It rarely chances that women are called upon to suffer in their common lives emotional strains through very long periods, and at the same time to sustain an excess of mental and physical labor.  In days of financial trouble this combination is sometimes fatal to the health of the strongest men.  When a loving relative undertakes to nurse one dear to her through a protracted illness, she subjects herself to just such conditions of peril as fall upon the man staggering under financial adversity.

The analogy to which I have referred is curiously complete.  In both there is the combination of anxiety with physical and mental overwork, and in both alike the hurtfulness of the trial is masked by the excitement which furnishes for a while the means of waging unequal battle, and prevents the sufferer from knowing or feeling the extent of the too constant effort he or she is making.  This is one of the evils of all work done under excessive moral stimulus, and when the excitation comes from the emotions the expenditure of nerve-force becomes doubly dangerous, because in this case not only is the governing power taken away from the group of faculties which make up what we call common sense, but also because in women overtaxing the emotional centres is apt to result in the development of some form of breakdown, and in the secondary production of nervousness or hysteria.

If she cannot afford a nurse, or will not, let her at least share her duties with some one.  Above all, let her know that every competent doctor watches even the best of his trained nurses, and insists that they shall be in the open air daily.  Your good wife or mother thinks in her heart that when she has sickness at home she should not be seen out of doors, and that to eat, sleep, or care for herself is then wicked or something like that.

If you can make a woman change her dress, eat often, bathe as usual, and take the air, even if it must be so at night, she can stand a great deal, especially if you insist that she shall sleep her usual length of time.  If she will not listen or obey, she runs a large risk, and is very apt to collapse as the patient recovers, and to furnish her family with a new case of illness, and the doctor and herself with some variety of disorder of mind or body arising out of this terrible strain on both.

If physical tire, without chance for rest, with anxiety and incessant vigilance, is thus apt to cause wrecks in the nurse of ordinary illness, far more apt is it to involve breakdowns when a loving mother or sister endeavors to care for a protracted case of insanity.  Unless the man of the house interferes, this effort is sure to bring disaster.  And the more sensitive, imaginative, and loving is the self-appointed nurse, the more certain is she to suffer.  There are no cases in which it is so hard to advise, none in which it is so difficult to get people to follow your advice.  The morbid view of insanity, the vague sense of its being a stain, the horror of the hospital, all combine to perplex and trouble us.  Yet here, if at any time, it is wise to cast the whole weight on the physician and to abide by his decision.