NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 45, 4 February 1928, Page 11

NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS

HARDEST WORKERS. THE LEAST SUSCEPTIBLE. “In the minds of most of us the words ‘nervous breakdown' have a definite meaning,” writes the Medical Correspondent of the “Times Trade and Engineering Supplement,” in a practical and helpful contribution to that newspaper. “We picture the victim of overwork. or over-strain, reeling under the blows of a world which is too difficult for him, and becoming, perhaps in a few brief months or weeks, a total wreck. “This picture is fanciful. Nervous breakdowns do not occur in that fashion. The hardest workers are the very people who seem to be least liable to suffer from them. “As a general rule, indeed, the victim of a nervous breakdown has been afflicted with ‘nerves’ for years before he finally hauls down his flag. The last catastrophe is merely the most important of a long series of disasters. “This fact deserves the attention of all those who may thing or ‘feel’ that they are likely to suffer from broken nerves. Because here, as elsewhere, a stitch in time saves nine. It is no use waiting for the final crash when by the exercise ot a little precaution that crash can be avoided. “Nervous feelings in the majority of instances are a symptom not of psychical but of physical illhealth. They occur constantly during illnesses of a great many different kinds, and they manifest themselves in a great many different ways. “One of the commonest of such manifestations is bad temper. If a man feels that his temper is frayed he had better make up his mind that he is slightly ill, unless, indeed, there be good cause for the frayed temper. A visit to a doctor at this period may save a visit to a nursing home a few months later. "Indigestion is a fruitful source of nervous breakdowns, but the most fruitful source of all is certainly rheumatism. Rheumatic folk, in fact ,are nearly all nervously unstable. “If this fact were not generally recognised than it is, a great deal of trouble and sorrow would be avoided. Rheumatism may not be curable—probably it is not curable—hut it is most emphatically capable of emelioration. And dryness is a tried ami trustworthy method of ameliorating it. . . . “Wet feet bling on attacks of rheumatism, and attacks of rheumatism bring on ‘nerves.’ A sound nair of goloshes is the best investment it is possible to imagine at this neriod of the year. “The goloshes should be worn onlv when out of doors, and they sho i'd b* worn until the end of

March. It is a significant fact that most nervous breakdowns occur between Christmas and Easter—that is when the ground is at its coldest and usually wettest. “And then there is diet. Give a rheumatic subject two big meat meals daily for six months and he will break down almost as surely as the sun rises. For some reason or other rheumatism unfits the body for the digestion of much meat. What the rheumatic person requires is light, easily digested food, eggs, milk, fish, and so on.”