Then, when the crash comes, we blame our nerves, our civilisation, our worries and troubles, our heredity, anything in short except ourselves. Of course, there are cases in which circumstances have entered over which the patient has had no control. Sometimes neurasthenia follows a severe illness or a bad accident. Sometimes it comes on at critical periods of life. And in some instances heredity has played a part. There are some unfortunate individuals who have been born with weak frames and little stamina, so that even the ordinary conditions of life, however favourable, prove too much for them. [Sidenote: The Remedy.] Such cases are the exception. In the great majority of instances the faults which have undermined the system are the results of mistakes, either through ignorance or thoughtlessness, in the mode of life. Not necessarily, observe, a vicious mode of life. The victims may have been consistently sober and virtuous. Yet they may have been guilty of egregious errors in regard to the quantity or quality of the food they have taken, or the way in which they have eaten it or in their neglect of fresh air, exercise or rest. The fault may lie in any one of these elements, or in more than one; in all of them, perhaps. And it is only by close examination of the habits of life that the source of the mischief can be brought to light. In like manner the treatment of nervous breakdowns consists in remedying these faults, once they have been ascertained. Patients seldom understand this fact. What they particularly desire is a tonic to restore their jaded energies, on the principle, evidently, of whipping up a tired horse to make him go. They look for some patent food which shall build them up in marvellous manner. Articles of this sort are valuable aids in cases where starvation from lack of sufficient food has been the cause of the trouble. But where there has been an error in diet, it has been, in an overwhelming proportion of cases, an excess of food rather than a lack of it, and when this has been so, it is about as rational to give such remedies, as it would be to pile more coals on to a fire that was already choked. It is not sufficient merely to treat individual symptoms, taking phenacetine for headache, pepsin for indigestion, and so forth; for that is but to touch the fringe of the matter, leaving the real secret of the trouble undealt with. Neither is it of any use to tell the sufferer that there is nothing the matter, that all he requires is to rouse himself or cease his restlessness, as the case may be. You might as well tell a drowning man who cannot swim to buck up and be cheerful.