440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



her curse. That insanity itself, as well as mere hysteria, is developed 

 by such a mode of existence, we- fully believe. The mind, although 

 not uneducated, deteriorates for want of either healthy intellectual 

 excitement, the occupation of business, or the necessary duties of a 

 family. Life must have an aim, although to achieve it there ought 

 not to be prolonged worry. 



In the same way there is the lady instanced who eats no breakfast, 

 takes a glass of sherry at eleven o'clock, and drinks tea all the after- 

 noon, and who, " when night arrives, has been ready to engage in any 

 performance to which she may have been invited." Clearly she is the 

 product of a highly-artificial mode of life, found in the midst of modern 

 civilization. She is certainly not suffering from mental strain ; at the 

 same time she is the outcome of the progress from barbarism and the 

 hardy forms of early national life to our present complex social con- 

 dition. We have particularly inquired into cases coming under our 

 own observation in regard to the alleged influence of overwork, and 

 have found it a most difficult thing to distinguish between it and 

 other maleficent agents which, on close observation, were often found 

 to be associated with it. We do not now refer to the circumstances 

 which almost always attach themselves to mental fatigue, as sleep- 

 lessness, but to those which have no necessary relation to them, as 

 vice. Here we have felt bound to attribute the attack to both causes, 

 certainly as much to the latter as the former. In some cases, on the 

 other hand, we could not doubt that long-continued severe mental 

 labor was the efficient cause of derangement. In a large proportion 

 of other cases we satisfied ourselves that overwork meant not only 

 mental strain, but the anxiety and harass which arose out of the work 

 in which a student or literary man was engaged. The overwork 

 connected with business, also largely associated with anxiety, proved 

 a very tangible factor of insanity. Indeed it is always sure to be a 

 more tangible factor of mental disease than overwork from study, 

 because of the much greater liability to its invasion during the busi- 

 ness period of brain-life than the study period. At Bedlam Hospi- 

 tal, Dr. Savage finds that there are many cases in which overwork 

 causes a breakdown, " especially if associated with worry and money 

 troubles." Among the women, the cases are few in number. In one, 

 where there was probably hereditary tendency, an examination, fol- 

 lowed in two days by an attack of insanity, may be regarded as the 

 exciting cause. Monotonous work long continued would seem to 

 exert an unfavorable influence on the mind. Letter-sorting, short- 

 hand writing, and continuous railway-traveling, are instanced. If 

 diversified, hard work is much less likely to prove injurious. During 

 a year and a half twenty men and eight women were admitted whose 

 attacks were attributed to overwork. The employments of architect, 

 surveyor, accountant, schoolmaster, policeman, and boot-maker, were 

 here represented. Seven were clerks, two of whom were law-writers; 



