, 1888-08-25
"NeRvous" MoDeRn CIVILIZATION.
The Subject as Viewed by a Writer in
Far Cathay-No Rest

Tho Subject as Viewed by a Writer In
Far Cathay-No Rest
1t Is a very significant aspect of mod
,ern civilization which is expressed in the
word nervous" Its original meaning
is possessing nerve; sinewy, strong,
vigorous" One of its d~erivative mean
ings, and the one which we by far most
frequently meet, is ''having the nerves
weak or diseased; subject to, or suffer
ing from undue excitement Of the nerves;
easily excited; weakly" The varied
and complex phraseology by which the
peculiar phases of nervous diseases are
expressed has become by this time ia
miliar in our ears as household words.
There is no doubt that civilization, as
exhibited in its modern form, tends to
undue nervous excitement, and that ner-
vous diseases are relatively more common
h they were a century ago. But
what we have now to say does not con-
Germ those who are specially subject to
nervous diseases, but to the general mass
Of Credentials, who, while not in any
specific condition of i'll health, are yet
continually reminded, in q great variety
of ways, that their nervous systems are
a most conspicuous part of their ryan
ization. We allude, in short, to people
who are nervous and we understand
this term to include all our readers, and,
in general, all the people who live in the
lands from which we have come. To
the Anglo-Saxon race at least it seems a
matter of course that those who live in
an age Of steal and of electricity must
necessarily be in a different condition as
to their nerves from those who lived in
the old, slow days of sailing packets and
of mail coaches.
Ours is an age of extreme activity. 1t
is an age of rush. There is no leisure,
so much as to eat, and the nerves are
kept in a state of constant tension, with
results which are sufficiently well known.
Business men in our time ave an eager,
restless air-at least those who do their
business in occidental lands-as if they
were in ~momentary expectation of n
telcgram-as they often are-the con-
tents of which may affect their destiny
in some fateful way. We betray this
unconscious state of mind in n multitude
of acts. We cannot sit still, but we
must hdget. We finger our pencils
while we are talking, as if we ought, at
this particular instant, to be rapidly in
diting something ere it 2be forever too
late. We rub our hands together, as if
preparing for some serious task which is
about to absorb all u energies. We
twirl u thumbs, we turn our heads
with the swift motion Of the wild ami
NAL which seems to fear that something
dangerous may nave been left unseen.
We have a sense that there is something
which we ought to be doing now, and
into which we shall proceed at once to
plunge as 500 as we shall have dis
patched six other affairs of even more
pressing Importance.
The effect of overworking our nerves
shows itself, not mainly in such affec-
tons as ''fddler's cramp, !" photographers
cramp, " "'writer's cramp, " and the like,
but in a general tension. We do not
sleep as we once did, either as regards
length of time or soundness of rest. We
are awakened by slight causes, and often
by those which are exasperatingly triv-
ial, such as the twitter of a bird in a
tree, q chance ray of light struggling
into our darkened rooms, the motion of
a shutter In the breeze, the sound of a
voice, and, when sleep is once inter
rupted, it is banished. We have taken
our daily life to rest with US, and the re-
suit is that we have no real rest. In an
age when 1t has become a kind Of apho-
rism that a bank never succeeds until it
has q president who takes 1t to bed with
him, 1t is easy to understand that, while
the shareholders reap the advantage, it
is bad for the president.-North China
News.