to give them the means in blood and flesh of carrying on the work of life, it must be done with the aid of the stomach, and we must humor that organ until it is able to act in a more healthy manner under ordinary conditions.  It may be wise to add that occasional cases of nervousness or of nervous disturbance of digestion are seen in which the patient assimilates food better if permitted to move about directly after a meal; and I recall one instance of very persistent gastric catarrh where the uncomfortable symptoms following meals only began to disappear when as an experiment the patient was ordered to take a quiet half-hour’s stroll after each meal, instead of the rest usually ordered.

I am often asked how I can expect by such a system to rest the organs of mind.  No act of will can force them to be at rest.  To this I should answer that it is not the mere half-automatic intellectuation which is harmful in men or women subject to states of feebleness or neurasthenia, and that the systematic vigorous use of mind on distinct problems is within some form of control.  It is thought with the friction of worry which injures, and unless we can secure an absence of this, it is vain to hope for help by the method I am describing.  The man harassed by business anxieties, the woman with morbidly-developed or ungoverned maternal instincts, will only illustrate the causes of failure.  Perhaps in all dubious cases Dr. Playfair’s rule is not a bad one, to consider, and to let the patient consider, this mode of treatment as a hopeful experiment, which may have to be abandoned, and which is valueless without the cordial and submissive assistance of the patient.

The muscular system in many of such patients—­I mean in ever-weary, thin and thin-blooded persons—­is doing its work with constant difficulty.  As a result, fatigue comes early, is extreme, and lasts long.  The demand for nutritive aid is ahead of the supply, or else the supply is incompetent as to quality, and before the tissues are rebuilded a new demand is made, so that the materials of disintegration accumulate, and do this the more easily because the eliminative organs share in the general defects.  And these are some of the reasons why anaemic people are always tired; but, besides this, all real sensations are magnified by women whose nervous systems have become sensitive owing to a life of attention to their ailments, and so at last it becomes hard to separate the true from the false, and we are thus led to be too sceptical as to the presence of real causes of annoyance.  Certain it is that rest, under proper conditions, is found by such sufferers to be a great relief; but rest alone will not answer, and it is needful, as I shall show, to bring to our help certain other means, in order to secure all the good which repose may be made to insure.

In dealing with this, as with every other medical means, it is well to recall that in our attempts to help we may sometimes do harm, and we must make sure that in causing the largest share of good we do the least possible evil.