S. Weir Mitchell

“ The best business men are apt to think that their own successful careers represent the lives their children ought to follow, and that the four years of college spoil a lad for business. In reality these years, be they idle or well filled with work, give young men the custom of play, and surround them with an atmosphere of culture which leaves them with bountiful resources for hours of leisure, while they insure to them in these years of growth wholesome, unworried freedom from such business pressure as the successful parent is so apt to put on too youthful shoulders. ”

“ In a somewhat discursive fashion I have dwelt upon the mischief which is pressing to-day upon our girls of every class in life. The doctor knows how often and how earnestly he is called upon to remonstrate against this growing evil. He is, of course, well enough aware that many sturdy girls stand the strain, but he knows also that very many do not, and that the brain, sick with multiplied studies and unwholesome home life, plods on, doing poor work, until somebody wonders what is the matter with that girl ”

“ As I said just now, when we talk of an overtaxed nervous system it is usually the brain we refer to, and not the spine; and the question therefore arises, Why is it that an excess of physical labor is better borne than a like excess of mental labor? The simple answer is, that mental overwork is harder, because as a rule it is closet or counting-room or at least in-door work--sedentary, in a word. The man who is intensely using his brain is not collaterally employing any other organs, and the more intense his application the less locomotive does he become. ”

“ Many men are warned by some sense of want of clearness or ease in their intellectual processes. Others are checked by a feeling of surfeit or disgust, which they obey or not as they are wise or unwise. Here, for example, is in substance the evidence of a very attentive student of his own mental mechanism, whom we have to thank for many charming products of his brain. Like most scholars, he can scarcely say that he ever has a sense of "brain-tire," because cold hands and feet and a certain restlessness of the muscular system drive him to take exercise. ”

“ I am very far from conceding that the vehement energy with which we do our work is due altogether to greed. We probably idle less and play less than any other race, and the absence of national habits of sport, especially in the West, leaves the man of business with no inducement to abandon that unceasing labor in which at last he finds his sole pleasure. He does not ride, or shoot, or fish, or play any game but euchre. Business absorbs him utterly, and at last he finds neither time nor desire for books. ”

“ I am disposed to think that the variety of work done by lawyers, their long summer holiday, their more general cultivation, their usual tastes for literary or other objects out of their business walks, may, to some extent, save them, as well as the fact that they can rarely be subject to the sudden and fearful responsibilities of business men. Moreover, like the doctor, the lawyer gets his weight upon him slowly, and is thirty at least before it can be heavy enough to task him severely. ”

“ The strain in all work comes chiefly from lack of qualification by training or nature for the work in hand,--tear in place of wear. The schools can restore the ideal of quiet work. They have an immense advantage in regularity, discipline, time. This vast system gives an opportunity, such as no private schools offer, for ascertaining the average work which is healthful for growing girls. It is quite possible to ascertain, whether by women medical officers appointed to this end, or by the teachers themselves, the physical capacity of each girl, and to place her where this will not be exceeded. ”

“ If the strictures I have to make applied as fully throughout the land--to Oregon as to New England, to the farmer as to the business man, to the women of the artisan class as to those socially above them--then indeed I should cry, God help us and those that are to come after us! ”

“ For obvious reasons, I do not name my witnesses, who are numerous; but, although they vary somewhat in the proportion of the effects which they ascribe to climate and to such domestic peculiarities as the overheating of our houses, they are at one as regards the simple fact that, for some reason, mental work is more exhausting here than in Europe; while, as a rule, such Americans as have worked abroad are well aware that in France and in England intellectual labor is less trying than it is with us. ”

“ Let branches in household economy be connected with all the general as distinguished from normal-school grades, and we not only relieve the girl immediately of the strain of working with insufficient food, and of acquiring skill in household duties in addition to the school curriculum, we not only simplify and harmonize her work, but we send out in every case a woman prepared to carry this new influence into all her future life, even if a large number of these women should eventually pursue special or higher technical branches ”

“ Not much unlike the boy in childhood, there comes a time when in the rapid evolution of puberty the girl becomes for a while more than the equal of the lad, and, owing to her conscientiousness, his moral superior, but at this era of her life she is weighted by periodical disabilities which become needlessly hard to consider in a school meant to be both home and school for both sexes. Finally, there comes a time when the matured man certainly surpasses the woman in persistent energy and capacity for unbroken brain-work. ”

“ It is apt, like a well-bred creature, to get into a sort of exalted state under the stimulus of need, so that its owner feels amazed at the ease of its processes and at the sense of wide-awakefulness and power that accompanies them. It is only after very long misuse that the brain begins to have means of saying, "I have done enough;" and at this stage the warning comes too often in the shape of some one of the many symptoms which indicate that the organ is already talking with the tongue of disease. ”

“ Even to read is sometimes almost impossible; and there still remains the perilous fact that under enough of moral stimulus the man may be able, for a few hours, to plunge into business cares, without such pain as completely to incapacitate him for immediate activity. Night, however, never fails to bring the punishment; and at last the slightest prolonged exertion of mind becomes impossible. In the worst cases the scalp itself grows sore, and a sudden jar hurts the brain, or seems to do so, while the mere act of stepping from a curb-stone produces positive pain. ”

“ I am perfectly confident that I shall be told here that girls ought to be able to study hard between fourteen and eighteen years without injury, if boys can do it. Practically, however, the boys of to-day are getting their toughest education later and later in life, while girls leave school at the same age as they did thirty years ago. It used to be common for boys to enter college at fourteen: at present, eighteen is a usual age of admission at Harvard or Yale. Now, let any one compare the scale of studies for both sexes employed half a century ago with that of to-day. ”

“ A share in the production of this evil may perhaps be due to certain general habits of life which fall with equal weight of mischief upon many classes of busy men, as I shall presently point out. Still, these will not altogether account for the fact, nor is it to my mind explained by any of the more obvious faults in our climate, nor yet by our habits of life, such as furnace-warmed houses, hasty meals, bad cooking, or neglect of exercise. Let a man live as he may, I believe he will still discover that mental labor is with us more exhausting than we could wish it to be. ”

“ I am prepared to agree with a recent London School Board Report so far as to say that in some of our graded schools there are pupils who are overworked. The number in any school is, I believe, small who are stimulated beyond their strength, and the schools are few in which such extreme stimulation is encouraged. When, with a large class of children whose minds are naturally quick and active, the teacher resorts to the daily marking of recitations, to the giving of extra credits for extra work done, to ranking, and to holding up the danger of non-promotion before the pupils ”

“ As to exercise in the fresh air, I need say little, except that if the exercise can be made to have a distinct object, not in the way of business, so much the better. Nor should I need to add that we may relieve the thinking and worrying mechanisms by light reading and other amusements, or enforce the lesson that no hard work should be attempted during digestion. The wise doctor may haply smile at the commonplace of such directions, but woe be to the man who neglects them! ”

“ I say this notwithstanding the fact that this school is, in my opinion, one of the most potent agencies for good in the community."
"Overpressure in school appears to me to be a disease of the body politic from which this member suffers; but it also seems to me that this vast school system is the most powerful agency for the correction of the evil. In the case of girls, the first principle to be recognized is that the education of women is a problem by itself; that, in all its lower grades at all events, it is not to be laid down exactly upon the lines of education for boys. ”

“ If any reader doubts my statement as to the physical failure of our city-bred women to fulfil all the natural functions of mothers, let him contrast the power of the recently imported Irish or Germans to nurse their babies a full term or longer, with that of the native women even of our mechanic classes. It is difficult to get at full statistics as to those a higher social degree, but I suspect that not over one-half are competent to nurse their children a full year without themselves suffering gravely. ”

“ As I have spoken of climate in the broad sense as accountable for some peculiarities of the health of our women, so also would I admit it as one of the chief reasons why work among men results so frequently in tear as well as wear. I believe that something in our country makes intellectual work of all kinds harder to do than it is in Europe; and since we do it with a terrible energy, the result shows in wear very soon, and almost always in the way of tear also. ”

“ While parents are clearly to blame for endangering health in the ways indicated, it may be a question whether the work required to be done in school should not be regulated accordingly; whether, in designating the studies to be taken, and in assigning lessons, there should not be taken into consideration all the circumstances of the pupil's life which can be conveniently ascertained, even though those circumstances are most unfavorable to school work and are brought about mainly through the ignorance or folly of parents. ”

“ In private schools for girls of what I may call the leisure class of society overwork is of course much more rare than in our normal schools for girls, but the precocious claims of social life and the indifference of parents as to hours and systematic living needlessly add to the ever-present difficulties of the school-teacher, whose control ceases when the pupil passes out of her house. ”

“ I have alluded above to a class of deaths included in my tables, but containing, no doubt, instances of mortality due to other causes than disease of the nerve-organs. Thus many which are stated to have been owing to convulsions ought to be placed to the credit of tubercular disease of the brain or to heart maladies; but even in the practice of medicine the distinction as to cause cannot always be made; and as a large proportion of this loss of life is really owing to brain affections, I have thought best to include the whole class in my statement. ”