416 THE TREATMENT OF DISEASES. 



and development, is very essential, and for growing boys and girls nine or ten hours 

 is not too much. A good portion of the day should be passed in the open air, and 

 close, badly ventilated school-rooms are to be sedulously avoided. The dull, heavy 

 headache from which children often suffer after prolonged study not unfrequently 

 ends in neuralgia. In the warmer months of the year, it is a capital plan to make 

 children learn their lessons out in the fresh air or in a summer-house. Of course 

 in many cases this is impossible, but with people living in the country and having a 

 garden, however small, it might be done without the slightest trouble, and it is a 

 little point well worth attending to. No stimulants of any kind should be taken 

 either in the form of tea, coffee, or spirituous liquors. Milk is a capital drink 

 for young people, and what can be better than a draught of pure spring water 

 if you can get it. The cold bath, or sea or river bathing, will do much to ward 

 off that condition of general debility which is so favourable to the develop- 

 ment of all neuralgic affections. The greatest attention must be paid to 

 fche mental and physical development, but there should be no superfluous 

 loading of the mind with useless knowledge. Young people should be led to 

 devote themselves to earnest, systematic, and yet interesting study. No culti- 

 vation of vanity or ambition should be permitted ; there should be no attendance on 

 frivolous or vicious theatrical performances, but the great aim should be a true 

 devotion to poetry, music, and art. Excessive reading of trashy novels is one of 

 the conditions most favourable to the development of neuralgia. The increasing 

 precocity of boys and girls, in their familiarity with the most objectionable aspects 

 of passion and intrigue, is steadily fed, in the present day, by a system that only too 

 frequently allows unlimited access to literature which is ab once devoid of all true 

 literary and artistic merit, and replete with sensational incidents of the most per- 

 nicious character. The same degrading tendency is to be noticed in many of the 

 most popular dramatic and public exhibitions of the day, their main characteristic 

 being too often bad art and thinly-veiled sensuality, which is all the more hurtful for 

 being veiled at all. As has been truly said, it would be a hundred times better that 

 a boy, or even a girl, should study the frank, out-spoken descriptions to be found in 

 Shakespeare or Fielding, with all their occasional coarseness, than that they should 

 enervate their minds with the sickly trash that is most current and most popular 

 at the present day in the theatre and circulating library. 



Those who have already suffered from neuralgia and are anxious to avoid a relapse 

 should carefully avoid all influences which are known to be hurtful, such, for instance, 

 as exposure to cold, insufficient or indigestible food, and mental or bodily over- 

 exertion. People engaged in business or professional work should endeavour to get 

 a month or six weeks' holiday every summer, and should utilise it for obtaining a 

 renewed supply of health and energy. Care should be taken to avoid mental excite- 

 ment, disturbances of the digestive organs, and, speaking generally, all those 

 injurious influences which are recognised as being favourable to the induction of a 

 paroxysm. Avoidance of exposure to cold and wet, and to draughts of air, is 

 especially important. 



"When neuralgia is fully developed these measures will have to be observed with 

 increased care and attention. The food should be good and abundant, especially in 



