Doctors, too, sometimes indulge in whimsical ideas about these cases. A nurse, who had recently “Weir Mitchelled” a neurasthenic patient, told me that the lady, like many others suffering from disorder of the medulla, had a difficulty in swallowing, and could not take the pills that were ordered for her. I inquired what happened. She replied that the doctor, evidently impressed with the belief that the difficulty was all sham, insisted that she should get those pills down somehow. It was done. But the nurse informed me that, in the effort, the poor lady swallowed a whole bottle of water every day, and it was very bad for her. A gentleman once asked me if I knew what Beau Brummell was then employed in doing in the other world. Much surprised at the question, I replied that I could not imagine. “Eating raw onions with a steel knife,” he said solemnly. “By and bye, he will get to cabbage. For a long time he will be allowed no other food.” On this principle, what will happen to that doctor who made a sick person swallow a whole bottle of water daily? But perhaps Beau Brummell is not suffering merely for having spoken contemptuously of the “creature” who ate cabbage, but for his indifference to the needs of others throughout his life. As to the doctor, let us hope he will be able to show a counterbalancing array of kind actions as a set-off against his misdemeanour, and so escape penance. After all, it requires little skill to find fault. The thing is to do better. Unfortunately, it is just those medical men who have recognised nervous exhaustion and done their best to treat it who, in the nature of things, have made the most blunders and have been most blamed. This was inevitable. It is by failure that we learn. There is all the more need to draw attention to our failures and to point the moral. We have often tried hard to treat the person and not the disease; we have even tried to treat the disease and not the person. We must accustom ourselves to attacking the enemy on all sides at once. We must realise that not only the food that we eat and the air we breathe act upon the nervous system, but every impression conveyed to it through our senses. We may think it is of little consequence whether we say certain words to a patient or not. We think they will soon be forgotten, or the damage done by them be repaired. But no impression on anything in nature can be done away, not even the impression of the faintest particle of light. The whole universe throughout eternity is altered by our uttering one sentence or leaving it unsaid.