“Exactly as I expected: simulated ailments and hysteria are hopelessly confounded; but no wonder; hysteria is a misnomer, used in the vaguest way, not even confined to women. Why, I knew a man, a clergyman in the North, who suffered from ‘clergyman’s sore throat’; he was a popular evangelical preacher, and there was no end to the sympathy his case evoked; he couldn’t preach, so his devoted congregation sent him, now to the South of France, now to Algiers, now to Madeira. After each delightful sojourn he returned, looking plump and well, but unable to raise his voice above a hardly audible whisper. This went on for three years or so. Then his Bishop interfered; he must provide a curate in permanent charge, with nearly the full emoluments of the living. The following Sunday he preached, nor did he again lose his voice. And this was an earnest and honest man, who would rather any day be at his work than wandering idly about the world. Plainly, too, in the etymological sense of the word, his complaint was not hysteria. But this is not an exceptional case: keep any man in his dressing-gown for a week or two--a bad cold, say--and he will lay himself out to be pitied and petted, will have half the ailments under the sun, and be at death’s door with each. And this is your active man; a man of sedentary habits, notwithstanding his stronger frame, is nearly as open as a woman to the advances of this stealthy foe. Why, for that matter, I’ve seen it in a dog! Did you never see a dog limp pathetically on his three legs that he might be made much of for his lameness, until his master’s whistle calls him off at a canter on all fours?” “I get no nearer; what have these illustrations to do with my wife?”