HEARTS OVERWOKEED.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3122, 19 February 1879, Page 3

HEARTS OVERWOKEED.

No organ in the body is so liable to be overworked as the heart. When every other part of the body sleeps it keeps on its perpetual motion. Every increased effort or action demands from the heart more force. A man runs to catch a train and his heart beats audibly. He drinks wine, and the blood rushes through its reservoir faster than ever was intended by nature. His pulse rises after each course at dinner. A telegram arrives and his heart knocks at his side. And when any one of these "excitements" is over he is conscious of a corresponding depression —a sinking or emptiness as it is called. The healthy action of all the members of our frame depends upon the supply of blood received from the central fountain. When the heart's action is arrested the stomach, which requires * large supply of blond, becomes enfeebled. 'i)te brain, also ■waiting for the blood, is inactive. The heart is a veiy willing lnenibev, but if it be made to fetch and carry incessantly— if it be " put upon," as the unselfish member of a family often is, it undergoes a disorganisation which is equivalent to its rupture. And this disorganisation begins too often nowadays in the hearts of very young children. Parents know that if their sons are to succeed at any of those competitive examinations which have now become so exigent, high pressure is employed. Hence young persons ar^^imulated to Overwork by rewards andT punishments. The sight of clever boy who is being trained for competition is truly a sad one. The- precocious coacbed-up childreu are never well. Their mental excitemeut keeps up a flush, which, like the excitement caused by strong drink in older children, looks like health, but has no relation to it; in a word, the intemperance of education is overstraining and breaking their young hearts. If in the schoolroom some hearts are broken from mental strain, in the playground and in the .gymnasium others succumb to physical strain. "It is no object of mine," says Dr Richardson " to underrate the advantages of physical exercise for the young, but I can scarcely overrate the danger of those fierce competitive exercises which the world in general seems determined to applaud. I had the opportunity once in my life of living near a rower. He was a patient of mine, suffering from the very form of heart disease of which I am now speaking and he gave me ample means of studying the conditions of many of those whom he trained both for running and rowing. I found occasion, certainly to admire the physique to which his trained men were brought; the strength of muscle they attained; the force of their heart; but the admiration was qualified by the stern fact of the results." But indeed it is not by overwork so much as worry and anxiety that our hearts are disorganised. "Laborious mental exercise is healthy, unless it is made anxious by necessary or nnneocessary difficulties. Regular mental labor is best carried on by introducing into it some variety." Business and professional men wear out their hearts by acquiring habits of- express-train haste, which a little attention to method would render unnecessary.