HORSE-BACK RIDING. 85 



cause or develop this hypochondriacal condition, and 

 that it is only after long solicitation that the faculties 

 involved can be made to perform their functions in 

 the irregular way which characterizes the disease. 

 It is to this that the greater proportion of hypochon- 

 driacs in cities than in the country is due. In cities 

 the impressions made upon the mind in a given time 

 are much more numerous than in the country ; the 

 struggle for place, and even for existence, much 

 fiercer. 



In the city very often the excessive mental labor 

 seriously impairs the bodily health ; in the country 

 the quiet daily routine is rarely departed from. 



There is scarcely a physician in our large cities 

 who has not had sufferers of a nervous temperament 

 and an impressionable and irresolute character come 

 to him seeking relief from this malady. Anxious 

 beyond measure, melancholy in the extreme, per- 

 petually uneasy about their health, they everywhere 

 seek new remedies, and alas ! but only making the 

 fortune of some quack. They describe with the most 

 scrupulous exactness a host of diseases from which 

 they believe themselves to suffer. 



To whoever will listen they will give the most 

 minute details of their existence ; each day they dis- 

 cover some new state or phenomena of their disease. 

 Their minds continually dwelling upon the thought 

 that a sudden and perhaps a very near death may 

 come at any moment, they go to the physician and 



