A young lady, rendered justly anxious by increasing nerve-weakness, consulted a well-known physician. He asked what ailed her. She described her symptoms, the most usual symptoms of neurasthenia. His comment on her report was singular. He wondered that she should have come to him at all, having no more than that the matter with her. One is again tempted to ask what more one can be expected to have the matter? Surely, continued languor, depression, neuralgia, and weakness are a sufficiently heavy burden for anybody to bear, to say nothing of want of comprehension on the part of others. Did the good gentleman wish the lady to wait until she had developed something more “interesting”? Not at all. We should wrong him by entertaining any such idea. He merely believed neurasthenia to be three parts fuss and nonsense, and he thought he was proving himself a kind friend to the young lady by rousing her to a sense of her duty--the duty of dragging herself about and saying nothing of her ailments. It is odd how very ready we all are to preach duty--to somebody else. Nevertheless, let us honour the conscientious physician for his honesty. Unfortunately, he failed to cure the young lady, and for anything I know to the contrary, she may by this time have developed something extremely interesting. CHAPTER IV. _ERRONEOUS NOTIONS._ It will be readily conceded that in order to treat nervous disease successfully, we must have some special qualifications for our task. We need not only learning, but experience and powers of ready observation. Indeed, mere learning will avail us little in a still undiscovered country, or in one where the observations of our predecessors have been so frequently and unavoidably erroneous. But if it be true that all disease is in a sense nervous disease--an affection of the nerves of some particular part of the organism--the importance of the study of neurasthenia cannot be overrated, provided that we study it from Nature, and do not rely wholly on prevalent teaching concerning the mode of treatment required.