MENTAL OVER-WORK AMONG PUBLIC MEN. 21 



chair unable to arouse either memory or attention. He had fre- 

 quent spells of profound dejiression ; and tinnitus aurium, a sense of 

 weight in the head, disturbed sleep, and partial insomnia were symp- 

 toms that came and went. After this condition had lasted for three or 

 four months his urine was tested, and, to his surprise, A\'as found to 

 contain sugar. 



In this case, as in many, mental irritability was an evidence of 

 impairment of power. Weakening of the inhibitory mechanism of 

 the brain is likely to be one of the first eifects of mental over-work. 

 Perfect inhibition is the sign of perfect mental health. Owing to 

 the sapping of inhibition, the man whose brain has been over- 

 worked or overstrained sometimes shows a tendency to morbid im- 

 pulses and morbid fears. One of my staid but greatly over-worked 

 patients felt himself moved by a strange impulse to shout on the 

 streets, another was impelled to steal umbrellas from a rack, another 

 to hurl his child over a stairway, another to commit suicide. Again, 

 a man who has steadily over-w^orked himself may find himself 

 developing a state of general timidity, and, along with this, a 

 tendency to perform foolish and indiscreet acts. Special morbid 

 fears sometimes ai'ise ; but Beard, I think, makes neurasthenia 

 play too important a role in the causation of these" fears — fears of 

 open spaces and fears of closed sj^aces, of lightning, of disease, of 

 defilement, and the like. These cases usually represent peculiar 

 forms of inherited mental perversion rather than conditions of ner- 

 vous exhaustion from brain work or strain. They are rather emo- 

 tional monomanias, as held by Hammond and Ball. They are 

 more likely to occur in those who never use their mental powers 

 energetically than in the active brain-workers. 



The inability in waking hours to banish some phrase, or thought, 

 or suspicion, that has somehow gained a foothold in the mind, has 

 been experienced by many who have suflfered simply from tem- 

 porary nervous depression. When mental conditions of this kind 

 often recur, and increase in intensity, when associated with other 

 morbid impressions and states, they are warning signs that ought 



