this kind will open a new and interesting
vista to the nurse as well as the patient.

CHAPTER XXV

_The Habit of Illness_

IT is surprising how many invalids there are who have got well and do
not know it! When you feel ill and days drag on with one ill feeling
following another, it is not a pleasant thing to be told that you are
quite well. Who could be expected to believe it? I should like to know
how many men and women there are who will read this article, who are
well and do not know it; and how many of such men and women will take
the hint I want to give them and turn honestly toward finding
themselves out in a way that will enable them to discover and
acknowledge the truth?

Nerves form habits. They actually form habits in themselves. If a woman
has had an organic trouble which has caused certain forms of nervous
discomfort, when the organic trouble is cured the nerves are apt to go
on for a time with the same uncomfortable feelings because during the
period of illness they had formed the habit of such discomfort. Then is
the time when the will must be used to overcome such habits. The
trouble is that when the doctor tells these victims of nervous habit
that they are really well they will not believe him. "How can I be
well," they say, "when I suffer just as I did while I was ill?" If then
the doctor is fortunate enough to convince them of the fact that it is
only the nervous habit formed from their illness which causes them to
suffer, and that they can rouse their wills to overcome intelligently
this habit, then they can be well in a few weeks when they might have
been apparently ill for many months--or perhaps even years.

Nerves form the habit of being tired. A woman can get very much
overfatigued at one time and have the impression of the fatigue so
strongly on her nerves that the next time she is only a little tired
she will believe she is very tired, and so her life will go until the
habit of being tired has been formed in her nerves and she believes
that she is tired all the time--whereas if the truth were known she
might easily feel rested all the time.

It is often very difficult to overcome the habit which the nerves form
as a result of an attack of nervous prostration. It is equally hard to
convince any one getting out of such an illness that the habit of his
nerves tries to make him believe he cannot do a little more every
day--when he really can, and would be better for it. Many cases