n
these partnerships between the sick and selfish and the sound and
over-loving. By slow but sure degrees the healthy life is absorbed by
the sick life, in a manner more or less injurious to both, until,
sometimes too late for remedy, the growth of the evil is seen by
others. Usually the individual withdrawn from wholesome duties to
minister to the caprices of hysterical sensitiveness is the person of a
household who feels most for the invalid, and who for this very reason
suffers the most. The patient has pain,--a tender spine, for example;
she is urged to give it rest. She cannot read; the self-constituted
nurse reads to her. At last light hurts her eyes; the mother or sister
remains shut up with her all day in a darkened room. A draught of air is
supposed to do harm, and the doors and windows are closed, and the
ingenuity of kindness is taxed to imagine new sources of like trouble,
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, anaemic 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 nota