Moreover,
like the doctor, the lawyer gets his weight upon him slowly, and is
thirty at least before it can be heavy enough to task him severely. The
business man's only limitation is need of money, and few young
mercantile men will hesitate to enter trade on their own account if they
can command capital. With the doctor, as with the lawyer, a long
intellectual education, a slowly-increasing strain, and responsibilities
of gradual growth tend, with his out-door life, to save him from the
form of disease I have been alluding to. This element of open-air life,
I suspect, has a share in protecting men who in many respects lead a
most unhealthy existence. The doctor, who is supposed to get a large
share of exercise, in reality gets very little after he grows too busy
to walk, and has then only the incidental exposure to out-of-door air.
When this is associated with a fair share of physical exertion, it is an
immense safeguard against the ills of anxiety and too much brain-work.
For these reasons I do not doubt that the effects of our great civil
war were far more severely felt by the Secretary of War and President
Lincoln than by Grant or Sherman.
The wearing, incessant cares of overwork, of business anxiety, and the
like, produce directly diseases of the nervous system, and are also the
fertile parents of dyspepsia, consumption, and maladies of the heart.
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