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
In the softened light of a richly furnished office two physicians were
seated. It was the elder who spoke. Drawn and sad was his cleanly
featured, tense face; his clear skin and slightly whitened, dark hair
belied his nearly seventy years. He was the anxious, unhappy father of
a sick, unhappy daughter, whom the nurse was preparing in an adjoining
room for examination by Dr. Franklin, the younger physician. "I mean
no discourtesy, Doctor, when I say that I don't believe any one
understands my girl's case. Her brother and sister are healthy
youngsters and have always been so. I may have taken a few drinks too
many now and then, but few men of my age can stand more night-work or
do more practice than I can, and I've about rounded my three-score and
ten. Wanda was a perfect child. She is my oldest. Her mother did pet
and spoil her, always humored her from the first, but she was a
cheerful, bright little thing. She finished high school at fifteen and
did a good year's study at Monticello. All her trouble seemed to start
that spring when she was vaccinated. She had never had worse than the
measles before. She didn't seem to know how to take sickness, though
the Lord knows she's had plenty of chances to learn since her sore
arm; and the school-doctor had to lance a small place, and this kept
her away from Commencement where they had some part for her to do. She
didn't get well in time to spend the month in Michigan with her room-
mate, and she always said that if she could have had this trip she
would never have been so bad. It was a mighty hard summer with me,
too, that year, and probably I didn't notice her enough--anyway she's
been a half-invalid these eighteen years. It's pain and tenderness in
this nerve and then in that one, and she hasn't walked a whole mile in
fifteen years because of her sciatica. I have sent her to Hot Springs,
one summer she spent at Saratoga, and she has taken two courses of
mud-baths. When she was twenty-six, she lived for four months in Dr.
Moore's home. He and I were college-mates and he had been mighty good
in treating rheumatic troubles. After awhile he decided it was her
diet and she lived a whole year in B--- Sanitarium and she gained
weight too, there, and hasn't eaten any meat to speak of nor drunk any
coffee since. She often complains of her eyes but the specialists say
they are all right, that that isn't the trouble. Two of the best
surgeons in our part of the country have refused to operate on her
even when I begged one of them to open her and see if he couldn't find
out what was the matter. Three of her doctors have said it was her
nerves, but I don't think any of them know. You know I don't mean to
say anything that will reflect on your specialty, but you never did
see a case of only nerves put a healthy young girl in bed and keep her
there suffering so that I've had to give her aspirin a hundred times
and even morphin by hypodermic to get her quiet, and off and on for
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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