The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-01-25 00:00:00

DR. RICHARDSON ON HEALTH AND
RECREATION.

In London, on Monday evening, a lecture was
delivered at the London Institution by Dr. B. W.
Richardson F.R.S., on "Health and Disease." He
took his stand on there being no difference other than
one of sentiment between work and recreation, which
latter he held to be a question of sentiment • altogether
both in the young and old. It had always struck him
that in the short and brilliant bloom of Greek history
the reason why such excellence, physical and in-
tellectual, was attained was the circumstance
that from the beginning to the end of the
Greek's career there was no Bitch thing as work or
play, but only life. If by some grand transformation we
could in our day approach this ideal handed down to
us by history, we should, in a generation or two, at-
tain a degree of health which no mere sanitary pro-
visions in the usual sense of the term can ever supply.
Perhaps our climate and other conditions of life ren-
dered a joyousness like that of Greece at its best
unrealisable here. To the drawbacks of our heavy
clothing in winter, and our gross food at all seasons,
is added the unequal struggle fur existence, dooming
millions to a mormtonous round of toil, until the whole
body lends itself to the drudgery like an automaton,
the movements of which the mind fretfully fol-
tows with little hope of any earthly relief. The
most striking exception was the small, but happy
class who find in mental labour of a varied and con-
genial sort that diversity of work which is truly a re-
creation of the healthy and vital powers. Dr. Beard, of
New York, had found that the life-value of 500 men
of the greatest mental activity—poets, philosophers,
men of science, inventors, politicians, musicians,
actors, and orators—to be 64 years. On comparing
this average with that of an equal number belonging
to the rest, of society, he found the latter to be but 50
years. In both instances the meilection.Was nistae from
those who had reached 20 Years of age. • A later calou-
latiou gave for 100 brain-workers 7,0 years of life.
Among the causes for this difference of 14 er 20 years
in favour of judiciously varied brain-work, D'r.
Richardson and others had seem taine i the most in-
fluential to be the recreative character of intelie3tual
labour. Brain-work, Dr. Beard describes as the highest
of all antidotes to worry. Scientists, phy-icians, lawyers,
clergymen, orators, statesmen, literati, and merchants,
when successful, are happy in their work with-
out reference to the reward, and work on in their
callings long after the necessity has ceased. Good
fortune gives good health, Dr. Beard adds, and nearly
all the money in the world is in the lands of brain-
workers, whose life is one long vacation. No dAibt
there might he an over-cultivation of mind which, so
far from being recreative to the health of the body,
would be positively injurious, just. as there was often
a no less mischievous overcultivation of muscular
power. Plato had warned his readers against this in
a passage on which the lecturer commented at some
length. The ideal they sheuld set before them was to
make all England a recreation ground, to make all
life a grand recreation, and to make all life healthier,
happier, and longer.

PRONETic.—" Phairest Pnlora," wrote an amorous
youth, who is smitten with the phonetic craze,
phorever dismiss your phears, and phly with one
whose phervent phlnicy is phixed oil\ you alone.
s
Phrienris phamily, ph,,ther—phorget them, and think
only of the phuture • Phew phellows are so phastidtous
as your Pherdin,nd, pheign not phonaneog if you
pheel it not. Phorego phrolic, and answer phinally,
Phlora.." "Oh, Pherdinand, you phool I" wa phair
Phlora's ourt reply.