. In another set of cases an illness is the cause, and she
never rallies entirely, or else some local uterine trouble starts the
mischief, and, although this is cured, the doctor wonders that his
patient does not get fat and ruddy again.

But, no matter how it comes about, whether from illness, anxiety, or
prolonged physical effort, the woman grows pale and thin, eats little,
or if she eats does not profit by it. Everything wearies her,--to sew,
to write, to read, to walk,--and by and by the sofa or the bed is her
only comfort. Every effort is paid for dearly, and she describes herself
as aching and sore, as sleeping ill and awaking unrefreshed, and as
needing constant stimulus and endless tonics. Then comes the mischievous
role of bromides, opium, chloral, and brandy. If the case did not begin
with uterine troubles, they soon appear, and are usually treated in vain
if the general means employed to build up the bodily health fail, as in
many of these cases they do fail. The same remark applies to the
dyspepsias and constipation which further annoy the patient and
embarrass the treatment. If such a person is by nature emotional she is
sure to become more so, for even the firmest women lose self-control at
last under incessant feebleness. Nor is this less true of men; and I
have many a time seen soldiers who had ridden boldly with Sheridan or
fought gallantly with Grant become, under the influence of painful
nerve-wounds, as irritable and hysterically emotional as the veriest
girl. If no rescue comes, the fate of women thus disordered is at last
the bed. They acquire tender spines, and furnish the most lamentable
examples of all the strange phenomena of hysteria.

The moral degradation which such cases undergo is pitiable. I have heard
a good deal of the disciplinary usefulness of sickness, and this may
well apply to brief and grave, and what I might call wholesome,
maladies. Undoubtedly I have seen a few people who were ennobled by long
sickness, but far more often the result is to cultivate self-love and
selfishness and to take away by slow degrees the healthful mastery which
all human beings should retain over their own emotions and wants.

There is one fatal addition to the weight which tends to destroy women
who suffer in the way I have described. It is the self-sacrificing love
and over-careful sympathy of a mother, a sister, or some other devoted
relative. Nothing is more curious, nothing more sad and pitiful, tha