failure; let us now examine some of the latter.

Miss F---- was about twenty years old when she completed her technical
education. She inherited a nervous diathesis as well as a large dower
of intellectual and æsthetic graces. She was a good student, and
conscientiously devoted all her time, with the exception of ordinary
vacations, to the labor of her education. She made herself mistress of
several languages, and accomplished in many ways. The catamenial
function appeared normally, and, with the exception of occasional
slight attacks of menorrhagia, was normally performed during the whole
period of her education. She got on without any sort of serious
illness. There were few belonging to my clientele who required less
professional advice for the same period than she. With the ending of
her school life, when she should have been in good trim and well
equipped, physically as well as intellectually, for life's work,
there commenced, without obvious cause, a long period of invalidism.
It would be tedious to the reader, and useless for our present
purpose, to detail the history and describe the protean shapes of her
sufferings. With the exception of small breasts, the reproductive
system was well developed. Repeated and careful examinations failed to
detect any derangement of the uterine mechanism. Her symptoms all
pointed to the nervous system as the _fons et origo mali_. First
general debility, that concealed but ubiquitous leader of innumerable
armies of weakness and ill, laid siege to her, and captured her. Then
came insomnia, that worried her nights for month after month, and made
her beg for opium, alcohol, chloral, bromides, any thing that would
bring sleep. Neuralgia in every conceivable form tormented her, most
frequently in her back, but often, also, in her head, sometimes in her
sciatic nerves, sometimes setting up a tic douloureux, sometimes
causing a fearful dysmenorrhoea and frequently making her head ache