kes her hesitate and conjure up dreams of
disaster. Very likely she is irritable and recognizes the
unreasonableness of her temper. Her daily tasks distress her sorely. She
can no longer sit still and sew or read. Conversation no longer
interests, or it even troubles her. Noises, especially sudden noises,
startle her, and the cries and laughter of children have become
distresses of which she is ashamed, and of which she complains or not,
as her nature is weak or enduring. Perhaps, too, she is so restless as
to want to be in constant motion, but that seems to tire her as it once
did not. Her sense of moral proportion becomes impaired. Trifles grow
large to her; the grasshopper is a burden. With all this, and in a
measure out of all this, come certain bodily disabilities. The telegram
or any cause of emotion sets her to shaking. She cries for no cause; the
least alarm makes her hand shake, and even her writing, if she should
chance to become the subject of observation when at the desk, betrays
her state of tremor. What caused all this trouble? What made her, as
she says, good for nothing? I have, of course, put an extreme case. We
may, as a rule, be pretty sure, as to this condition, that the woman has
had some sudden shock, some severe domestic trial, some long strain, or
that it is the outcome of acute illness or of one of the forms of
chronic disturbance of nutrition which result in what we now call
general neurasthenia or nervous weakness,--a condition which has a most
varied parentage. With the ultimate medical causation of these
disorderly states of body I do not mean to concern myself here, except
to add also that the great physiological revolutions of a woman's life
are often responsible for the physical failures which create
nervousness.
If she is at the worst she becomes a ready victim of hysteria. The
emotions so easily called into activity give rise to tears. Too weak for
wholesome restraint, she yields. The little convulsive act we call
crying brings uncontrollable, or what seems to her to be uncontrollable,
twitching of the face. The jaw and hands get rigid, and she has a
hysterical convulsion, and is on the way to worse perils. The
intelligent despotism of self-control is at an end, and every new attack
upon its normal prerogatives leaves her less and less able to resist.
Let us return to the causes of this sad condition. It is a common
mistake to suppose that the well and strong are not liable to onsets
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