In some of the severer cases of neurasthenia in women such a mechanism can be traced. There is a definite relation between the onset of the attacks and some domestic difficulty, and though the recovery does not take place at once, an adjustment in favor of the wife causes the condition to turn soon for the better. I do not claim that the above is an original discovery. True, the medical men have not formulated it in their textbooks, but every experienced practitioner knows it to occur. And the humorists and the satirists of the daily press use the theme every day. The favorite point is that the brutal husband is forced to his knees through the disabilities of his wife, and that cure takes place when--he gets her the bonnet or dress she wants, when the trip to Florida is ordered, etc. etc. Discreditable to women? Discreditable to those women who use it? Men would do the same in the face of superior force. In the battle of wills that goes on in life the weak must use different weapons than the strong. Doubtless the women of another day, trained otherwise than our present-day women and having a different relationship to men, will abandon, at least in larger part, the weapons of weakness. Wherever women work with men on a plane of equality they ask no favors and resort to no tears. They play the game as men do, as "good sports." But where the relationship is the one-sided affair of matrimony, a certain type uses her tears, her aches and pains, her moods, and her failings to gain her point. CHAPTER X HISTORIES OF SOME SEVERE CASES The cases that follow represent mainly the severe types of nervousness in the housewife. To every case that comes to the neurologist there are a hundred that explain their symptoms as "stomach trouble", "backache", etc., who remain well enough to carry on, and who think their pains and aches inevitably wrapped with the lot of woman. It will be seen, upon reading these cases, that a rather pessimistic attitude is taken toward some of them. It would be nice to present a series of cases all of which recovered, and it would be easy to do that by picking the cases. Such a series would be optimistic in its trend; it would however have the small demerit of being false to life. Though the majority of women suffering from nervousness may be relieved or cured, a number cannot be essentially benefited. Some of them have temperaments utterly incompatible with matrimony, others have husbands of the incorrigible type, others have life situations to change which would make it necessary to change society. Therefore in these cases all a doctor can do is to _relieve symptoms_, relieve some of the distress and rest content with that.