436 Longevity of Brain-Workers. (October, 
marvel not that he dies young, but rather that he lives at 
all.* 
3. Brain-workers live under better sanitary conditions than 
muscle-workers. They have better food and drink, warmer 
clothing, breathe purer air, and are less exposed to fatal acci- 
dent and the poison of disease. None of the occupations 
are ideal; none fulfil all the laws of health; but the muscle- 
working callings are all more or less unhealthy; tradesmen, 
artisans, common labourers, and even farmers (who combine 
muscle with brain-work), all are forced to violate sanitary 
law every hour of their lives; not one out of ten have 
enough good food ; many are driven by passion and hunger 
to excess in the worst forms of alcoholic liquors; for a large 
number sleep is a luxury of which they never have suffi- 
cient for real recuperation; healthful air is but rarely breathed 
by the labouring classes of any large city ; exposure to weather, 
that brings on fatal inflammatory diseases ; accidents that 
cripple or kill—in all these respects, the muscle-worker, ascom- 
pared with the brain-worker, is at stupendous disadvantage. 
4. The nervous temperament, which usually predominates in 
brain-workers, 1s antagonistic to fatal, acute, inflammatory 
disease, and favourable to long life. Comparative statistics 
have shown, that those in whom the nervous temperament 
prevails live longer than those in whom any one of the other 
temperaments prevail, and common observation confirms 
the statement. Nervous people, if not too feeble, may die 
every day. ‘They live, but they do not die; they talk of 
death, and each day expect it, and yet they live. Many of 
the most annoying nervous diseases, especially of the func- 
tional, and some even of the structural varieties, do not 
rapidly destroy life, and are indeed consistent with great 
longevity. I have known a number of men and women who 
were nervous invalids for half a century or more, and died 
at an advanced age. It is one of the compensations of 
nervousness that it protects the system against those febrile 
and inflammatory diseases that are so rapidly fatal to the 
sanguine andthe phlegmatic. The nervous man can expose 
himself to malaria, to cold and dampness, with less danger 
of disease, and with less danger of death if he should contract 
disease, than his tough and hardy brother. This was shown 
in the late war, when delicate, ensanguined youth, followed 
by the fears of friends, went forth to camp and battle, and 
* Those who question the truth of the above picture, are referred to any of 
the recently published essays and treatises on the condition of the peasantry 
of England. Observations show, that in our own country, not only in large 
cities, but in all manufacturing towns, and even in farming districts, the labour- 
ing classes are as badly circumstanced as I have stated. 
