Neurasthenia is especially prevalent, not only with members of certain families (we all know people peculiarly liable to suffer from the “nerves”), but certain races are more prone to it than others--the French and American more than ourselves; and this fact must not be lost sight of, nor the fact that the relatives of many of these patients--probably afflicted themselves with a latent form of the same condition--are frequently but ill-fitted to help the patient to recovery, so that a temporary removal from their care is sometimes advisable. But prevention is better than cure, and this is best secured by healthy hygienic, physical, mental, and moral surroundings,--by bestowing upon the growing human plant a share of as intelligent a care as the gardener bestows upon his grapes and his peaches; by no undue forcing, by no undue straining, and by no undue school pressure; but by bodily exercises in proportion to the strength of the body, and progressively increased as the strength of the body increases, and by mental exercises equally proportioned to the increasing mental strength, and not forced beyond it; for the exercise of nerve-power is as fatiguing as that of muscle-power, brings on the same feeling of exhaustion, and requires the same recuperation by adequate food and rest. So much for prevention: but when the nervous system _has_ broken down--when the symptoms may vary from extreme mental and physical exhaustion to that condition of what has been called “Death-trance,” where the patient is apparently dead; that condition which has furnished the theme for many a sensational story (but the most ghastly incidents of fiction have been paralleled by authenticated facts)--then treatment comes in. The less physic-drinking the better. As the late Sir William Gull said, “Medicine was once given even for fractures. Disease is not cured by drugs. It is the power of Nature that cures disease, and the duty of the medical man is--not to give drugs--but to assist Nature.” So spoke Sir William Gull; and Lord Coleridge, deciding a law case not long since, said, “If you give a man drugs, you make him the arena of a conflict of opposing poisons.”