HOUSE NERVES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5333, 10 August 1895, Page 3

HOUSE NERVES.

Energetic, care-free individuals laugh, at the suggestion of such an ailment as house nerves, and say it is only imaginary. But thousands of women, says the Neio York Press, will testify otherwise. People of sedentary habits, who spend all their time indoors, frequently become morbid, brooding and irritable. The failure of any member of the family to raach home at the usual time brings forth gloomy forebodings of disaster. The absence of any one at night causes floor* walking aod tears, even though such person be of mature years, sound health, and abundant ability to care for himuelf. A projected journey is overcast by recitals of horrible accidents. Meals are unsatisfactory, clothes never fit, no one sympathises or condoles with the Bufferer. The reasons of houße nerves are legion. Introspection is one. Let a woman sit at home day after day, week in and week out, and analysis of everything and person within her ken naturally follows, heraelf included. A woman who studies horaelf, her wants and desires, her ailments and loneliness, is on a fair road to an asylum, did she but know it. Some women, it is true, are tied down by children and household cares to a ceaseless indoor life, bat they are not generally the ones who succumb to house nerves, one reason being that, forced out of contact with others, they yearn always for the privilege of mingling in some sort of society, embracing every chance thrown in their way toward that end. But the woman who stays at home because she might get sick by venturing out in the cold, or because her neighbour can entertain better than Bhe can or dress better, or perhaps the habit has become fixed by degrees to that extent that it is like parting with a tooth to get out of the routine —this is the woman who broods and fancies and cries over mental pictures of cataatrophies that never happen, and meets troubles which never come. Any parent who owns a highly imaginative child owes it to society at large to throw ib in with healthy, merry companions, who always effect n. complete cure, for mirth is infectious. But if the unhappy owner ia repressed and kept indoors, some family in the future will feel the effects. The cure is simple, but few follow it. Throw away your medicine and go visiting. Patronise all the gaieties that your pocketbook affords. Take long walks in the sunshine, and whenever a morbid thought comes think up a necessary errand, and it will dissolve like mißt before the sun. Houbo nerves can ba cured, but only by natural laws. Medicines dull, but do not cure.