Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 136 pages of information about Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia.

Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 136 pages of information about Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia.
“So many severall wayes are we plagued and punished for our father’s defaultes, that it is the greatest part of our felicity to be well born, and it were happy for humankind if only such parentes as are sounde of body and mind should be suffered to marry.  An Husbandman will sow none but the choicest seed upon his lande; he will not reare a bull nor an horse, except he be right shapen in all his parts, or permit him to cover a mare, except he be well assured of his breed; we make choice of the neatest kine, and keep the best dogs, and how careful then should we be in begetting our children?  In former tyme, some countreys have been so chary in this behalf, so stern, that if a child were crooked or deformed in body or mind, they made it away; so did the Indians of old, and many other well gouverned Commonwealths, according to the discipline of those times.  Heretofore in Scotland, if any were visited with the falling sickness, madness, goute, leprosie, or any such dangerous disease, which was like to be propagated from the father to the son, he was instantly gelded; a woman kept from all company of men; and if by chance, having some such disease, she was found to be with child she with her brood were buried alive; and this was done for the common good, lest the whole nation should be injured or corrupted.  A severe doom, you will say, and not to be used among Christians.  Yet to be more looked into than it is.  For now, by our too much facility in this kind, in giving way to all to marry that will, too much liberty and indulgence in tolerating all sorts, there is a vast confusion of hereditary diseases; no family secure, no man almost free from some grievous infirmity or other.  Our generation is corrupt, we have so many weak persons, both in body and mind, many feral diseases raging among us, crazed families:  our fathers bad, and we like to be worse.”

Her husband will want much petting and caressing, and she must foster his love by lavishing on him much fondness, and ignoring amours as but the mischievous results of his restless, intriguing mind.

She must let him see in an affectionate way that she can let others enjoy his company betimes, secure in the knowledge that she is supreme in his affections—­cajolery that flatters his overweening vanity, and rarely fails.

In anger, as in every other emotion, the neuropath is as transient as he is truculent.  A trivial “tiff” will make him blaze up in ungovernable rage and say most abominable and untruthful things; even utter violent threats.  He will not admit he is wrong, but like a spoilt child must be kissed and coaxed into a good temper, first with himself and with others next.

At one moment he is in a perfect paroxysm of fury; five minutes later he is passionately embracing the luckless object of it and vowing eternal devotion.  In a further five he has forgotten all his remarks and would hotly deny he used the vexing statements imputed to him.

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Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.