1875.] Longevity of Brain-Workers. 437 
not only survived, but grew stout amid exposures that pros: 
trated by thousands the lumbermen of Maine, and the sons 
of the plough and the anvil. Inthe conflict with fevers and 
inflammations, strength is often weakness, and weakness 
becomes strength—we are saved through debility. Still 
further, my studies have shown that, of distin¢tively nervous 
diseases, those which have the worst pathology and are the 
most hopeless, such as locomotor ataxia, progressive muscu- 
lar atrophy, apoplexy with hemiplegia, and so on, are more 
common and more severe, and more fatal among the com- 
paratively strong and tough than among the most delicate 
and finely organised.* Cancer, even, goes hardest with the 
hardy, and is most relievable in the nervous. 
5. Brain-workers can adapt their labour to their moods and 
hours and periods of greatest capacity for labour better than 
muscle-workers. In nearly all intellectual employments there 
is large liberty; literary and professional men especially 
are so far masters of their time that they can select the hours 
and days for their most exacting and important work; and 
when from any cause indisposed to hard thinking, can rest 
and recreate, or limit themselves to mechanical details. 
Thus, there is less of the dreadful in their lives; they work 
when work is easy, when the desire and the power are in 
harmony; and, unlike their less fortunate brother in the 
mill or shop, or diggings, need not waste their force in 
urging themselves to work. Forced labour, against the grain 
of one’s nature, is always as expensive as it is unsatisfactory ; 
it tells on the health and on life. Even coarser natures have 
their moods, and the choicest spirits are governed by them ; 
and they who worship their moods do most wisely, and 
those who are able to do soare the fortunate ones of the 
earth. 
Again, brain-workers do their best work between the ages 
of twenty-five and forty-five; before that period they are 
preparing to work ; after that period, work, however exten- 
Sive it may be, becomes largely a matter of routine. 
Lawyers and physicians do much of their practice after 
forty; but to practice is easy, to learn is hard—and the 
learning is done before forty or forty-five. In all direétions, 
the French motto holds true, ‘‘ It is the first step that 
costs.” Successful merchants lay the foundations of fortune 
in youth and middle life, to accumulate, and recreate, and 
take one’s ease in old age; thus they make the most when 
* In my paper on “Spinal Congestion and Locomotor Ataxia,” in the 
“‘ Philadelphia Medical Times”’ for January 24 and 31, 1874, I have discussed 
this point in some detail. 
