Id. at 518. Other examples in which recovery has been denied include Begin's Case, 354 Mass. 594 (1968) (job experiences may have contributed to mental illness), Spalla's Case, supra (years of hard labor weakened abdominal walls), Reardon'sCase, 275 Mass. 24 (1931) (years of handling tools injured hand), Pimental's Case, 235 Mass. 598 (1920) (years of sitting with poor posture to roll cigars caused nerve disorder), and Maggelet's Case, 228 Mass. 57 (1917) (same). See also Korsun's Case, 354 Mass. 124 (1968) (general concern over job security, not proved related to incidents at work, aggravated heart condition).
That case held that the emotional disturbance sustained by an employee resulting from the stress of his employment over a three and one-half year period was not a personal injury within the meaning of the act. Begin's Case relied on Maggelet's Case, 228 Mass. 57 (1917), Reardon's Case, 275 Mass. 24 (1931), and Pimental's Case, 235 Mass. 598 (1920), which have come to stand for the doctrine of wear and tear. Under that doctrine the "gradual breaking down or degeneration of tissues caused by long and laborious work is not the result of a personal injury within the meaning of the act." Maggelet's Case, supra at 61.
P. 518. But see G.L.c. 152, § 1 (7A); Perron's Case, 325 Mass. 6. See also Pimental's Case, 235 Mass. 598, 602; Reardon's Case, 275 Mass. 24, 27; Mercier's Case, 315 Mass. 238, 240. We are not disposed to vary the doctrine of those cases which have followed the principles elucidated in Maggelet's Case. Any change in those principles should come through legislative, not judicial, intervention.
This must be borne in mind. In Pimental's Case, 235 Mass. 598; 127 N.E. 424, this court held that neurosis and neuralgia produced by the faulty posture of a cigar maker was not a "personal injury" within the Compensation Act. In the case of In re Maggelet, 228 Mass. 57, 116 N.E. 972, the first paragraph of the syllabus reads:
The important question is whether the employment is a proximate contributing cause of the disability. We think Pimental's Case, 235 Mass. 598, 127 N.W. 424, may be distinguished on its facts from the one before us on this basis. In that case the employee, a cigar maker, had an underlying disorder affecting the spinal nerves, which in the performance of his duties produced a neuralgic pain.
Maggelet's Case, 228 Mass. 57, 60-61. Pimental's Case, 235 Mass. 598, 602. Panagotopulos's Case, 276 Mass. 600, 604.
G.L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 152, § 26. Pimental's Case, 235 Mass. 598. Crowley's Case, 287 Mass. 367. Beaudette's Case, 314 Mass. 728. The most that appears in the testimony and findings concerning the condition of the abdominal walls of the employee since March 29, 1944, is that the muscles of the abdominal walls have become thin and attenuated from years of toil as a laborer in a foundry.
Hurle's Case, 217 Mass. 223. Maggelet's Case, 228 Mass. 57. Pimental's Case, 235 Mass. 598. Sullivan's Case, 265 Mass. 497. Wentworth's Case, 284 Mass. 479. Minns's Case, 286 Mass. 459. Smith's Case, 307 Mass. 516. Beaudette's Case, 314 Mass. 728. That distinction in so far as it related to "infectious or contagious diseases if the nature of the employment is such that the hazard of contracting such diseases by an employee is inherent in the employment" has been eliminated by St. 1941, c. 437, amending G.L. (Ter.
A claim in these words is more naturally construed as pointing toward some specific nerve injury by trauma or as the direct result of physical contact rather than as pointing toward that kind of impairment of bodily health which is properly described as disease. See Hogan v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. 164 Mass. 448, 449; Hurle's Case, 217 Mass. 223; Madden's Case, 222 Mass. 487; Maggelet's Case, 228 Mass. 57, 61, 62; Pimental's Case, 235 Mass. 598, 601, 602; Smith's Case, 307 Mass. 516, and cases cited. But even if a claim of some form of disease of the nerves resulting from personal injury as distinguished from personal injury without disease might sometimes fairly be comprehended within these words, their meaning is not restricted to such a claim, and there is nothing in them to show that such a claim was intended in this instance. There is nothing in the record outside of the written statement of claim to indicate that at the time of the filing of the statement the employee was "claiming to be disabled as a result of an injury by industrial disease" rather than as the result of an injury without industrial disease, if we assume, without deciding, that the nature of the employee's claim "at the time of filing" can ever be determined by evidence outside of the formal written statement of claim required by the act to be filed.
We hold that no such accident or hazard has been shown. Maggelet's Case, 228 Mass. 57. Pimental's Case, 235 Mass. 598. Burns's Case, 266 Mass. 516. Doyle's Case, 269 Mass. 310. Reardon's Case, 275 Mass. 24. Smith's Case, 307 Mass. 516. Belezarian's Case, 307 Mass. 557. The petitioner contends that there is an analogy between the instant case and those arising under the workmen's compensation act where death was caused by an injury to the heart resulting from overexertion or overwork.