topic seems to leave that of nerves proper with comparative
neglect. It would appear to be largely the practice of the medical profession to treat nerves as something to be ignored or eschewed as far as possible, notwithstanding that many doctors, while professing to give the matter attention or even to make it a speciality yet treat applicants, of whom the present writer is one, with something like disguised contempt on the assumption that the patient has only himself to blame or as
if he had got into his present condition for want of ordinary care. So in the work of the well-known and popular Dr. Alfred T. Schofield of Harley Street, we find it said :— " When one of these victims . . . has recourse to medicine he is usually told that it is of no importance ; that he is fanciful ; and some anodyne is carelessly prescribed. More sympathy and less contempt are, indeed, felt for a drunkard than for a hypo- chondriac."
On this conspiracy of silence he also quotes- Sir James Paget as saying :—
" To call a patient hysterical 'is taken by many people as mean- ing that she is silly or shamming, or could get well if she pleased."
In conclusion, the matter needs more attention from the
learned than it has yet got.—I am, Sir, &c., VINDEX.
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