is the danger signal, the red light
showing the open switch, and we will disregard it at our peril.
Unfortunately, by that power of _esprit de corps_ of the entire system,
known as "pluck" or "grit," or the veto-power, physiologically termed
inhibition, we may ignore and for a time suppress the symptom, but this
in the long run is just as rational as cutting the wire that rings a
fire alarm, or blowing out the red light without closing the switch.

Nervousness is a _symptom_ which should always have _something done for
it_, especially in children. In fact, it has passed into an axiom both
with intelligent teachers and with physicians who have much to do with
the little ones, that crossness, fretfulness, laziness, lack of
initiative, and readiness to weep, in children, are almost invariably
the signs of physical disease. And this doctrine will apply to a
considerable percentage of children of larger growth.

Unfortunately, one of the first and most decided tendencies on the part
of the badly fed or poisoned nervous system, is to exaggerate the
difficulties of the situation, and to minimize its good features. The
individual "has lost his nerve," is afraid to undertake things, shrinks
from responsibility, exaggerates the difficulties that may be in the
way; hence the floods of tears, or outbursts of temper, with which
nervous children will greet the suggestion of any task or duty, however
trifling. If the nervous individual has reached that stage of maturity
when she realizes that she is not merely "naughty," but sick, then this
same process applies itself to her disease. She is sure that she is
going to die, that another attack like that will end in paralysis; as a
patient of mine once expressed it to me, "My heart jumps up in my mouth,
I bite a couple of pieces off it, and it falls back again." In short,
she so obviously and grossly exaggerates every symptom and phase of her
disease, that the impression irresistibly arises that the disease itself
is a fabrication. This view of her condition by her family or her
physician is the tragedy of the neurasthenic.

Broadly speaking, _no_ disease, even of the nervous system, is ever
purely imaginary. Some part of the patient's nervous system is poisoned,
or he would not imagine himself to be sick. We can all of us find
trouble enough in some part of our complex bodily machinery, if we go
around hunting for it; but this is precisely what the healthy man, or
woman, _never_ does.