This negative remedy demands its positive supplement. The patient must be brought under conditions and influences which give fair chances for the recuperation of his energies. Too often from the standpoint of the psychologist, the prescription is simply rest. As far as rest involves sleep, it is certainly the ideal prescription. There is no other influence which builds up the injured central nervous system as safely as sound natural sleep, and loss of sleep is certainly one of the most pernicious conditions for the brain. Again rest is a great factor in those systematic rest cures which for a long while were almost the fashion with the neurologist. Experience has shown that their stereotyped use is often unsuccessful, and moreover that the advantage gained by those months spent in bed completely isolated and overfed is perhaps due to the separation and changed nutrition more than to the overlong absolute rest. Yet used with discrimination, the physiological and the psychical effect of lying in bed for a few weeks has certainly often been a marked improvement, especially with young women. But more often the idea of rest in bed during daytime is not meant at all when the nerve specialist recommends rest to his over-strained patient. It is simply meant that he give up his fatiguing daily work, even if that work is made up of a round of entertainments and calls and social engagements. The neurasthenic and all similar varieties are sent away from the noise of the city, away from the rush of their busy life, away from telephones and street cars, away from the hustling business and politics. Indeed it is the dogma of most official and unofficial doctors that the restlessness and hurry and noise which all are characteristic of the technical conditions of our time are the chief sources of the prevailing nervousness. There was no time in the history of civilization in which the average man was overwhelmed by so many demands on his nerve energy, no time which asked such an abundance of interests even from the school child. The wild chase for luxury in the higher classes, reenforced by the commercialism of our time, the hard and monotonous labor in our modern mills and mines for the lower classes, the over-excitement brought to everybody by the sensationalism of our newspapers and of our public life all injure the brain cells and damage the equilibrium. That is a story which we hear a thousand times nowadays. Yet it is doubtful whether there is really much truth in such a claim and whether much wise psychotherapy can be deduced from it.