Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of NervousnessCarroll, Robert S. (Robert Sproul)
Science
Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness
Carroll, Robert S. (Robert Sproul)
Nervous system -- Hygiene
The midsummer months in Southern Alabama drive such as are able to the
relief of the mountains of Tennessee and the Carolinas. The Judge had
always felt that he should send his family away during July and
August; they often went in June when the summers were early. And these
weeks of change proved, year after year, the most helpful influences
that came to Ruth. She always improved and would usually remain
stronger until after Thanksgiving. But with irregular periodicity the
blinding, prostrating headaches would return--a week of pain, nausea
and prostration. Yet Ruth never asked for, nor took medicine, unless
it was ordered by the doctor, and then more in consideration of the
desires of her family, for the unnatural sensations, produced by most
of the remedies she was given, seemed but the substitution of one
discomfort for another. The only exercise that counted, which this
girl ever had, was during her weeks at Point View. The stimulation of
the invigorating mountain air seemed to get into her blood, and after
a few weeks with her friendly mountains she could climb the highest
with little apparent fatigue. At home, the country was flat, the roads
sandy, and even horseback riding uninteresting. She had never been
taught any strengthening form of daily home-exercise, and so she
suffered on. While the glasses brought comfort, they lessened, for but
a short time, the number and the intensity of her attacks. Several
physicians were consulted and several varying courses of treatment
undertaken, but no betterment came which lasted, and the headaches
remained a mystery, not only to her mother, but to others who
seriously tried to help. As we are behind the scenes, we need no
longer delay the mystery's solution. It was not eyes, they were
accurately corrected; it was not stomach, as much stomach treatment
proved; it was not anaemia, or the many excellent tonics that had been
prescribed would have cured; it was not displaced vertebrae nor
improperly acting nerves, or the manipulations and vibrations and deep
kneadings of the specialists in mechanical treatment would have
rescued her years before. It was, and here is the secret--her mother's
wonderful table!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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