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440 her curse. That insanity itself, as well as mere hysteria, is developed by such a mode of existence, we fully believe. The mind, although not uneducated, deteriorates for want of either healthy intellectual excitement, the occupation of business, or the necessary duties of a family. Life must have an aim, although to achieve it there ought not to be prolonged worry.

In the same way there is the lady instanced who eats no breakfast, takes a glass of sherry at eleven o'clock, and drinks tea all the afternoon, and who, "when night arrives, has been ready to engage in any performance to which she may have been invited." Clearly she is the product of a highly-artificial mode of life, found in the midst of modern civilization. She is certainly not suffering from mental strain; at the same time she is the outcome of the progress from barbarism and the hardy forms of early national life to our present complex social condition. We have particularly inquired into cases coming under our own observation in regard to the alleged influence of overwork, and have found it a most difficult thing to distinguish between it and other maleficent agents which, on close observation, were often found to be associated with it. We do not now refer to the circumstances which almost always attach themselves to mental fatigue, as sleeplessness, but to those which have no necessary relation to them, as vice. Here we have felt bound to attribute the attack to both causes, certainly as much to the latter as the former. In some cases, on the other hand, we could not doubt that long-continued severe mental labor was the efficient cause of derangement. In a large proportion of other cases we satisfied ourselves that overwork meant not only mental strain, but the anxiety and harass which arose out of the work in which a student or literary man was engaged. The overwork connected with business, also largely associated with anxiety, proved a very tangible factor of insanity. Indeed it is always sure to be a more tangible factor of mental disease than overwork from study, because of the much greater liability to its invasion during the business period of brain-life than the study period. At Bedlam Hospital, Dr. Savage finds that there are many cases in which overwork causes a breakdown, "especially if associated with worry and money troubles." Among the women, the cases are few in number. In one, where there was probably hereditary tendency, an examination, followed in two days by an attack of insanity, may be regarded as the exciting cause. Monotonous work long continued would seem to exert an unfavorable influence on the mind. Letter-sorting, shorthand writing, and continuous railway-traveling, are instanced. If diversified, hard work is much less likely to prove injurious. During a year and a half twenty men and eight women were admitted whose attacks were attributed to overwork. The employments of architect, surveyor, accountant, schoolmaster, policeman, and boot-maker, were here represented. Seven were clerks, two of whom were law-writers;