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your situation in life may be.
I don't care how rich or how poor you are. I don't care how much
trouble you have had, or the nature of it. I want you to know these
words are being written by one who knows more about your sufferings
than you can imagine. I want you to believe this, because it is true. If
you have longed and prayed for death, remember that the one who is
writing these words also has longed and prayed for death. But one thing
you must be sure to remember: while you are waiting and trying to get
well you must have patience.
I recollect one beautiful day in early spring when traveling in Nebraska
I passed a little cemetery. How sweet and restful the place seemed, and
as I looked out over those little white stones I prayed silently that the
great God who made me would not hold me much longer on earth, that
He would soon grant me the rest and peace which I believed was to be
found only in death and the grave. But remember this: In those dark
days never for a moment did I think of taking my own life! These
words may reach some one who has had such a thought. If so, I say to
you that to take one's life is the most cowardly thing a human being can

do. This is the only place where I feel like being severe with you people.
Shame on the man or woman who will not go on to the end fighting
honorably! And now if you have ever given thought to such a thing,
blot it from your mind forever. I can see how these miserable people
might long for death, as I did. But no matter how we may long for
release through death, the God of nature must be the judge of our time
of going.
Now this brings me to what I want to say about such sufferers going
insane. Believe me, they never do! Remember this always. You won't
become insane. You couldn't if you tried! In letter after letter among
the flood of them I have had from all over this country and Canada, I
read how the poor sufferer feared he or she might be going insane. I
know, poor souls, just how you feel. That feeling is, I think, the most
dreadful of all things connected with "nerves." I suffered from it for
years. It is a dreadful feeling, but there is not the least bit of danger of
such a thing happening to you. You will not go insane. Such persons
can't. Do you really get me? Such persons cannot go insane. This
disease is nothing but what we call a functional nervous trouble. And
so forget about the danger of insanity for all time. You can be cured,
but you will make your return to health just that much slower by
harboring this fear. And it would be simply foolish for you to go on
thinking it possible after I--let me say it again--after I have told you
that it cannot happen. For the value of this treatise lies in the "I." Its
value is just like that of the treatise by Cornaro. He lived it. And so
likewise have I lived it. I have been laid low with this malady. I have
staggered in black despair with staring eyes and bleeding feet and
crying soul along this road strewn with thorns and stones. I know what
it is to lie awake all night and cry like a baby, with none to know and
none to tell me what to do. I know what it is to be tremendously
ambitious. Ambition! Ambition! Ah, God of Heaven! How a poor soul
suffers who beyond everything else, craves to be able to do something
big in this world because he knows he should, yet is held down by this
dreadful thing, "nerves!" And how little, how unspeakably little, do
physicians, even the greatest of them, know, actually know, how we
suffer, unless indeed there be one in whose own body the fiend has
sunk deep its talons.

After I had my first breakdown I made up my mind to study medicine
because something told me that I was one of those "peculiar" people
who just think there is something the matter with them. Is it not strange
that with all the advance that has been made in general medicine, little
or nothing has been done for the relief of the people born with this
curse hanging over them?
I wish this book could be put into the hands of every nervous parent for,
think as you may, all nervous parents beget nervous children. But does
it follow that such children should have