Burnout feels like a thoroughly modern concept – one borne from our age of global digital communication and long office hours. But the Victorians also had an idea of burnout, one they termed “overwork”.
The Victorian doctor, C.H.F. Routh, for example, published On Overwork and Premature Mental Decay: Its Treatment, which ran to four editions between 1873 and 1888. Although the language differs, the underlying concerns are similar. Victorian overwork was a new development in their era of empire and industrialisation, with its railways and telegraphs which enabled rapid global communication and an ever-quickening speed of life.
