STRAIN OF MODERN PROGRESS

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 26 August 1933, Page 14

STRAIN OF MODERN PROGRESS

“/''iXE hesitates to suggest a possibility of a -widespread mental crash, but this may be realised just as much as the‘financial crash, which was the result of high pressure and unnatural methods of doing business,” said Sir lienry Gray, the famous surgeon, in his presidential address to the Royal Em- j pire Society in Montreal. “The innate capacity of. the modern lira in is even more out of control at j present than are the immense forces let loose by its want of foresight and which have brought about the present state of lamentable economic distress. I venture to draw attention to a phase of modern life which one does not hear much about, but which is of vast importance. Is the strain imposed by modern progress—recently so inordinately exaggerated and accelerated — really, proving too much for the human frame? The tissues of the ‘body, in ever increasing numbers, are not standing:

Is It Too Much for Human Frame?

up too well under the complexities and extravagance of life. . . . The brain is composed of the most delicately and highly organised tissues of the body.

“The tissues affected by the many organic diseases are coarse in comparison. It seems absurd to imagine that the slow evolution of the brain capacity to its present marvellous anatomical and physiological structure and r.bility should or could become accelerated in a generation so as to permit the ordinary person to cope successfully with the phenoinenalily increased intensity and speed of modern life in the past 30 years. One hesitates, however, to suggest a possibility of widespread mental crash. In spite of all these ominous and fateful conditions, I have great faith that all will be well, and sooner than is expected —if we all try to use our influence in the right direction and all are prepared to make sacrifices.”