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 makes 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