Then they experimented on continuity and discontinuity of work—whether a person could produce as much or more in five continuous hours as in two batches of two and a half hours with rest in between. They found that the shorter periods did distinctly better.
Output, then, was the first rough, but still serviceable, test that they used in relation to fatigue.
(b) Next they recorded the general look and feeling of the men as the foreman and other interested people could size it up—the look of listlessness, of boredness, of fatigue in the working-man when they varied the hours and continuity of work in the ways that I have spoken of.
(c) Next they took the amount of illness, of time off, away from work, as a measure of fatigue, and it was very definitely shown that with a diminished number of hours the number of sicknesses of all kinds, such as colds, were diminished, illustrating the point that I made a moment ago,—that accumulated fatigue diminishes our resistance to infection.
(d) Finally, they made some physiological tests of powers of sight, quickness of answer, etc., after fatigue, and showed that a man was less keen in his senses, less capable of accurate response, after a certain number of hours' work than before, and that fatigue could to a certain extent be measured in that way.
All these tests of fatigue can be applied in our lives and in the lives of people we are trying to help in social work. We have to take account of the number of hours, the possible breaks, intervals, that can be made in otherwise continuous labor. Many people can get on very well if they break the day into manageable fragments. We must also take account of the effect of fatigue in producing infectious disease, of the general look of the person, and of such little physiological lapses as I have spoken of, weakened attention, the capacity for forgetting names, and mental numbness or the sense that things are unreal.
In dispensary work, when we try to give up the use of particular medicines which are useless (as contrasted with the medicines that are useful), one of the chief things to put in their place is the study of fatigue and of the methods for resting our patients. We cannot make the social work of a medical-social clinic successful unless, whenever we take away something which we know to be a fraud and an untruth, we put something else in its place. It is for that reason that I have devoted so much space to the subject of fatigue and rest.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] See Health of Munition Workers Committee. Final Report, Industrial Health and Efficiency. (London, 1918.)