the patient may be all that could be desired and all that wealth can
procure. It is an everyday experience that business worries and
responsibilities in men, domestic anxieties or childlessness in women,
have the power to ruin health, even in those who habitually or grossly
break none of its laws. The unstable mind of the child is so sensitive
that cerebral fatigue and irritability are produced by causes which
seem to us extraordinarily trivial. In the little life which the child
leads, a life in which the whole seems to us to be comprised in
dressing and undressing, washing, walking, eating, sleeping, and
playing, it is not easy to detect where the elements of nervous
overstrain lie. Nor is it as a rule in these things that the mischief
is to be found. It is in the personality of mother or nurse, in her
conduct to the child, in her actions and words, in the tone of her
voice when she addresses him, even in the thoughts which pass through
her mind and which show themselves plainly to that marvellously acute
intuition of his, which divines what she has not spoken, that we must
seek for the disturbing element. The mental environment of the child
is created by the mother or the nurse. That is her responsibility and
her opportunity. The conduct of the child must be the criterion of her
success. If things go wrong, if there is constant crying or
ungovernable temper, if sleep and food are persistently refused, or if
there is undue timidity and tearfulness, there is danger that seeds
may be sown from which nervous disorders will spring in the future.

There are many women who, without any deep thought on the matter, have
the inborn knack of managing children, who seem to understand them,
and have a feeling for them. With them, we say, the children are
always good, and they are good because the element of nervous
overstrain has not arisen. There are other women, often very fond of
children, who are conspicuously lacking in this power. Contact with