The result of this strange conception of medical education is different according to the mental make-up of the particular physician. There are many whose insight and sympathy enable them to penetrate successfully for some distance into the Cimmerian darkness of the patient’s mental troubles. But do we believe that insight and sympathy alone are sufficient for the successful diagnosis of disorder or disease of the heart or lungs? Mental disorder is subtler, more varied than these, but like them it proceeds along definite lines in definite situations, and it is capable of description even as they are. It is therefore insufficient even for the talented doctor to rely entirely upon his natural gifts. But in what other branch of science would it enter his head to do so? But not all doctors happen to be of the type we have described. There exist many excellent practitioners who are temperamentally so constituted that to them these unaided excursions into the investigation of mental trouble would never suggest themselves. Predominantly objectively-minded,[71] “without a nerve in their bodies,” calm and confident, practical and quick to apply their knowledge in the physical sphere, they have no natural inclination towards the study of such disorders as we have mentioned; and their teachers have too seldom done anything to supplement the exclusively materialistic studies[72] of their medical course. When, as not seldom happens, he is faced by a case of hysteria or neurasthenia, such a practitioner is inclined to regard the malady, if it does not prove tractable by rest, change, drugs and diet, massage, electricity, etc., either as “fanciful” and requiring firmness unveiled or veiled,[73] or as the beginning of a lamentable and grave attack of mental disorder. Unfortunately the number of cases yielding to firmness is not gratifyingly large. The hysterical patient, too, has a will of his own, and frequently proves this fact in a disconcerting manner. The neurasthenic, knowing long before the doctor tells him, that he ought not to worry, that he ought to “buck up,” frequently becomes acutely critical of his physician, and his powers of judgment are all the keener for their frequent whetting upon his own deficiencies. Not that he should not worry, but _why and how_ he should not worry is what he wants to know. This criticism of the brusque, cheery way in which such a physician may treat mental troubles is not meant to be one-sided or unfair. For some patients, the “firmness” treatment is the right one; others may be so impressed by the doctor’s cheery personality that they recover. But it is safe to say that these are seldom serious cases. The intelligent, highly moral, over-worked business man must not be given the same treatment as the society lady suffering from lack of honest labour—and nobody knows this better than the patient.