Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1883 — What. Doctors See. [ARTICLE]

What. Doctors See.

Medical men see. a great deal of life, and nothing strikes the observant family practitioner more than the number of feeble, sauntering and loitering minds with which he is brought into contact. No inconsiderable proportion of the common and some of the special ailments by which the multitude are affected may be traced to the want of vigor in their way of living. The human organism is a force of physic-o-mental machinery, which can only be successfully worked at a fairly high pressure. It will almost inevitably get out of gear, if the propelling force is allowed to fall below a moderately high standard of pressure or tension, and that degree of tension cannot be maintained without so much interest as will secure that the blind of the worker shall be in his work. It is curious to observe the way in which particular temperaments and types of mental constitution are, so to say, gifted with special affinities, or predelections for particular classes of work. The men who work in hard material are men of iron will, which is equivalent to saying that the men of what is called hard-heaped earnestness find a natural vent for their energy in work that requires and consumes active power. On the other hand, the worker in soft material is commonly either theoretical or dreamy. There is a special type of mental constitution connected w.th almost- every distinct branch of industry, at least with those branches which have existed long enough to exercise a sufficient amount of influence on successive generations of workers. We are all familiar with what are called the racial types of character. It would be well if some attention coijld be bestowed on "the industrial types, both in relation to educational policy and the study of mental and physical habits in health aud disease.— Lancet.