in
a larger number. The use of rest in these people admits of no question.
If we are to give them the means in blood and flesh of carrying on the
work of life, it must be done with the aid of the stomach, and we must
humor that organ until it is able to act in a more healthy manner under
ordinary conditions. It may be wise to add that occasional cases of
nervousness or of nervous disturbance of digestion are seen in which the
patient assimilates food better if permitted to move about directly
after a meal; and I recall one instance of very persistent gastric
catarrh where the uncomfortable symptoms following meals only began to
disappear when as an experiment the patient was ordered to take a quiet
half-hour's stroll after each meal, instead of the rest usually ordered.

I am often asked how I can expect by such a system to rest the organs of
mind. No act of will can force them to be at rest. To this I should
answer that it is not the mere half-automatic intellectuation which is
harmful in men or women subject to states of feebleness or neurasthenia,
and that the systematic vigorous use of mind on distinct problems is
within some form of control. It is thought with the friction of worry
which injures, and unless we can secure an absence of this, it is vain
to hope for help by the method I am describing. The man harassed by
business anxieties, the woman with morbidly-developed or ungoverned
maternal instincts, will only illustrate the causes of failure. Perhaps
in all dubious cases Dr. Playfair's rule is not a bad one, to consider,
and to let the patient consider, this mode of treatment as a hopeful
experiment, which may have to be abandoned, and which is valueless
without the cordial and submissive assistance of the patient.

The muscular system in many of such patients--I mean in ever-weary, thin
and thin-blooded persons--is doing its work with constant difficulty. As
a result, fatigue comes early, is extreme, and lasts long. The demand
for nutritive aid is ahead of the supply, or else the supply is
incompetent as to quality, and before the tissues are rebuilded a new
demand is made, so that the materials of disintegration accumulate, and
do this the more easily because the eliminative organs share in the
general defects. And these are some of the reasons why anaemic people are
always tired; but, besides this, all real sensations are magnified by
women whose nervous systems have become sensitive owing to a life of
at