Wear and tear, or, Hints for the overworked / by S. Weir Mitchell.

  • Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir), 1829-1914
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wear and tear, or, Hints for the overworked / by S. Weir Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    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 talk- ing with the tongue of disease. I do not know how these views will be gen- erally received, but I am sure that the per- sonal experience of many scholars will decide them to be correct; and they serve to make clear why it is that men may not know they are abusing the organ of thought until it is already suffering deeply, and also wherefore the mind may not be as ruthlessly overworked as the legs or arms. Whenever I have closely questioned patients or men of studious habits as to this matter, I have found that most of them, when in health, recognized no such thing as fatigue in mental action, or else I learned that what they took for this was merely that physical