My patient does not have to cease from life. He is not undressed
and tucked into bed and forbidden to stir hand or foot during his
whole term. He is not forbidden to receive letters, or to read books,
or to look on any face but his nurse's (or nurses'). Nor, above all,
is he condemned to the loathsome necessity of eating so much food as
to make him dread the sight of food. Doubtless, the grim, inexorable
process of the `rest-cure' is very good for him who is strong enough
and brave enough to bear it, and rich enough to pay for it. I address
myself to the frailer, cowardlier, needier man. Instead of ceasing
from life, and entering purgatory, he need but essay a variation in
life. He need but go and stay by himself in one of those vast modern
hotels which abound along the South and East coasts.
You are disappointed? All simple ideas are disappointing. And all good
cures spring from simple ideas.
The right method of treating overwrought nerves is to get the patient
away from himself--to make a new man of him; and this trick can be
done only by switching him off from his usual environment, his usual
habits. The ordinary rest-cure, by its very harshness, intensifies a
man's personality at first, drives him miserably within himself; and
only by its long duration does it gradually wear him down and build
him up anew.
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