until at last, as I have seen more than once, the window-cracks are
stuffed with cotton, the chimney is stopped, and even the keyhole
guarded. It is easy to see where this all leads to: the nurse falls ill,
and a new victim is found. I have seen an hysterical, anæmic girl kill
in this way three generations of nurses. If you tell the patient she is
basely selfish, she is probably amazed, and wonders at your cruelty. To
cure such a case you must morally alter as well as physically amend, and
nothing less will answer. The first step needful is to break up the
companionship, and to substitute the firm kindness of a well-trained
hired nurse.[12]

Another form of evil to be encountered in these cases is less easy to
deal with. Such an invalid has by unhappy chance to live with some near
relative whose temperament is also nervous and who is impatient or
irritable. Two such people produce endless mischief for each other.
Occasionally there is a strange incompatibility which it is difficult to
define. The two people who, owing to their relationship, depend the one
on the other, are, for no good reason, made unhappy by their several
peculiarities. Lifelong annoyance results, and for them there is no
divorce possible.

In a smaller number of cases, which have less tendency to emotional
disturbances, the phenomena are more simple. You have to deal with a
woman who has lost flesh and grown colorless, but has no hysterical
tendencies. She is merely a person hopelessly below the standard of
health and subject to a host of aches and pains, without notable organic
disease. Why such people should sometimes be so hard to cure I cannot
say. But the sad fact remains. Iron, acids, travel, water-cures, have
for a certain proportion of them no value, or little value, and they
remain for years feeble and forever tired. For them, as for the whole