But many neurasthenic people also suffer
from being read to, or, in other words, from any prolonged effort at
attention. In these cases it will be found that if the nurse will read
the morning paper, and as she does so relate such news as may be of
interest, the patient will bear it very well, and will by degrees come
to endure the hearing of such reading as is already more or less
familiar.
Usually, after a fortnight I permit the patient to be read to,--one to
three hours a day,--but I am daily amazed to see how kindly nervous and
anaemic women take to this absolute rest, and how little they complain of
its monotony. In fact, the use of massage and the battery, with the
frequent comings of the nurse with food, and the doctor's visits, seem
so to fill up the day as to make the treatment less tiresome than might
be supposed. And, besides this, the sense of comfort which is apt to
come about the fifth or sixth day,--the feeling of ease, and the ready
capacity to digest food, and the growing hope of final cure, fed as it
is by present relief,--all conspire to make most patients contented and
tractable.
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