Nervous Breakdowns and How to Avoid Them

by Charles David Musgrove

As a rule, however, a continental trip means one of the advertised tours, in which a maximum of travelling and sight-seeing is carried out in a minimum of time. People who are strong enough to undertake such a task do not come under the category of health-seekers.

When the journey, either home or foreign, includes a sea-trip, it is well to take only light food for a day or two previously, if you are subject to mal de mer, and also to take a good aperient the day before starting. These precautions will often serve to avoid the biliousness which so frequently spoils the first few days of the holiday.

Preparations.

In making preparations for a holiday it is necessary to be ready for all sorts of weather. The day may be tropical when we start, and like winter the next day, and it is both uncomfortable and dangerous to have brought nothing but light summer clothing. There is an old superstition that people do not catch cold by the sea. This is a huge mistake, as they are just as liable to do so as at home, often more so in fact, as home comforts are missing. It is a pitiable sight to see numbers of people wandering about a seaside resort on a damp, chilly day, looking cold and miserable, simply because they think it their duty to dress in flannels while they are on a holiday.

That phrase “on a holiday” covers a multitude of sins. People seem to think that they can dispense with all the precautions they would find necessary at home, and that they will escape the consequences of running needless risks because they happen to be at the seaside or in the country.

The result is that many people complain that they feel tired and headachy when they are on a holiday, and that much of their pleasure is spoiled in consequence. They attribute it to the fact of the air being too strong for them, or else that it is the reaction from previous overwork. It is neither one nor the other, but is due to something quite different.

Diet on a holiday.

For one thing, most people eat too much when they are away, a great deal more than they would dare to take at home. Often, too, they indulge in things which they know to disagree with them in an ordinary way. The consequence is that they become dyspeptic, and their livers get out of order. That is why they have headaches and get tired so easily. If they could take less rather than more, and eschew all those things which do not suit them, the value of the holiday would be considerably enhanced. In the case of men, smoking to an excess they would never dream of at home has a similar effect in producing a feeling of lassitude.

Exercise.

The amount of exercise has a pronounced influence on the good of a holiday. People who have been overworked or ill, or have neglected to take regular exercise at home, should be extremely careful as to exertion when on a vacation, particularly during the first few days. A man who had saved up for a long time to have a fortnight among the mountains did so much climbing on the first day that he was knocked up for the remainder of his stay. Many others, without going to extremes such as this, feel languid all the time from the same cause. They try to make up for lost time at home by doing as much as possible in the weeks at their disposal, and think it a crime to miss any opportunity of getting about. They walk more in a day than they do in a week at home, and are surprised to find that instead of feeling braced up they are listless and tired out.