reason, and still more hard to make the nursing relation understand that
she is of necessity the worst of nurses, and may share the wreck she
helps to make.

These old and happily rare cases of chronic nervous invalids are simply
fatal to loving nurses. I have said, perhaps too often, that invalidism
is for most of us a moral poison. Given a nervous, hysterical, feeble
woman, shut out from the world, and if she does not in time become
irritable, exacting, hungry for sympathy and petty power, she is one of
nature's noblest. A mother or sister gives herself up to caring for her.
She is in the grip of an octopus. Every fine quality of her nature helps
to hurt her, and at last she breaks down utterly and can do no more.
She, too, is become nervous, unhappy, and feeble. Then every one wonders
that nobody had the sense to see what was going on. I can count many
examples of nervousness which have arisen in this fashion. Perhaps my
warning may not be without good results. Over and over I have made like
statements in one or another form, and the increasing experience of
added years only contributes force to my belief that, in still urging
the matter, I am doing a serious duty. I ought to say also that the care
of these invalids is, even to the well-trained and thoughtful nurse, one
of the most severe of moral and physical trials, and that, in the effort
to satisfy the cravings of these sick people, I have seen the best
nurses crumble as it were in health, and at last give up, worn out and
disheartened. A part of the responsibility of such disasters falls on
the physician who forgets that it should be a portion of his duty to
look sharply after the health of too devoted nurses as well as that of
selfish patients.

I have now said all that I need to say of the causes which, directly or
indirectly, evoke the condition we call nervousness. Many of these are