THE NEED OF HOLIDAYS.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3697, 30 October 1880, Page 1

THE NEED OF HOLIDAYS.

la the course of a very able and in* teresting address lately delivered in the Medico-Psychological Section <at..Cam* bridge, Dr Crichton Browne instanced, among the evidences of increased weaknesa and liability to the neurotic diseases and insanity, the fact that "annual holidays hare become a necessity^ instead of, a luxury." It cannot be denied that, either from habit or necessity, the routine worker —whether " with s what he is pleased to call bis mind," or that lesser combination of the intellectual faculties by which .the routine busines* of life is transacted—has oome to look for a respite from his labours once, a year as one of .Abie ' essentials of existence... In - the • days when 'we were young' thus was > npt the sway in which the annual .holiday WBS regarded. Those who'eould afford it went out of town, but their object 1 was pleasure,.not " relief,'!! still " reoupera* tion," in any serious sense. /Moat men worked harder, though generally,in;* more pleasurable way, during their vacation than throughout the rest of the year. Now the jaded creature of oppressive arid exacting circumstances crawls away to " rest." His plaintive desire is to to get anywhere out of the din and turmoil and " worry,"—that wondrous word-^of the busy world—far, far from " the madding crowd." There is something humiliating iv. all this. It is '.a' sort of human nature we seem to have inherited. We should like to see the question., of causation fully and. impartially discussed, in view of the abundantly evident fact that we have as & nation left off drinking sound-brewed ale and well matured wines, and have taken to imbibing vast quantities

of tea and coffee; weak, watery; and acid wines ; rivers of mineral waters, real and fictitious; and to eating, for food, the Bade dishes and flimsy compounds so common on the Continent. Were our grandfathers wholly wrong when the associated the courage and stature of the British shopkeeper with the roast beef •&d ale of old England P—Lancet.