A DAY'S WORK.
The amount of work some people get through is simply enormous. Few people are harder worked than a London physician in active practice. We know a doctor who seldom gets more than four hours' sleep out of the twenty-four. He says that it is not that he couldn't do with more, but it is as much as he can get. Many busy men are constantly at work of some kind or the other from eight in the morning till past twelve at night. Some, of course, break down, but others can do this year after year, apparently without any detriment to their health. Instances are known of professional men who have not slept for five days together, and who have not been in bed for three weeks at a time. These sound almost like travellers' tales, but they are true, although, of course, they are exceptional cases. It is astonishing what interest and energy will do in enabling a man to dispense with rest. It has been said that the twenty-four hours might be advantageously divided into three equal parts—eight hours for sleep, eight for meals, exercise, recreation, &c., and eight for mental work. Few men really require more than eight hours' sleep, but the majority of us have to do considerably more than eight hours' work in the day. It is not so much that a man wishes for the work, as that it is forced upon him. He, perhaps, is the only person who can perform a certain duty, and when, as is often the case, it is a question of life and death, it is almost impossible to refuse. Many people can never force themselves to do more than a certain amount of mental work; they get nervous and headachy, and then it is all over with them. Forced work, as a rule, tells on a man much more rapidly than purely voluntary work, for in the former case it is usually associated with anxiety. Real overwork gives rise to loss of memory, a general sense of fatigue, and particularly of discomfort about the head, poorness of appetite, lowness of spirits, and other similar symptoms. It is worry that injures more than real work. Some people are so happily constituted that they never worry much about anything, whilst others are in a fever of anxiety on every trivial occasion.—The Family Physician.