Overwork.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 66, 17 March 1894, Page 9 (Supplement)

Overwork.

The amount of work gome people get through is simply enormous. Few people are harder worked than a London physician in active practice. We know a doctor who seldom gets more than four hours' sleep oub of bbc bwenty four. He says thab ib is nob that he couldn't do with more, bub it is as much as he can get. Many busy men are constantly at work of some kind or the other, from eight in the morning till past twelve ot night. Some, oi course, break down, but others can do this year after year, apparently without any detriment to their health. Instances are known of professional mon who have not slept for five days together, and who have nob boon in bed for three weeks at a time. Those sound almosb like travellers' tales, bu they are true although, of course, they are exceptional caaea. It is astonishing what interest and energy will do, in enabling a man to dispense with reft. It Tiatf been said that the twenty-four hours might be advantageously divided info three equal parts, eight hour 3 for sleep, eight for meals, exercise, recreation, etc., and eight for mental work. Few men really require more than eight hours' sleep, bub the majority of us have to do considerably more than eight hour'e work in the day. It is not so much that a man wishes for the work, as thab ib is forced upon him. He, perhaps, is the only pereoii who can perform a certain duty, and when, as is often the case, ib is a question of life and deabh, ib is almosb impossible to refuse. Many people can never force themselves to do more than a certain amount of mental work • they get nervous, and headachy, and then 'ib is all over with them. Forced work, as a rule, tells on a man much more rapidly than purely voluntary work, for in bhe former case ib is usually associated with anxiety. Real overwork gives rise to loss of memory, a general senee of fatigue, and particularly of discomfort aboub tho head, poorness of appebite, lowness of spiribs, and other similar symptoms. It is worry that injures moro than real work - care kiled the cab. Some people ara co happily constituted that they never worry much about anythiag, whilst other's are in a fever of anxiety on every trivial occasion.-From 'The Family Phyeician ' tor January.