r to get back to her work.

It is obvious that in such a case as this the physician is largely
diagnostician and director, the actual treatment consisting in getting a
selfish and inert social system to help out one of its victims. That a
sick man should be left to sink or swim, though he has previously been
industrious and a good member of society, is injustice and social
inefficiency. That a woman, under such circumstances, should be left
with the entire burden on her hands is part of the stupidity and
cruelty of society.

How avert such a thing? For one thing do away with the name "Charity" in
relief work,--and find some system by which industry will adequately
care for its victims. What system will do that? I fear it may be called
socialistic to suggest that some of the fifteen billions spent last year
on luxuries might better be shifted to social amelioration. The record
in automobile production would be more pleasing if it did not mean a
shift from real social wealth to individual luxury.

Case II. The over-rich, purposeless woman.

This type is of course the direct opposite of the woman in Case I and
represents the kind of woman usually held up as most commonly afflicted
with "nervousness." "If she really had something to do," say the
critics, "she would not be nervous."

This is fundamentally true of her, though not true of the majority of
women whom we have discussed. It seems difficult to believe that hard
work and worry may bring the same results as idleness and
dissatisfaction, but it is true that both deenergize the organism, the
body and mind, and so are kindred evils. What's the matter with the
poor is their poverty, while the matter with the rich is their wealth.

Mrs. A. De L. is of middle-class people whose parents lived beyond their
means and educated their only daughter to do the same. Here is one of
the anomalies of life: bitterly aware of their folly, the extravagant
and struggling deliberately push their children into the same road. Mrs.
De L. learned early that the chief objects of life in general were to
keep up appearances and kill time; that as a means to success a woman
must get a rich husband and keep beautiful. Being an intelligent girl
and pretty she managed to get the rich husband,--and settled down to the
rich housewife's neurosis.

Her husband was old-fashioned despite his rather new wealth, and they
had two children,--a large modern American family. Though he allowed her
to hav