Few persons realise what a terrible disease nervousness really is. It is one of the greatest annoyances of youth. It renders many girls utterly miserable when they first “come out.” It is most fearful suffering, and one which brings many girls to a life of misery. There is but one other condition which troubles girls more than nervousness, and that is excessive blushing, and blushing is but a physical expression of nervousness. It is commonly held that the work of physicians is confined to the body, and that they have no knowledge of the troubles of the mind. It follows from this that the study of the mind has been grossly neglected by medical men, and even the simplest mental aberration will baffle many worthy practitioners, simply because they consider that the mind is not their province. We can delay no further and must get on to consider the practical side of our task, the causes and treatment of blushing and nervousness. We suppose that we must first mention the physical causes of blushing and nervousness. Many would consider these to be of the first importance. They are not. Blushing is a momentary relaxation of the minute blood-vessels of the skin of the face, caused by an impression received by the brain. The vessels relax, they become distended with blood, and the face becomes red, hot and swollen. If this phenomenon lasts but a minute it is called a blush; if it lasts for a longer period it is called a flush. The former is usually due to mental causes, the latter invariably to physical conditions. Blushing is the direct effect of a more or less powerful stimulus passing to the brain from one of the special senses. Flushing is the effect of a stimulus from one of the internal organs, usually the stomach. Anæmia, indigestion, constipation, and various other ailments cause flushing, and very rarely they produce blushing. This is all we have to say of the physical causes of blushing and nervousness, except that people who are ill or run down are often irritable and nervous. But the illness is not the cause of the nervousness, it only paves the way for it to become manifest; it only reduces the force by which nervousness is normally overcome. It is in the workings of the mind that we must seek the causes of nervousness. We are not all born with the same mental powers. Each inherits from her parents certain hereditary tendencies. We all know that insanity runs in families; so does nervousness; so does every kind of mental inclination, but only to a certain extent. We do not inherit the virtues, the vices, the powers or the mental shortcomings of our parents; we inherit a tendency to them--a tendency which may develop and reproduce in us the minds of our fathers. Or these tendencies may be modified or suppressed by education; or they may be overwhelmed by some individual peculiarity which we have not inherited from our parents, but which had its beginning in our own minds.