The Untroubled Mind | Page 9

when they do come. After the pain or the
"nervous" attack is over, that is the time to prevent the worst features of
another. Forget the distress; live simply and happily in spite of the
memory, and you will have done all that the patient himself can do to
ward off or to make tolerable the next occasion of suffering. Pain
itself--pure physical pain--is a matter for the physician's judgment. It is
his business to seek out the causes and apply the remedy.

V
RULES OF THE GAME

It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make man better be. BEN
JONSON.
It is a good thing to have a sound body, better to have a sane mind, but
neither is to be compared to that aggregate of virile and decent qualities
which we call character. THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
The only effective remedy against inexorable necessity is to yield to it.
PETRARCH.
When I go about among my patients, most of them, as it happens,
"nervously" sick, I sometimes stop to consider why it is they are ill. I
know that some are so because of physical weakness over which they
have no control, that some are suffering from the effects of carelessness,
some from wilfulness, and more from simple ignorance of the rules of
the game. There are so many rules that no one will ever know them all,
but it seems that we live in a world of laws, and that if we transgress
those laws by ever so little, we must suffer equally, whether our
transgression is a mistake or not, and whether we happen to be saints or
sinners. There are laws also which have to do with the recovery of
poise and balance when these have been lost. These laws are less well
observed and understood than those which determine our downfall.
The more gross illnesses, from accident, contagion, and malignancy,
we need not consider here, but only those intangible injuries that
disable people who are relatively sound in the physical sense. It is true
that nervous troubles may cause physical complications and that
physical disease very often coexists with nervous illness, but it is better
for us now to make an artificial separation. Just what happens in the
human economy when a "nervous breakdown" comes, nobody seems to
know, but mind and body coöperate to make the patient miserable and
helpless. It may be nature's way of holding us up and preventing further
injury. The hold-up is severe, usually, and becomes in itself a thing to
be managed.
The rules we have wittingly or unwittingly broken are often unknown
to us, but they exist in the All-Wise Providence, and we may guess by
our own suffering how far we have overstepped them. If a man runs

into a door in the dark, we know all about that,--the case is simple,--but
if he runs overtime at his office and hastens to be rich with the result of
a nervous dyspepsia--that is a mystery. Here is a girl who "came out"
last year. She was apparently strong and her mother was ambitious for
her social progress. That meant four nights a week for several months
at dances and dinners, getting home at 3 A.M. or later. It was gay and
delightful while it lasted, but it could not last, and the girl went to
pieces suddenly; her back gave out because it was not strong enough to
stand the dancing and the long-continued physical strain. The nerves
gave out because she did not give her faculties time to rest, and perhaps
because of a love affair that supervened. The result was a year of
invalidism, and then, because the rules of recovery were not understood,
several years more of convalescence. Such common rules should be
well enough understood, but they are broken everywhere by the wisest
people.
The common case of the broken-down school teacher is more
unfortunate. This tragedy and others like it are more often, I believe,
due to unwise choice of profession in the first place. The women's
colleges are turning out hundreds of young women every year who
naturally consider teaching as the field most appropriate and available.
Probably only a very small proportion of these girls are strong enough
physically or nervously to meet the growing demands of the schools.
They may do well for a time, some of them unusually well, for it is the
sensitive, high-strung organism that is appreciative and effective. After
a while the worry and fret of the requirements and the constant nag of
the schoolroom have their effect upon those who are foredoomed to
failure in that particular field. The plight of such young women is
particularly hard, for they are usually dependent upon their work.
It is, after all, not so much the things