This objective way of regarding cases of neurasthenia readily tends on the one hand to make the physician underrate their importance (as when he expects to cure them with “firmness”) and on the other, when they prove impregnable to such attacks, to cause him to exaggerate their seriousness. For, he may argue to himself, if they are beyond cure in this way, what is to be the future of the patients except permanent eccentricity or even insanity? Only a deeper knowledge of the subject can save him from this top-heavy oscillation from unfounded optimism to equally baseless pessimism. We have noted two of the common obstacles which obstruct the path of the physician anxious to treat mental disorder: his own lack of training and, in not a few cases, his temperamental inclination to look exclusively for visible and tangible material evidence of disease. There is, moreover, at present another serious obstacle consisting in a widespread social convention. This is the unwritten law which commands a person to hide any troubles of a mental nature not only from his friends, but even from his doctor, though he may speak of his physical disabilities to everybody with unblushing frankness. Much could be written on this subject, but the inconsistency of the current attitude has been satirised with inimitable wit and humour by Samuel Butler. His whimsical fancy has created a civilised country in which this convention does not exist; in which, in fact, the opposite belief obtains. In that land, while a man’s bodily ills are counted a disgrace, and not to be mentioned, his mental troubles are regarded as physical illness is with us. The name of that country is _Erewhon_. In _Erewhon_, we are told, physical illness is not only considered shameful but is punishable by imprisonment. Mental trouble, on the other hand, even irritability or bad temper, is regarded as illness requiring the attention of physicians, known as “straighteners.” And the consequences of this are that a man will dissimulate the existence of indigestion, giving out that he is being treated for dipsomania, while in answer to questions about his general condition another will quite freely and truthfully say that he is suffering from snappishness. We in England, says the explorer, “never shrink from telling a doctor what is the matter with us merely through the fear that he will hurt us. We let him do his worst upon us and stand it without a murmur, because we are not scouted for being ill, and because we know that the doctor is doing his best to cure us and that he can judge our case better than we can; but we should conceal all illness if we were treated as the Erewhonians are when they have anything the matter with them; we should do the same as with moral and intellectual diseases—we should feign health with the most consummate art till we were found out....”