I have described the extreme case, but it is not exaggerated. Writers, editors, scientific investigators and generally those whose work does not bring them much in contact with others, are likely to thus suffer. Contact with others, even on business matters, seems to have a relaxing effect. Social amenities and personal interests prevent absolute concentration of mind over long periods. In some people even milder degrees of preoccupation with a [{225}] single subject may work harm. Some people are able to stand concentration of mind for many hours a day for years. Others cannot. We have come to recognize that more than eight hours a day is a mistake, but there are many people who cannot work more than a four-hour day. The sooner this is recognized and diversion of mind provided, the better for them. This is one of the most important benefits that psychotherapy can confer on many of the so-called neurasthenics.
Possibility of Diversion of Attention from Ills.—The necessity for diversion of attention from one's ills is best realized by considering what happens in the opposite direction. Headache, toothache, and many other uncomfortable feelings, especially discomfort associated with abdominal disturbances, can be entirely banished from the mind by pleasant association with friends, by an interesting play, by a game of cards, or, indeed, by almost anything that takes up the attention completely. It is well understood that the severer forms of pains can not be thus banished, but discomforts that make life miserable for the patient may be entirely relieved for the time being. If this power of mind to divert attention from the ills of the body means so much, it is not hard to understand that if this mental influence be directed in the other way, that is, to emphasize the ailment by attention to it, it will not be long before symptoms become quite unbearable.
Hobbies.—A hobby is the physical salvation for a man who wants to work hard, yet not become so absorbed in his work that it becomes an obsession. Unfortunately, it is not possible to create a hobby for a man or a woman in a short time. It must be a growth for many years until it has become a portion of one's life. It must, as far as possible, be something to which one turns with as much interest as to one's regular occupation, so that the time taken from it, even for the necessary vocation of life, is more or less resented. If a man has two occupations that are intensely interesting, then he gets the best possible rest. Otherwise it will be necessary in many cases for the physician to help him in the choice of another interest in life. It is not enough that there should be a vacation once a year, or a conventional day off on Sunday. There must be much more than this, deliberately planned and faithfully carried out.
Gladstone.—Men with hobbies have done some of the best of the world's work; busy for many hours every day, they have yet lived to be eighty and even ninety years of age, and have been industrious to the end. A typical example in our generation was Gladstone, the great English statesman. Few men had their minds occupied with more serious problems than he for nearly forty years of a busy existence. In spite of this, he found time to make a study of Greek literature and of ecclesiastical writers; He acquired even more authority perhaps in these subjects than in political science, doing the work of several men, yet he lived to be an extremely old man. He welcomed the opportunity to get away from one kind of work in order to devote himself to another, but this occupation of an entirely different set of brain cells gave those that had been previously at work opportunity for complete rest. Very probably, except at times of special crisis or stress of anxiety, his political problems did not disturb his studies of Greek literature, not because he insisted on keeping them away, but because this other interest was so absorbing that it required no special effort to occupy his mind completely with it.
Virchow.—For more than a year I lived close to the great German pathologist, Virchow, and found that his varied interests were probably the secret of his power to devote himself to work for many hours a day, take only a small amount of sleep and yet live healthily and happily for over eighty years. Frequently he did not leave the Prussian legislature until 1 a. m., or even later, and yet he seldom failed to be at his laboratory before 7:30 o'clock in the morning, though it was several miles from his home and took over half an hour to get there. Besides pathology, he was deeply interested in anthropology and in most of the biological sciences, and his favorite hobby was the practical care of the health of the city of Berlin. From the time when Berlin, just after the Franco-Prussian war, began to grow out of the half-million provincial town that it was, into the great world capital that it became, a transformation that took less than twenty years, Virchow had charge of the health of the men engaged on the sewer farms of the city. Berlin, unlike other great capitals, is not situated on a large stream that will carry off its excreta, and consequently a new problem in sewage disposal had to be met. The sewage was spread over fields outside the city and proved, as might be expected, a magnificent fertilizer. The whole cost of sewage disposal was recouped from the sale of the farm products.
Prophecies of dire disaster of many kinds were made when this system was first proposed. It was said that the men engaged on the farms would suffer from all sorts of disease, especially respiratory and intestinal diseases, that the farm products would be insanitary, and the whole plant would be such a disease producer for the city as to become a nuisance. Virchow was put in charge of the sanitary side of the project, and how well he fulfilled his obligations is shown by the statistics. The people who worked on the farms were healthier than the average inhabitants of Berlin, and were especially free from intestinal disease. Every phase of disease that occurred among the workers on the farms, and there were many thousands of them with their families, was reported to Virchow. Every night, the last thing before he went to bed, he looked over this report and if there were any suspicious cases, made arrangements for the prevention of the spread of disease.
This of itself might seem work enough for one man, but it was only a diversion for Virchow, turning his mind away from his other intellectual work completely during certain hours of the day. His visits to the farms, his planning for the prevention of the spread of disease, his deep interest in the reports and the constant improvement of conditions, instead of hampering his other intellectual activity by wasting brain force, probably proved restful by diverting the blood stream away to the cells that occupied themselves with this other and very different problem, and so proved a benefit, not an evil. Perhaps other men might not have had the store of nervous energy to enable them to carry on work in this way, but for those who have, this is the ideal arrangement. There are many others whose names might be mentioned here. John Bigelow and Pope Leo XIII are typical recent examples. Great workers are usually long livers, barring accident, and all of them have had variety of occupation.
Necessity for Diversity of Occupation.—Even for those of lesser intellectual capacity, it is advisable to have, in a lower order of intellectual occupation, two very different things in which there is intense interest. The blasé [{227}] attitude in which the individual finds no interest in anything and nothing worth doing, makes it impossible to secure such relaxation as will give relief from worry. So long as nothing happens to call for special resistive vitality, such people may go on nursing their unhappiness. It is from this class, however, that the suicides come. The mind becomes occupied with the worries that it cannot get away from, sleep is interfered with; the worries become an obsession, and brain exhaustion results. It is usually said that suicides are insane, and to this extent certainly the expression is true. Certain brain cells have so long been occupied with a particular subject, because the mind has no other interest to divert attention and blood supply to other portions, that these cells are overborne and become utterly beyond the control of reason and will.
Intervals in Work.—The old university rule of long ago was that no one should do more than two hours of intellectual work continuously at the same subject. Certain of the monastic orders required scholars and students to take a break from an intellectual occupation for a measured interval at least every two hours. The modern business man, and even the literary man or reporter, would think this preposterous. The rule is, however, founded on good common sense, for it relieves the tension and keeps conditions of strain from inveterating themselves in such a way as to do harm.