power of assimilating food? Are you oppressed with an indescribable
lassitude? Can you no longer follow the simplest train of thought? Are
you troubled throughout the night with a hacking cough? Are you--in
fine, are you but a tissue of all the most painful symptoms of all the
most malignant maladies ancient and modern? If so, skip this essay,
and try Somebody's Elixir. The cure that I offer is but a cure for
overwrought nerves--a substitute for the ordinary `rest-cure.' Nor is
it absurdly cheap. Nor is it instant. It will take a week or so of
your time. But then, the `rest-cure' takes at least a month. The scale
of payment for board and lodging may be, per diem, hardly lower than
in the `rest-cure'; but you will save all but a pound or so of the
very heavy fees that you would have to pay to your doctor and your
nurse (or nurses). And certainly, my cure is the more pleasant of the
two. My patient does not have to cease from life. He is not undressed
and tucked into bed and forbidden to stir hand or foot during his
whole term. He is not forbidden to receive letters, or to read books,
or to look on any face but his nurse's (or nurses'). Nor, above all,
is he condemned to the loathsome necessity of eating so much food as
to make him dread the sight of food. Doubtless, the grim, inexorable
process of the `rest-cure' is very good for him who is strong enough
and brave enough to bear it, and rich enough to pay for it. I address
myself to the frailer, cowardlier, needier man. Instead of ceasing
from life, and entering purgatory, he need but essay a variation in
life. He need but go and stay by himself in one of those vast modern
hotels which abound along the South and East coasts.

You are disappointed? All simple ideas are disappointing. And all good
cures spring from simple ideas.

The right method of treating overwrought nerves is to get the patient