EFFECTS OF CONSTANT RAILWAY TRAVELLING.
A writer in Cassell’s Magazine remarks:—“We hear individuals now and then talking of the ease with which the season-ticket holder journeys backwards and forwards daily from Brighton. By the young, healthy man, no doubt, the journey is done without fatigue; but, after a certain time of life, the process of being conveyed by express fifty miles night and morning is anything but refreshing. The shaking and jolting of the best constructed carriage is not such as we experience in a coach on an ordinary road; but is made up of an infinite series of slight concussions, which jar the spinal column and keep the muscles of the back and sides in continued action.” Dr. Radcliff, who has witnessed many cases of serious injury to the nervous system from this cause, contributed the following conclusive case some years ago to the pages of the Lancet:—“A hale and stout gentleman, aged sixty-three, came to me complaining
of inability to sleep, numbness in limbs, great depression, and all the symptoms of approaching paralytic seizure. He was very actively engaged in large monetary transactions, which were naturally a source of anxiety. He had a house in town; but, having been advised by the late Doctor Todd to live at Brighton, he had taken a house there, and travelled to and fro daily by the express train. The symptoms of which he complained began to appear about four months after taking up his residence at Brighton, and he had undergone a variety of treatment without benefit, and was just hesitating about trying homæopathy when I saw him. I advised him to give up the journey for a month, and make the experiment of living quietly in town. In a fortnight his rest was perfectly restored, and the other symptoms rapidly disappeared, so that at the end of the month he was as well as ever again. After three months, he was persuaded to join his family at Brighton, and resumed his daily journeys. In a few days his rest became broken and in two months all the old symptoms returned. By giving up the journeys and again residing in town, he was once more perfectly restored; but, it being the end of the season, when the house at Brighton could not readily be disposed of, and yielding to the wishes of his family, he again resumed his journeys. In a month’s time he was rendered so seriously unwell that he hesitated no longer in taking up his permanent abode in town; and since that time—now more than two years ago—he has enjoyed perfect health.”