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
five years she's had ten, and sometimes fifteen grains of veronal at
midnight, nights when she couldn't get to sleep. If it's only nerves,
then I've got a mighty heap to learn about nerves. I think in forty-
five years practicing medicine a man ought to know enough about them
to recognize them in his own family. But something's got to be done.
Wanda's making a hospital of our home. We daren't slam a door, or her
sister mustn't play the piano but her headaches start; and if Rosie
boils turnips or even brings an onion into the house, it goes to
Wanda's stomach and it takes a hypodermic to quiet her vomiting and a
week to get over the trouble.
"That child of mine is just like a different creature from the fine
little girl she was at twelve when my buggy turned over one night and
broke my leg. Why, she nursed me better than her mother. She just
couldn't do enough for me. That little thing would come down just as
quiet as she could--sometimes every night--to see that that leg was
all right and hadn't got twisted; while now she expects attention from
everybody in the house and from some of the neighbors. She will even
send for Rosie just when she is trying to get dinner started and keep
her a half-hour telling just what she wants and how it's got to be
fixed, then more often she'll just nibble at it just enough to spoil
it for everybody else, after Rosie's spent an hour getting it ready
for her. Tonics don't help her a bit. I've given her iron, arsenic and
strychnin enough to cure a dozen weak women. She's always too weak to
exercise, lies in bed two days out of three, reads and sometimes
writes a letter or two. But before Christmas comes (you know she is
mighty cunning with her fingers; she can sew and embroider and make
all sorts of pretty, womanish things) she works so hard making
presents that she's just clear done out for the next two months and
won't leave her room for weeks. That's about all she does from one
year's end to another, but complain of her sickness, and of late years
criticize the rest of us and dictate to the whole household what they
must do for themselves, and just out-and-out demand what she wants
them to do for her. She really treats her stepmother like a dog, and
often she is so disrespectful to me that I certainly would thrash her
if she wasn't so sick. She was a fine child but her suffering has
wrecked her disposition. She and the rest of us would be better off if
she'd die. You see, Doctor, I haven't much faith left, but she's been
bent so long a time on coming to you, and is willing to spend the
little money her mother left her, to have her own way. Now, I am
doctor enough to stand by you in what you decide if you say you can
cure her, and if she gets well, I'll pay every cent of the bill, but
if she don't, the Lord will just have to help us all, though I suppose
I'll have to take care of her as long as she lives for she won't have
a cent after she gets through with this."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account