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Introductory. The Physician. Convalescence. Pain and its Consequences. The Moral Management of Sick or Invalid Children. Nervousness and its Influence on Character. Out-Door and Camp-Life for Women.
PHILADELPHIA:
J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
LONDON: 36 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1901.
The essays which compose this volume deal chiefly with a variety ofsubjects to which every physician must have given more or less thought.Some of them touch on matters concerning the mutual relation ofphysician and patient, but are meant to interest and instruct the laityrather than the medical attendant. The larger number have from theirnature a closer relation to the needs of women than of men.
It has been my fate of late years to have in my medical care very manywomen who, from one or another cause, were what is called nervous. Fewof them were so happily constituted as to need from me neither counselnor warnings. Very often such were desired, more commonly they weregiven unsought, as but a part of that duty which the physician feels, aduty which is but half fulfilled when we think of the body as our onlyprovince.
Many times I have been asked if there were no book that helpfully dealtwith some of the questions which a weak or nervous woman, or a woman whohas been these, would wish to have answered. I knew of none, nor can Iflatter myself that the parts of this present little volume, in which Ihave sought to aid this class of patients, are fully adequate to thepurpose.
I was tempted when I wrote these essays to call them lay sermons, soserious did some of their subjects seem to me. They touch, indeed, onmatters involving certain of the most difficult problems in human life,and involve so much that goes to mar or make character, that no mancould too gravely approach such a task. Not all, however, of thesechapters are of this nature, and I have, therefore, contented myselfwith a title which does not so clearly suggest the preacher.
It would be scarcely correct to state that their substance or advice waspersonally addressed to those still actually nervous. To them a word ortwo of sustaining approval, a smiling remonstrance, or a few phrases ofdefinite explanation, are all that the wise and patient doctor shouldthen wish to use. Constant inquiries and a too great appearance of whatmust be at times merely acted interest, are harmful.
When I was a small boy, my father watched me one day hoeing in my littlegarden. In reply to a question, I said I was digging up my p