The symptoms by which a man is led to think he is on the verge of a breakdown are equally vague. That is what makes them all the harder to locate and to bear. If he has sciatica, pleurisy or a gumboil, he can speak of his ailments and tell people what is the matter with him. The neurasthenic has not even this consolation. His symptoms are so indefinite that he can scarcely find words in which to express them; if he could do so, he would shrink from mentioning them for fear that his friends would laugh at him. For it must be understood that neurasthenia is a very different matter from hysteria or hypochondriasis. The hysterical subject craves for sympathy, and will imitate all sorts of ailments in order to secure it. The hypochondriacal imagines he has all manner of diseases and loves to talk about them to anyone who has the patience to listen to his tale of woe. The neurasthenics are the very opposite of this. They are usually people of refined susceptibilities, sensitive about themselves and their feelings. They have, therefore, to bear their burden alone. They see the clouds gathering on their mental horizon and their sky getting darker and darker. The future becomes laden with foreboding, and all around there is the presentiment of a storm that is about to break. Often they keep their feelings to themselves, until at last these become of such intensity that they can no longer be hidden. Such persons often welcome a definite illness, if only because it gives them something unmistakable to speak about, affording them the opportunity of calling in the medical aid of which--quite wrongly, be it observed--they had previously been ashamed to avail themselves. We are sometimes told that headache, giddiness, pains in the region of the spine, weak digestion and a host of similar complaints are preliminary signs of oncoming breakdown. Yet, whilst they often accompany the latter condition, they are also significant of many other ailments, which have nothing to do with it. Sciatica may be the result of a chill, spinal pains of an influenza cold, whilst headache may be due to biliousness, faulty eyesight or a variety of other conditions. The fact that we suffer from any one of them does not imply that we are threatened with a breakdown. For all that, it is not well to neglect these complaints, for it is certain that if we have any tendency to nervous trouble they will hasten it on. To suggest, however, that such symptoms are preliminary to a nervous collapse would be to inspire, in the minds of many people, a sense of terror which would precipitate the very disaster we are anxious to avoid.