. While making money he forgets his
ills; the moment his attention is diverted from the "root of evil" he
proceeds to further "diagnosis".

In the end, he makes a pleasant hobby of his imaginary maladies, trying
each patent nostrum, and giving herbalists, electric-belt men, Christian
Scientists, and dozens of other weird "specialists" a chance to cure him.

Sexual Neurasthenia occurs chiefly in young men given to self-abuse or
sexual excesses. Erections and emissions are frequent, first at night with
amorous dreams, then in the day as a result of sexual thoughts; weakness
and pain in the back follow, and the sexual act may become impossible. The
patient usually studies a quack advertisement, and passes into the hands of
men who make a living by bleeding such wretches dry. Cold baths and the
treatment outlined in Chapter IX will cure him.

Course and Outlook. Neurasthenia is very curable. If the cause be removed,
and vigorous treatment instituted, the victim may be well in a couple of
months, but in most cases there are obstacles to radical treatment, and the
disease drags on indefinitely.

Egoism, moral cowardice, and sexual excess play a part in much
neurasthenia, but relatives must not forget, in their indignation at these
laxities, that the patient really _is_ ill; it is unkind, unjust and
useless to tell an ailing man the unpalatable truth that it is his own
fault.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII

HYSTERIA

"Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions; ..."
"King Henry IV."

Hysteria, recorded in legend and law, in manuscript and marble, in
folk-lore and chronicle, right from history's dawn, is still a puzzle of
personality, and only equalled by syphilis in the protean nature of its
manifestations.

The sacred books of the East said delayed menstruation due to a devil was
its cause; the thrashing-out of the devil its cure. Chinese legends
describe it, and its symptoms were ascribed by the Inquisition to
witchcraft and sorcery.

Old Egyptian papyri tell how to dislodge the devil from the stomach, and
there were hysteria specialists in 450 B.C. All old theories fix on the
womb as the seat of the disease. The name hysteria is the Greek word for
womb, and 97 per cent of patients are women.

A few of the very numerous modern theories may be noticed.

The unconscious (or the subconscious) and the conscious are only parts of
one whole. Our "co