(From to be -weary). Fatigue, weariness.

We are so constituted by nature, that all our exertions must be succeeded by a suitable and proportionate relaxation. We are not calculated for a constant activity; and weariness, without its due share of rest, exhausts the constitution, and shortens life. In our muscular exertions, we soon find inability succeed ex-traordinary action; in our mental, languor and a wan! of comprehension, after a time, come on: and though from habit we gain a power over mind and body, so that the employment of each may be continued for a longer than the usual period, yet we at last yield to weariness, and a sleep so deep as even to resemble death ensues.

Our activity and fatigue must be equally referred to different and opposite states of the nervous power, which we have styled its mobility and torpor. By what means it is exhausted or recruited we know not, but the fact is sufficient for our purpose. Independent of this change, the muscular structure seems to receive some organic injury; since, after great bodily fatigue, rest, though so necessary, is prevented by an obtuse, aching pain. For the effect on the nervous power we know no remedy but sleep; yet coffee and strong tea will often enable us to continue our labours with little present inconvenience. Vinous spirits will sometimes have a similar, but often an opposite effect. Varying the mental action, we have remarked, will prevent weariness. Is, according to the system of Dr. Gall, one portion of the brain only employed in a given occupation; or is a less degree of labour a relief after a greater, as the horse, after a race, is recruited more by walking slowly than by rest? More acute physiologists must decide; but that the fact is true our own experience has taught us. Indeed, there is no more effectual remedy for extraordinary mental fatigue, than what employs the attention without any great exertion of mind. One reason of this seems to be,that intellectual labour leaves a degree of irritability which will not admit of sleep.

Bodily fatigue does not produce such an irritable state; yet the achingpain, which prevents sleep,requires some remedy. The warm bath is well adapted to relieve this extraordinary tension of the muscular fibres; and opium has a similar effect. Fatigue in a great degree conquers, however, every painful feeling. In the American war, a pilot, in carrying a frigate up Hudson's river, had been, for two or three days and nights, at the helm. They then arrived at a fort, mounting fourteen guns, which it was necessary to silence; the pilot, no longer wanted, sunk on the deck, and slept, during the whole cannonade, with the most perfect tranquillity.