They have other things to occupy them, and are far
more liable to run into danger by pushing ahead at full steam, and
neglecting small creakings and jarrings until something important in the
gear jams, or goes snap, and brings them to a halt, than they are to be
wasting time and energy worrying over things that may never happen.

Worry, in fact, is a sign of disease instead of a cause. To put it very
crudely, whenever the blood and fluids of a body become impoverished
below a certain degree, or become loaded with fatigue poisons, or other
waste products above a certain point, then the nervous system proceeds
to make itself felt. Either the perceptive end-organs become color-blind
and read yellow for blue, or are astigmatic and report oval for round;
or the conducting nerve-strands tangle up the messages, or deliver them
to the wrong centre; or the central clearing-house, puzzled by the
crooked messages, loses its head, and begins to throw the inkstands
about, or goes down in a sulk. In other words, the nervous system goes
on a strike. But it is perfectly idle to endeavor to treat it with
cheering words, or kindly meant falsehoods, to the effect that "nothing
is really the matter." Like any other strike, it can be rationally dealt
with only by improving the conditions under which the operatives have to
work, and meeting their demands for higher wages, or shorter hours.

We were accustomed at one time to divide diseases into two great
classes, organic and functional. By the former, we meant those in which
there was some positive defect of structure, which could be recognized
by the eye or the microscope; by the latter, those diseases in which
this could not be discovered, in which, so to speak, the machine was all
right, but simply wouldn't work. It goes without saying that the latter
class was simply a confession of our ignorance, and one which is
steadily and rapidly diminishing as science progresses.

If the machine won't work, there is a reason for it somewhere, and our
business is to find it out, and not loftily to assure our patients that
there is nothing much the matter, and all they need is rest, or a little
cheerful occupation. Furthermore, the most inane thing that a
sympathizing friend or kindly physician can do to a neurasthenic, is to
advise him to take his mind off himself or his symptoms. The utter
inability to do that very thing is one of the chief symptoms of the
disease, which will not disappear until t