than at the present time. Before the days of railroads, the animals used to come on foot by short stages, sometimes as much as a hundred leagues, before reaching the slaughter house. It was said that the fatigue of the journey made the meat more tender, and gave to it a taste of "hazel nut." Similarly, in South Italy, it is usual, before killing the oxen, which run almost wild, and the flesh of which is tough and waxy, to chase them for some time on horseback, making them gallop as fast as possible. Their flesh acquires, it is said, after these mad gallops, a more savoury taste.

These facts are not in contradiction to those given above. They all alike show that fatigue causes an accumulation within the muscles of new products, the presence of which profoundly changes the qualities of the flesh. If these products are not present in too great quantity, and more especially if the animal is eaten soon after it is killed, so as to avoid the putrefactive fermentation which would quickly come on, the fatigued flesh is not offensive. The extractives even cause a kind of seasoning of the meat, and give it a suspicion of a high taste, a flavour agreeable to the palate. Connoisseurs prefer this savour to that of ordinary meat, just as they like to eat their game high.

It is always through overwork that we can explain the peculiar taste of the flesh of animals which have suffered before death. A butcher near Limoges had the reputation of selling much better pork than others in the district. The brute never killed the animals without torturing them. He pierced their eyes and bled them slowly to death with small stabs. In certain districts in the South of France, geese are only killed after being plucked alive, that their flesh may be made more tender by suffering.

These abominable practices deserve nothing but censure from humane persons, but we must recognize, from the scientific stand-point, that the idea under which they are performed is not without foundation. The flesh of an animal which has suffered extreme pain may have a peculiar flavour like that of an overworked

animal, for the pain induces overwork. The unfortunate animal which is being tortured, exhausts itself in desperate efforts to escape the pain, and expends in a few minutes as much nervous energy as it would in a very long period of muscular exercise.

It has long been noticed that animals which have undergone vivisection, for the sake of physiological research, and which only die after suffering for some time, and striving in vain to escape from the constant pain, have after death all the appearances of overworked animals; hair bristling, bathed in sweat, rapid cadaveric rigidity, and flesh subject to early putrefaction.

Here are phenomena which are at first sight very distinct, and which we should not perhaps have expected to find in the same group. They have, as we hope we have shown, a common bond, the formation within the organism of certain products of dissimilation which result from the performance of an excessive quantity of muscular work. These products are found alike in the body of the man muscularly overworked, and in that of the animal which for a long time has striven against pain, for in both cases there is the same excess of fatigue.

Chronic overwork is due, like sub-acute overwork, to the impregnation of the system with the waste-products of work; but the course is not so rapid, and the termination usually less fatal, because the dose of the poisonous substances is less considerable, the exercise producing them being less violent.

This condition is observed in persons whose bodies are subjected to work too long sustained, or to fatigue too often repeated, and not followed by sufficiently long periods of repose.

Let us suppose that a man performs a fatiguing work which does not absolutely pass beyond the measure of his powers. The work is borne, and produces in his system the ordinary disturbances of consecutive fatigue and of stiffness. If he performs the same work on the

following day, the waste-products of the day before have not been all eliminated when other waste-products are formed and add to the last, increasing the dose.

Let us suppose that on the following days the work is again repeated; the quantity of injurious substances accumulated in the blood will increase more and more, and will reach after a time a proportion great enough to have serious consequences. Then the fatigue will assume the character of an illness, and the condition of overwork will be established.

The condition of chronic overwork terminates in diseases of long duration, or at least ill-defined morbid states which do not, strictly speaking, constitute diseases, but which cause a profound change in the organism, which makes it liable to the most serious consequences from slight disturbances of health accidentally produced. The organism infected by the products of dissimilation becomes an admirable field for the hatching of the most pernicious germs.

The more or less lasting disturbances of health which are a consequence of excessive work will be studied in the following chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.

OVERWORK (continued).

The Disorders of Overwork-Pseudo-Typhoid Fevers-AutoInfection and Auto-Typhisation-Opinion of Professor PeterMicrobes and Leucomaïnes Frequency of Fevers of Overwork-Greater predisposition of Adolescents-Two personal Observations-Abuse of Fencing and too much of the Trapeze -Overwork in the Army-Too Energetic a Colonel-Forced Manœuvres Overwork a cause aggravating Disease - Infective forms assumed by the mildest Disorders in Overworked systems-So-called Sunstroke of Soldiers on the March-The large influence of Overwork in the production of these Disorders-Rarity of Sunstroke in Horse Soldiers; its frequency in Foot-Soldiers-Spares persons habituated to FatigueRarity of Sunstroke in Harvest men.

IT often happens that the medical man is confronted by a continued fever for which he can find no external cause. No contagion, no epidemic to invoke: the case is an isolated one. He is tempted to diagnose typhoid fever, but none of the usual ætiological elements of this fever are discoverable; a careful inquiry shows that there could have been no infection from air, from water, from milk, from a privy: no cause of illness is found in the persons or things surrounding the patient. If then he carefully examines the circumstances which have preceded the illness, he will almost always find that his patient has undergone an abuse of exercise or some excess of work.

There exists, in fact, a fever of overwork which has the closest analogy with typhoid diseases, and amidst the confusion which reigns between the true typhoid fever and the serious accidents of fatigue, it is difficult

very precisely to determine the pathognomonic cha racters belonging to the one and to the other.

The fever of overwork is merely an exaggeration of stiffness. The causes and the processes are the same. These two disorders are due to an auto-infection, to a poisoning of the body by the body; and the infective agents are, in both cases, products of dissimilation due to work; but in simple stiffness, the disorder is checked in time, and it has been possible, thanks to rest, to eliminate the substances which are doing the mischief, whereas in the fever of overwork these substances have been renewed by new work before they have been completely expelled, and have thus accumulated in the blood in excessive quantity.

Overwork does not always lead to a febrile condition of a typhoid character. It often happens that the disorder is limited to a condition of general prostration, to a languor of all the functions. In this case there is no explosion, and the disturbances of the system are checked in the prodromal stage, in the condition when disease is imminent. It is a menace which aborts, because the abuses which have called it forth are remedied in time. The disorder which was smouldering did not burst into flame, because the organism was placed in better hygienic conditions-and the only efficient hygienic condition against overwork, is repose. It is thus that we must explain many morbid conditions known as abortive typhoid fever, in which symptoms of great severity sometimes develop and disappear in a few days.

Overwork is usually quoted among the predisposing causes of typhoid fever; but overwork is much more than a predisposing cause of typhoid fever; it is capable, in absence of all other causes, of producing epidemics of continued fever absolutely resembling typhoid fever.

Sevrael eminent members of the Academy of Medicine, in a most interesting discussion (Comptes rendus, March, 1886), on the subject of the poisons discovered by Gautier as the products of living organisms, have drawn attention to the importance of auto-intoxication in