more important source of the painful
intrusions may lie outside of the organism in the social surroundings
and conditions of life. Most of that has to be accepted. The physician
cannot bring back the friend who died or the fortune which was lost in
speculation or the man who married another girl. He will even avoid
suggesting far-reaching social changes in the private life of the
patient, changes like divorce in an unhappy marriage or the breaking of
the home ties, however often he may get the impression that such a
liberation would stop the source of the mental trouble. He will be the
more careful not to overstep his medical rights as he seldom has the
possibility to judge fairly on the basis of the one-sided complaint, and
the probability is great that the character and temperament of the
complainant may be a more essential factor of the ailment than the
personalities which surround him. Yet even the conservative physician
will find abundant opportunities for advice which will remove disturbing
energies from the social surroundings of the sufferer. Even a short
release from the burdening duties, a short vacation from the incessant
needs of the nursery, a break in the monotony of the office, may often
do wonders with a neurasthenic. Often within a surprisingly short time
the brain gathers the energies to overcome the frictions with
unavoidable surroundings.

Yet here the physician has to adjust the prescribed dose of outing very
carefully to the special case. We may be guided by the psychological
experiments which have been made in the interest of testing the fatigue
induced by mental work. If perhaps four hours of concentrated work are
done without pauses, experiment shows that the quality of the work
deteriorates, measured for instance by the number of mistakes in quick
calculation. If certain relatively long pauses are introduced, the
standard of work can be kept high all through. But if frequent pauses
are made, and each short, the result is with many individuals the
opposite. The experiment indicates that these frequent pauses are
working as interruptions which hinder the perfect adjustment to the work
in hand. That is suggestive. Our neurasthenic may complain about the
life which he has to live and yet after all he is frequently so
completely adjusted to it that it may not be in his interest to remove
him far away from the conditions which cannot ultimately be changed but
to which he has to return. The instinct o