THE NECESSITY FOR HOLIDAYS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3355, 4 January 1884, Page 2

THE NECESSITY FOR HOLIDAYS.

That a holiday is a necessity, and not merely a luxury, is a fact which it especially behoves members of our hard working profession to remember in the regulation of their own lives as well as in their dealings with their patients. For the brain-worker, periodical remission of accustomed toil has always been a necessary condition of continued vigour; for him, the heightened tension of modem life has especially accentuated the need for occasional periods devoted to the recreation and reaccumulation of energy. The cogent physiological principles and practical purposes of systematic holidays are generally admitted. All workers if they are to last, must have holidays. For some persons and for some occupations, frequent short holidays are best; with other natures, and in other circumstances, only comparatively long periods of release from routine are of service. Few real workers, if any, can safely continue to deny themselves at least a yearly holiday. Mere rest, that is mere cessation from work, while it is better than unbroken toil, does not recreate the fairly vigorous so thoroughly as does a complete change of activity from accustomed channels. For the strong worker either with brain or muscle,diversion of activity recreates better than rest alone. The whole body feeds,as it works, and grows as it feeds. Best may check expenditure of force, but it is by expending energy that the stores of energy can be replenished. We mostly need holidays because our ordinary daily life tends to sink into a narrow groove of routine exertion, working and wearying some part of our organism disproportionately, so that its powers of work and its faculty of recuperation are alike worn down. In a well-arranged holiday, we do not cease from activity, we only change its channels ; with such change we give a new and saving stimulus to assimilation, and the transmutation of its products into force. As a rule, the hardest workers live longestf but only those live long who sufficiently break their wonted toil oy the recreating variety of well timed and well spent holidays.—“ British Medical Journal.”