The Victorians called burnout ‘overwork’ – and so they cured it by holidaying in France.

Burnout appears like a very modern concept – born out of our global digital communications and long office hours. But the Victorians also had an idea of ​​burnout, which they described as “overwork.”

The Victorian doctor, CHF Routh, for instance, published On overwork and premature mental decline: its treatmentwhich ran for 4 editions between 1873 and 1888. Although the language is different, the underlying concerns are the identical. Victorian overwork was a brand new development of their era of empire and industrialization, with its railways and telegraph enabling rapid global communication and a faster pace of life.

The Victorians were undoubtedly followers of what the philosopher Thomas Carlyle described. “The Gospel of Work”. But he was also well aware of the health problems that might come from devotion to this recent religion.

In America, neurologist George Baird introduced the concept of Neurastheniaa condition related to increased nerve pressure. But in Britain, overwork was considered altogether more manly – and indeed almost a badge of pride.

As now, with our concepts of executive burnout, overwork was highly related to mental activity and vocational classes. It due to this fact excluded the overburdened working class from consideration. Doctors were a selected cause for concern.

Roth cites the case of Dr. Goldingbird, a successful physician, who advised him to moderate his work. He told him to take six weeks off a yr: “Otherwise you’ll find yourself, at my age, a prosperous practitioner, but a dying old man”. Byrd was still practicing, but died a couple of weeks later on the age of 39.

Travel for health.

For those affected by overwork and other types of illness or disease, the first prescription (for the skilled classes) was to travel to a sanatorium, preferably in Europe.

Published in 1870 by Scottish publisher William Chambers. Winter in Mentonan account of his own unwell health from overwork, following his time as Lord Provost of Edinburgh and his subsequent recovery. He writes in awe of the fantastic thing about the landscape on the French Riviera, its blue skies and charming climate, and asks his contemporaries to reconsider their lives. Many were falling of their graves, “struck in the fevered, and we might almost say, maddened, battle for life. Too long and too diligently have they stuck to their professional pursuits.”

Menton became a favourite retreat for the British to get better from overwork and other types of unwell health. This was largely because of the publication of a series of works by Dr. James Henry Bennett, including Menton and the Riviera as winter climates (1861), and its quite a few editions Winter and spring on the shores of the Mediterranean (1865-75).

The latter produced a guide to health travel, sampling all of the resorts across the Mediterranean coast, but concluding that Menton offered the most effective climate and conditions for recovery.

The reasons for the extraordinary influence of Bennett’s work could be traced to his own recovery narrative, which forms the preface to all his books:

520 years dedicated to a laborious career, and the harassing troubles of a hard-working London physician broke down vital powers. In 1859 I became a victim of consumption, and tried in vain to examine the progress of the disease.

Believing himself to die, Bennett heads for Rivera. But finding himself under the “gentle sky” of Menton, and “freed from the toils and troubles of a former life,” he marveled at the advance in his health. He decided to spend the winter there yearly, and arrange a practice. Menton, in consequence, grew from a small village into a significant health resort, complete with its own English quarter.

The medical climate revolution

Bennett was a number one figure in the event of what became often known as “medical meteorology”. It was believed that many conditions (including consumption, or tuberculosis), could actually be cured, or no less than arrested, by moving to a resort with the proper climate.

Partly this movement was in response to the shrinking smog of business cities. “Chest ailments,” as they were known, inevitably improved in winter amid the pure air and blue skies of the Riviera.

Bennett’s type of therapy was considered almost revolutionary on the time. Invalids were to flee the nice and cozy, close confines of an English sick room and head for the hills, absorbing the sun’s rays and fresh air, feasting their senses on the wonders of nature around them. No medicine is required.

It was also a prescription for the elderly, or infirm. They could also be taken daily to a special, sheltered and sunny spot: “Thus the range of observation is increased without fatigue, the splendid scenery of the district is seen and enjoyed in its various phases, and the mind is refreshed by the change.” It is an inspiring vision of what is feasible in end-of-life care today.

For overworkers, Bennett recommends spending no less than three full winters on the resort. It was a far cry from the short stays at spas within the 18th century, or our own quick “health” breaks.

What he presented was the concept of “legitimate idleness,” where the hard-working skilled could live a “quiet, contemplative life,” basking within the sun “like an ‘illegitimate’ lizard on his wall.”

Queen Victoria brought her son Leopold who was affected by hemophilia. “Lovely and Beautiful Mantone” And writers and artists, from Robert Louis Stevenson and Aubrey Beardsley to Katherine Mansfield, flocked to the resort. He left extraordinary records of the thrill and pains of his time in medical exile.

my very own book, In Search of a Cure: Literary and Medical Cultures of the Health Resort.explores lots of these lives and changing patterns of treatment in Menton, Davos and elsewhere. For more work matters, and other situations, time was of the essence: as an alternative of the hustle and bustle and wasted time of Victorian city life, time was to be prolonged, as invalids rested in a state of “legitimate idleness” amid the healing powers of nature.