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
which cause nervousness. As a rule, they rarely suffer; but we are
neatly ballasted, and some well people are nearer to the chance of being
so overturned than it is pleasant to believe. Thus it is that what for
lack of a better name we call "shock" is at times and in some people
capable of inflicting very lasting evil in the way of nervousness.

We see this illustrated in war in the effects of even slight injuries on
certain people. I have known a trivial wound to make a brave man
suddenly timid and tremulous for months, or to disorder remote organs
and functions in a fashion hard to understand. In the same way, a moral
wound for which we are not prepared may bring about abrupt and prolonged
consequences, from which the most robust health does not always protect
us; and which is in proportion disastrous if the person on whom it falls
is by temperament excitable or nervous. I have over and over seen such