If a man can describe it all so well, what could a woman do?  I fear that her description would be too graphic to be read by us, her sisters.

Many people have a way of saying of a sufferer: 

“There is nothing the matter with her.  She is only excessively nervous.”

This “only” is a very serious matter.  There is no illness more difficult to treat and more trying to bear than nervous prostration.  It is a slowly advancing malady which is scarcely recognized as serious by one’s friends until the tired mind succumbs and mental aberration is the terrible finale of the seemingly slight indisposition.

My readers may wonder why I dwell upon a subject that baffles even the most eminent physicians in the country.  It is because I feel that each of us women has in herself the only check to the nervousness which we all dread.  We, as Americans, cannot afford to trifle with our unfortunate inheritance, but must use every means at our command to subjugate the evil instead of being subjugated by it.  Too many women, especially among the lower classes, think it “pretty” to be nervous.  The country practitioner will tell you of the precious hours he loses every week in hearkening to the recital of personal discomforts as poured into his professional ears by farmers’ wives.  And the beginning, middle, and end of all their plaints is “my nerves.”  Anything, from a sprained ankle to consumption, is attributed to or augmented by these necessary adjuncts to the human anatomy.

Not long ago I was talking to the ignorant mother of a jaundiced, colicky child of two years of age.

“What does she eat?” I asked.

“Well, she takes fancies, and her latest notion is that she won’t eat nothin’ but ginger-nuts and bananas.  So she mostly lives on them.  Sometimes she suffers awful.”

“From indigestion?”

“Oh, no!” patronizingly.  “She inherits all my nervous weakness.  Her nerves get the upper hand of her, and she turns pale and shivers all over, and then she looks as if she would go into the spasms.”

“But,” I suggested, “don’t you think that is caused by acute indigestion?”

“No, ma’am.  You see I know what it is, havin’ had it so bad myself.  The nerves of her stomach all draw up, and cause the shakin’ and tremblin’.”

Suggestions as to the modification of the little one’s diet were useless.  Indigestion was unromantic (in the mother’s judgment), and “nerves” were highly aristocratic and refined.

I am happy to note that the girl of the rising generation is learning that to succumb to weakness is not a sign of ladyhood.  She does not jump on a chair at sight of a mouse, scream when she meets a cow in a country road, or cover her face and shudder at mention of a snake.  She is proud of being afraid of nothing, of having a good appetite, and of the ability to sleep as soundly as a tired and healthy child.