OVER.WORIC OF THE BRAIN.
Blairgowrie, Perthshire, 27th May 1854. Sin—The newspapers lately contained a letter from an eminent authoress complaining of a cruel statement which had been circulated, that she had gone mad on spirit-rapping; and stating that her health had, owing to fatigue, anxiety, and overwork of the brain, been seriously injured, but that she was again convalescent, and about to try the effects of Malvern, with a view to ultimate recovery. Having a deep personal feeling in connexion with this source of illness to the human frame, will you allow me, Sir, through the medium of your co- lumns, to say a few words on the subject ? Such is the general ignorance, in this age of boasted enlightenment, as re-
gards the malady called overwork of the brain, that its symptoms when they first appear are seldom attended to, or indeed acknowledged, on the part of relatives and friends, even after they have made themselves but too glaringly manifest ; and, because the sufferer can walk, and eat, and drink, and (at least partially) sleep, the very existence of the complaint is denied; while the sufferer himself is but too apt to be looked upon, in consequence of the nervous excitement under which he labours, as simply a disturber of the peace and comfort of those around him. The result is, that the patient is without any chance of cure ; and that those who ought to cling to him most closely, and aid him in his attempts at convalescence, flee from him as they would from the plague.
I am aware, Sir, of a case in point. About two years ago, owing to over-
work of the brain, a party lost his health ; since then he has been a sufferer to a deplorable extent. Struck with the strangeness of the symptoms ex- hibited by him, those who ought to have attended him, and to have watched over him with affectionate care, deserted him ; and, during these two years, he has been wandering about from place to place, and from one hotel to
another, literally almost as helpless as a child—utterly unable to devote himself to any settled pursuit, or to do anything but occasionally write an ordinary letter. His disease is aggravated by the want of the society of those who are most dear to him; and whom nothing will persuade, for the reason I have above stated, to give him the benefit of that society, while he is struggling to restore the brain to its former state. The subject of this letter is an unusual one ; but I ask insertion of the let-
ter itself at your hands, in the hope that it may prove of service to many, when in this age political, literary, and other varied overworkers of the men- tal faculties are sufferers, from one of the severest calamities that can affict a human being
Had the first symptoms of the direful malady which carried Scott, and Southey, and Pitt, and Castlereagh, and Moore, and Tytler, and Romilly, and Leman Blanchard, and Wilson, and Robert Hall, and Talfourd, and, in a great measure, Burns, and Byron, and Campbell, and Coleridge, and Words- worth, and Hayden, and a host of others, distinguished in literature, in science, in politics, and in art, to a premature grave, been promptly attended to, might not many of these illustrious men have been yet spared to us ? There is little reason to doubt that they would have been so.
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