Gold Hill daily news. [volume] (Gold Hill, N.T. [Nev.]) 1863-1882, 1866-06-02
WORKING MEN.

toric, and others, again, as o subject for
philanthropic zeal, speak Of the working
classes as of those alone who are engaged
in manual labor and handicraft employ
ments, in contradistinction to those who
are engaged in commerce, the exercise Of
the learned professions and the ane arts.
In the first division the physical. in the
second the mental powers are chiefly ex.
ercised. But the difference is more ap-
parent than real. The mind acts through
a corporal organ, the brain, which in the
various processes Of thought, invention,
discovery and solutions Of great problems
in science, labors more, Is more tasked
and strained, than are the limbs in agri-
cultural and mechanical labor.
Brain work. when continued, as it
often is, beyond measure, brings on the
worker more numerous and more serious
disorders, ending often in loss Of life itself,
than any muscular work. If we measure
the severity Of the work by the fatigue
which follows, the man who has labored
all day in paving the streets. or in min
ing, does o feel SC entirely done up
as the merchant, banker, or accountant,
who has spent hours over the desk in
planning, devising and calculating, or the
lawyer who has just escaped. from the
pestiferous air of a courtroom, after q
long and arduous mental contest, in which
oil his faculties have been strained to the
utmost. Many a person in humble life,
seeing a physician who rides IN his car
riage when visiting his patients, may say
to himself, What an easy life is that of a
doctor, Little does he know the profess
sional inner life, "the wear and tear" Of
body and mind, Of the man whose posi-.
ton he thinks is so enviable. We will
take q case-and it is moo an extraordinary
one, OF an eminent London physician, DR..
Baillie, who, at the beginning Of the pres
ens century, was the recognized head Of
the profession.
Baillie was not q man Of great physical
powers; and he found exerticn, either Of
body or mind, beyond . certain point,
always i%nconvenient and painful. When
he had become fully engaged in private
practice his labors were very arduous.
He rose at six o'clock, in the morning,
and was occupied until he breskfasted, at
eight o'clock, in answering the letters Of
his correspondents from that time he
was employed in seeing patients until six
or seven o'clock, when he returned home
to dinner. He had to take another round
Of professional visits in the evening, and
seldom retired to rest much sooner than
twelve o'clock. II we deduct two hours
and the allowance was q large one-tor
meals, there are left sixteen hours Of hard
brain. work in the twenty-four. Few men
in the working classes, so called, could or
would 90 through the same mount Of
labor. Baillis was of q nervous and irri.
table temperament; and while others
looked, If not with envy at least with some
sort Of admiration, at his large practice, be
complained Of it as if it was q great hard
ship. and there is no doubt he felt it at
the time to be so. The celebrated John
Hunter, the reformer Of modern surgery,
used to rise at four o'clock to pursue his
observations and dissections IN compare.
tive anatomy. Dupuytren, called the
Napoleon of surgery. began at six o'clock
every morning his round Of the wards Of
the large hospital, the Hotel Dieu, Paris.
going from bed to bed, questioning, ex-
aiming. and prescribing, and sometimes
applying apparatus and performing minor
operations, and also those on the eye. BE
would then descend to the amphi,heatre
and lecture before the assembled students
on the more important cases which they
had seen with him in the wards. The
lecture was followed by his performing
the larger and more serious operations,
such as amputations, lithotomy, etc. He
would then receive and prescribe for the
ward as is now done in our d~ispensaries.
Ten and eleven o'clock would even come
before the great surgeon could leave the
hospital and allow himself to hasten home,
snatch a hurried repast, and begin his
visits to his private patients in the city.
Five o'clock in the afternoon found him
again at the hospital, when he would visit
the patients On whom he had operated in
the morning, or whose situation he be-
lieved to be critical. Were not Baillie
and Dupuytren working men, and very
hard workers toos