Medicine: Take It Easy

"Look at one of your industrious fellows for a moment, I beseech you," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in An Apology for Idlers. "He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and receives a large measure of nervous derangement in return." Many a reader of R.L.S. was reminded of his appraisal last week by a more detached description of industrious, unhappy modern man, given by British Surgeon Sir Heneage Ogilvie in the British Medical Journal.

Present-day Western civilization, says Sir Heneage, has made it hard to make proper use of the mind. Man was better...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!