So much has been written on this subject by myself and others, that I should hesitate to treat it anew from a mere didactic point of view. But, perhaps, if I can bring home to the sufferer some more individualized advice, if I can speak here in a friendly and familiar way, I may be of more service than if I were to repeat, even in the fullest manner, all that is to be said or has been said of nervousness from a scientific point of view.
The two questions referred to above are these: The woman who consults you says, "I am nervous. I did not use to be. What can I do to overcome it?" Once well again, she asks you,--and the query is common enough from the thoughtful,--"What can I do to keep my girls from being nervous?"
Observe, now, that this woman has other distresses, in the way of aches and feebleness. The prominent thing in her mind, nervousness, is but one of the symptomatic results of her condition. She feels that to be the greatest evil, and that it is which she puts forward. What does she mean by nervousness, and what does it do with her which makes it so unpleasant? Remark also that this is not one of the feebler sisters who accept this ill as a natural result, and who condone for themselves the moral and social consequences as things over which they have little or no reasonable control. The person who asks this fertile question has once been well, and resents as unnatural the weaknesses and incapacities which now she feels. She wants to be helped, and will help you to help her. You have an active ally, not a passive fool who, too, desires to be made well, but can give you no potent aid. There are many kinds of fool, from the mindless fool to the fiend-fool, but for the most entire capacity to make a household wretched there is no more complete human receipt than a silly woman who is to a high degree nervous and feeble, and who craves pity and likes power. But to go back to the more helpful 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 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.