54 BULLETIN OP THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 



upon the athlete whose life is ordered in conformity to the re- 

 quirements of neural hygiene rather than by superiority in mus- 

 cular brawn per se. 



The visible manifestation of cerebral fatigue most in evi- 

 dence in the affairs of daily life is the lack of power to secure 

 delicate and sustained co-ordination of bodily activities. Tasks- 

 demanding exact control and fine adjustment of muscles, as in 

 delicate workmanship for instance, are exceedingly difficult when 

 one is nervously exhausted. The explanation is doubtless found 

 in the fact that different sections in the brain are charged with 

 the control of certain definite motor processes, one section 

 having general oversight of the large, coarse, fundamental move- 

 ments, a, second one governing the secondary and more com- 

 plex movements, while still other sections control the peripheral, 

 the most finely adjusted movements, — those for instance, in- 

 volved in the co-ordinations of the fingers and the articulatory 

 apparatus in speech. 1 This highest level, to employ Hughlings- 

 Jackson's term, 2 may be regarded as the co-ordinating mechan- 

 ism, par excellence, of the nervous system. Now, in cerebral 

 fatigue, as in intoxication or mental disease, this level seems 

 to suffer first because it is the most unstable ; and nervous deple- 

 tion will then manifest itself at the outset in inability to deli- 

 cately correlate these most intricate movements. 



This is at the root of much of what in the common affairs 

 of life we call "carelessness," one of those terms which con- 

 veniently covers up a lack of critical analysis, grouping, and 

 interpretation of phenomena. An individual who in a condi- 

 tion of fatigue is performing a task requiring exact adjustments 

 of any kind, as fine writing for instance, will be unable to 

 co-ordinate his actions so perfectly as when nervously refreshed, 

 and this will result in blundering, coarse work. Warner 5 



1 For a fine treatment of this subject see the Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. VI, 

 No. 1, pp. 5-65. The matter is brought down to date in this article. See also 

 Mercier, Sanity and Insanity, Chaps. I and II. 



2 See Anderson, in Hack Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, Vol. I» 

 pp. 440 et seq. for a discussion of Hughlings-Jackson's theory, which seems now 

 to be accepted by practically all physicians. 



3 The Study of Children, pp. 52 et seq. 



