The Harveian lecture on industrial fatigue : delivered before the Harveian Society of London on April 23rd, 1925 / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946.
Date:
1925?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Harveian lecture on industrial fatigue : delivered before the Harveian Society of London on April 23rd, 1925 / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of ergographic records daily taken by the late Dr. liivers, who one day felt so tired from an exceptionally arduous day’s mental work that he was sorely tempted not to tire himself further with the taking of the usual evening’s ergograph tracing. But, resisting the temptation, he obtained one of the best records of muscular work throughout the whole series of his experiments. We have also to remember that the conditions under which the industrial worker carries out his daily work are very different from those under which an ergographic record is taken. The worker does not confine himself to the use of a single muscle. By varying his posture, as he tires, he often brings other muscles into play to carry out the same operations as heretofore. He does not work his hardest at each muscular contraction, as the ergograph demands of its subject. More or less unconsciously he adapts his expenditure of work to the length of his unbroken working spell or working day. The fatigue which such a worker suffers is not merely or principally a fatigue of effort ; it is also largely a fatigue of skill. There is no industrial work that is, strictly speaking, unskilled. For there is no occupation in industry in which there are not good and bad methods of carrying it out. The best worker is he who has become expert in the use of the best movements. He acquires his skill by coordinating visual, tactual, or auditory sensations with move¬ ments, by synthesising relatively simpler, previously acquired movements with one another so as to perform more complex movements, and by analysing and suppressing needless movements so as to obtain cleanness and economy of movement just as a clever artist eliminates all but the essentials in a sketch or caricature. Coordination, integration, and inhibi¬ tion are thus the essential nervous processes for securing the minimal expenditure of muscular effort and for yielding the maximal efficiency of output. At the same time, the field of consciousness becomes reduced both in extent and in intensity. The need for widely diffused attention and for continuous judgment becomes replaced by the establishment and maintenance of an appropriate conscious attitude or posture in which the work is carried out to a large extent automatically. When fatigue arises, the dis¬ carded conscious attention to details is revived. Voluntary effort replaces intuitive behaviour, but with much less success. Output is reduced not only in quantity, but also in quality. The expert worker falls to the level of the inexpert worker. Old faults reappear. Finally, disorder replaces order of movement. Moreover, apart from the fatigue of muscular contraction, there is a fatigue of the posture of the