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Brain-Work Healthy

About This Item

  • Title: Brain-Work Healthy
  • Date: 5 September 1859
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00812
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 5 September 1859: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylee R. Swinford Kaylen Michaelis Cassandra Jannel Simms Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Brain-Work Healthy." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00812.xml (TEI)
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BRAIN-WORK HEALTHY.—

The Scientific American1 thinks that more die annually from a want of sufficient brain-work than from an excess of it. Good health of body and mind depends on each having its full share of exercise and work, and it would seem from history that we can better afford the body to be in a state of lassitude than allow the intellectual powers to lie dormant. Galileo and Roger Bacon both lived to 78, Buffon died at 81, Goethe and West were 82, Franklin and Herschel lived to 84, and Newton and Voltaire did not finish their labors until 85. The astronomer Halley was 86 at his decease, and Sir Hans Soane was 98. Michel Angelo and Titian, the great masters of art, lived to 96.2

Notes:

1. The Scientific American is an ongoing Science magazine founded by Rufus Porter in 1845. Albert Einstein and Franklin D. Roosevelt were among the various well known figures who contributed to the magazine. [back]

2.  [back]

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