“I have heard the ‘rest cure’ advocated in cases like mine,” suggested the capitalist.

“In the treatment of neurasthenia we must take the whole man into consideration,” said the physician.  “We must stimulate nutrition, feed well the tired and exhausted organism, and, above all, provide some sort of rest and distraction for the mind.  The mind needs feeding as well as the body.  The rest cure is a kind of passive, relaxing, sedative treatment.  The field is allowed to lie fallow, and often to grow up with weeds, trusting to time to rest and enrich it.  The ’exercise and occupation cure,’ on the other hand, is an active, stimulating, and tonic prescription.  You place yourself in the hands of a physician who must direct the treatment.  He will lay out a scheme with a judicious admixture of exercise which will improve your general health, soothe your nervous system, induce good appetite and sleep, and of occupation which will keep your mind from morbid self-contemplation.  One of the best means to this end is manual occupation—­drawing, designing, carpentry, metal-work, leather-work, weaving, basket-making, bookbinding, clay-modeling, and the like—­for in all these things the hands are kept busy, requiring concentration of attention, while new interests of an artistic and aesthetic nature are aroused.  The outdoor exercise, taken for a part of each day, if of the right sort, also distracts by taking the attention and creating interest.”

The capitalist had called upon the specialist braced for a possible sentence of death, prepared at the least to be informed that he was suffering from a progressive mental malady.  Now, while a tremendous weight was lifted from his mind with the information that he might anticipate a complete return to health, the idea of devoting his trained intelligence, accustomed to cope with great problems of trade and finance, to such trivialities as basket-making or modeling in clay appeared preposterous.  Nevertheless, when the physician told him of a resort near at hand, established for the treatment of cases just such as his, where he might be under continuous medical supervision, without confinement indoors or being deprived of any of the comforts or luxuries of life, he decided to put himself in the other’s hands unreservedly.  The specialist informed him that the length of time required for his cure would depend largely upon himself.  He might, for instance, even keep in touch with his office and have matters of import referred to him while he was recuperating his mental and physical strength, but such a course would inevitably retard his recovery, and possibly prevent it.  To get the best results from the treatment he ought to leave every business interest behind him, he was told.