Application of Principles.--The best possible source of relief from that combination of mental despondency, and the lack of bodily vitality which so often accompanies it, and which, if not interrupted, may lead to a serious breakdown of mental health, is the discipline of work; above all, work for the benefit, of others, to which one forces one's self gradually but persistently, not with, long intervals, but day after day. The discipline of the asylum and the sanatorium is probably the most efficient curative agent when these cases are at their worst. When the symptoms are beginning, a discipline of a milder character, yet resembling that of the institution, but appealing to higher motives and leading to frequently repeated actions for the benefit of others, will undoubtedly do much to prevent worse developments or make the future condition of the patient less serious than it would otherwise be. Undoubtedly some of the old monastic regulations were efficient in preventing the more serious developments of despondency when the danger to himself and others of the melancholic was not so well recognized as at present. _Laughing Cures_.--Every now and then the newspapers announce that some physician has invented a laughing cure, or a smiling cure, or something of the kind. Sometimes these reports are founded on actual occurrences; oftener, perhaps, they are the invention of a reporter suffering from a dearth of news. There is, however, no doubt that a smiling cure will do much to make people, even those who have serious reasons to be depressed, feel better. Every physician knows that if melancholic patients of the milder type can be amused quietly, their depression is modified for the better. Accordingly, we advise them to see farces or lively comedy, and we try to pick out cheerful nurses for them. The depression consequent upon some serious illness can be better relieved in this way than by any tonics or stimulants. For the depression, for instance, that so often follows a stroke of apoplexy, the employment of a nurse with a good human sense of humor and a large sympathy with the humorous side of things in life will do more to arouse a man from the lethargy into which he settles than almost anything else. {105}