult of relief is hard to comprehend, until we remember that the
brain is apt to go on doing its weary work automatically and despite the
will of the unlucky owner; so that it gets no thorough rest, and is in
the hapless position of a broken limb which is expected to knit while
still in use. Where physical overwork has worn out the spinal or motor
centres, it is, on the other hand, easy to enforce repose, and so to
place them in the best condition for repair. This was often and happily
illustrated during the late war. Severe marches, bad food, and other
causes which make war exhausting, were constantly in action, until
certain men were doing their work with too small a margin of
reserve-power. Then came such a crisis as the last days of McClellan's
retreat to the James River, or the forced march of the Sixth Army Corps
to Gettysburg, and at once these men succumbed with palsy of the legs. A
few months of absolute rest, good diet, ale, fresh beef and vegetables
restored them to perfect health.
In all probability incessant use of a part flushes with blood the
nerve-centres which furnish it with motor energy, so that excessive work
may bring about a state of congestion, owing to which the nerve-centre
becomes badly nourished, and at last strikes work. In civil life we
sometimes meet with such cases among certain classes of artisans:
paralysis of the legs as a result of using the treadle of the
sewing-machine ten hours a day is a good example, and, I am sorry to
add, not a very rare one, among the overtasked women who slave at such
labor.
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.
THE END.