THE HEALTH OF DOCTORS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 83, 22 May 1908, Page 5

THE HEALTH OF DOCTORS.

The philosopher's demand that the physician should heal himself before prescribing for other people seems to be warranted by modern conditions. At first blush we should expect doctors to be healthy people, living long lives in the land, but the estimate has to be revised when we reflect what manner of life a doctor really lives. The " British Medical Journal " tells us, indeed, that medical men are rather more subject to illness than are their fellow men, and their expectancy of is not high. Tables prepared by statisticians in various countries give doctors an average life as low as fifty-seven years. "An explanation of this," says the " Journal," "is readily found in the anxieties caused by responsibilities which must weigh heavy on every man of right feeling; in the amount and trying nature of the work the doctor has to do; in irregularity in meals and broken sleep ; in exposure to weather and to infection; and, last but not least, in the scanty remuneration which his labour too often brings him. The combined influence of all these causes is sufficient to undermine the strongest constitution long before a man has reached the limit of three score and ten." Medical men as a | class are especially liable to certain diseases. They are abroad in all weathers, and they must often labour under most unhealthy conditions among highly infectious diseases. But setting these troubles on one side, there remain many diseases directly contracted through overwork and worry. Angina pectoris has been called the " doctor's disease." Neurasthenia can be included ih the same category, and severe forms of neurosis are common amongst men whose profession compels them to live at the highest mental and physical tension. The expenditure of brain and nerve force is excessive, and it is not be wondered at thai; doctors, familiar with the inimediaie effects of sedatives, should frequently use narcotics. It is reolly the mental and bodily strain that shortens the medical man's life. The "Journal" suggests that doctors should deliberately " go slow " when they reach the age of fifty, but not many of them will be found following this counsel of perfection.