WEAR AND TEAR, OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. BY S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D., LL.D. HARV., MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF PHILADELPHIA, ETC. _FIFTH EDITION_, THOROUGHLY REVISED. PHILADELPHIA: J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. LONDON: 10 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. PRINTED BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA. PREFACE. The rate of change in this country in education, in dress, and in diet and habits of daily life surprises even the most watchful American observer. It is now but fifteen years since this little book was written as a warning to a restless nation possessed of an energy tempted to its largest uses by unsurpassed opportunities. There is still need to repeat and reinforce my former remonstrance, but I am glad to add that since I first wrote on these subjects they have not only grown into importance as questions of public hygiene, but vast changes for the better have come about in many of our ways of living, and everywhere common sense is beginning to rule in matters of dress, diet, and education. The American of the Eastern States and of the comfortable classes[1] is becoming notably more ruddy and more stout. The alteration in women as to these conditions is most striking, and, if I am not mistaken, in England there is a lessening tendency towards that excess of adipose matter which is still a surprise to the American visiting England for the first time. I should scarcely venture to assert so positively that Americans had obviously taken on flesh within a generation if what I see had not been observed by many others. It would, I think, be interesting to enter at length upon a study of these remarkable changes, but that were scarcely within the scope of this little book. [Footnote 1: Happily, a large class with us.] WEAR AND TEAR. OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. Many years ago[1] I found occasion to set before the readers of _Lippincott's Magazine_ certain thoughts concerning work in America, and its results. Somewhat to my surprise, the article attracted more notice than usually falls to the share of such papers, and since then, from numerous sources, I have had the pleasure to learn that my words of warning have been of good service to many thoughtless sinners against the laws of labor and of rest. I have found, also, that the views then set forth as to the peculiar difficulties of mental and physical work in this country are in strict accordance with the personal experience of foreign scholars who have cast their lots among us; while some of our best teachers have thanked me for stating, from a doctor's stand-point, the evils which their own experience had taught them to see in our present mode of tasking the brains of the younger girls. [Footnote 1: In 1871.]