ure.]

So much has been written on this subject by myself and others, that I
should hesitate to treat it anew from a mere didactic point of view.
But, perhaps, if I can bring home to the sufferer some more
individualized advice, if I can speak here in a friendly and familiar
way, I may be of more service than if I were to repeat, even in the
fullest manner, all that is to be said or has been said of nervousness
from a scientific point of view.

The two questions referred to above are these: The woman who consults
you says, "I am nervous. I did not use to be. What can I do to overcome
it?" Once well again, she asks you,--and the query is common enough from
the thoughtful,--"What can I do to keep my girls from being nervous?"

Observe, now, that this woman has other distresses, in the way of aches
and feebleness. The prominent thing in her mind, nervousness, is but one
of the symptomatic results of her condition. She feels that to be the
greatest evil, and that it is which she puts forward. What does she
mean by nervousness, and what does it do with her which makes it so
unpleasant? Remark also that this is not one of the feebler sisters who
accept this ill as a natural result, and who condone for themselves the
moral and social consequences as things over which they have little or
no reasonable control. The person who asks this fertile question has
once been well, and resents as unnatural the weaknesses and incapacities
which now she feels. She wants to be helped, and will help you to help
her. You have an active ally, not a passive fool who, too, desires to be
made well, but can give you no potent aid. There are many kinds of fool,
from the mindless fool to the fiend-fool, but for the most entire
capacity to make a household wretched there is no more complete human
receipt than a silly woman who is to a high degree nervous and feeble,
and who craves pity and likes power. But to go back to the more helpful
case. If you are wise, you ask what she means by nervousness. You soon
learn that she suffers in one of two, or probably in both of two, ways.
The parentage is always mental in a large sense, the results either
mental or physical or both. She has become doubtful and fearful, where
formerly she was ready-minded and courageous. Once decisive, she is now
indecisive. When well, unemotional, she is now too readily disturbed by
a sad tale or a startling newspaper-paragraph. A telegram alarms her;
even an unopened letter ma