of the lesson we may hope and know few will be called on to apply to an
existence such as hers.

Pain of body, hurt of mind, all the sad gamut from discomfort to
anguish, depend for their influence on her life upon how nature and
training enable the woman to meet them.

To endure without excess of emotion saves her from consequent
nervousness, and from that feebleness of mind and body which craves at
all cost instant relief. It is the spoiled child, untaught to endure,
who becomes the self-pampered woman. Endurance of pain has also its
side-values, and is the handmaid of courage and of a large range of
duties. Tranquil endurance enables the sufferer to seek and to use all
the means of distraction which this woman I have described did use. It
leaves the mind free, as it never can be otherwise in the storm of
unrestraint, to reason on her troubles, and to decide whether or not her
pain justifies the use of drugs, for on her the physician must
measurably rely for this knowledge, and as she is morally strong or weak
the decision will be.

There are those, indeed, who suffer and grow strong; there are those who
suffer and grow weak.

This mystery of pain is still for me the saddest of earth's
disabilities. After all is said that can be said on its values as a
safeguard, an indicator of the locality of disease, after the moralist
has considered it from the disciplinary view, and the theologian cracked
his teeth on this bitter nut, and the evolutionist accounted for its
existence, it comes at last to the doctor to say what shall be done with
it. I wish it came to him alone. Civilized man has ceased to torture,