Nervous Prostration.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue III, 20 July 1901, Page 138

Nervous Prostration.

Concerning this prevalent affliction Marion Harland says in an exchange: One of the bugaboo stories of my nursery days was of a little girl who feigned to be dead when her nurse called her to get up in the morning, and was struck dead in punishment for the wicked deception. The moral, “ Never pretend to be sick. There’s no telling how soon the real thing may be sent upon you as a judgment.” I am sorely tempted to tell a story and moral to women who are courting the very evil they affect to fear by cultivating, instead of resisting, disorders of the nervous system. They are like silly children playing with the fire from which they ought to run. For nervous prostration is a terrible reality when it has once closed with its victim. The letter from which the following extracts were made was written bv a real and an unwilling invalid:—

“ 1 have been suffering from nervous prostration for a year. T have been to more than one doctor—one of them a specialist in nervous diseases —and theyhave doneme no good. Oneand all sav: 1 Medicine won't cure you. Everything depends upon yourself.’ What do people mean when they say that? Many tell me the same thing, but they do not explain it to my satisfaction. How can one cure one’s self? You may have known others afflicted as T am. and may be able to help me in some way. . . T am very despondent. Tn fact, that is the chief symptom of my disease. T have crying spells for no cause whatsoever, and suffer from despondency T cannot overcome.

“ Have yon. in the course of your wide experience of life, known of cases like mine, and can yon say anything to comfort me?”

If it were in mv power to transport my querist in body, as I do n spirit, into my consultation-room. I would widen her eyes and divert her attention from her own troubles by stories of “ cases ” so much worse than hers that she would take “ comfort ” in the contrast. One favourable symptom is that she rebels against the tyranny which, like Satan, in Dr. Watts’ ma-chine-made hymn. “ binds ” her "fast in slavish chains.” Some wo-

men hug these chains and clink them ostentatiously in the ears of all who will listen.

I should like, too, to tell one of my favourite fables to you, my visitor—the tale of a crew of witches who sailed a vessel out of the port of Marblehead by the help of one sailor, whom they held as prisoner. They could not furl a sail or belay a rope unless he first touched sail. He must begin the operation. Then they laid hold with a will and finished it. What your doctors and friends mean by saying that cure depends upon yourself is that the first effort of will must come from you.

Will you listen patiently to a little true storv that will convey my meaning better than didactic teachings? A woman, overwrought by many literary, domestic, and charitable labours, and stricken to the heart by a great bereavement, sank into just such a state as yours, complicated by a menace of pulmonary consumption. After fighting against odds for some months she told her husband one morning that she could hold on to life no longer. She had but to let go and drift out upon the boundless sea. She had made up her mind to let go.

He was a sensible man and he understood his wife’s nature. Without sentimentalising, he said:

“ I wish you could make it convenient to live until your boy ” —an only son. just 14 years old—“ is through college! He will go to the devil without his mother.”

Then he left the leaven to work. Tn half an hour the invalid rang for her maid to help her dress. She had macle up her mind to see her boy through college. She lived to see him doing 11 man's work in the world and to laugh with him over the incident T have sketched. Hers was the witches' touch. Tt must be yours.