The Copper Country Evening News

HOMILY ON NERVOUSNESS.

Some Practical Ideas That Are Drawn by a Thinking Layman.

The most casual glance at the columns of the newspapers betrays the fact that nervous complaints, as recently asserted by the medical profession, are greatly on the increase. Comparison will demonstrate that we Americans are becoming, if we are not already, the most highly strung and nervous people in the world.

But nervousness, as expressed by various well meaning citizens, seems to be a certain resentment against noise. I am considering the point from the vantage or disadvantage of a layman. Is mere noise the cause or simply the evidence of nervousness? That's what I want to know. To be clearer, is mere noise the creator of nervousness, or is the universal complaint of these noises merely the evidence of growing nervousness? Most of the errors of reasoning, I believe, are from the confusion of cause and effect.

When a letter carrier suddenly and unexpectedly pipes his thin, shrill whistle up a vibrant hallway and causes me to start, it is easy and natural to say he makes me nervous. And when an elevated train brakes down, approaches a station, causing every wheel to scream and shriek, it sets my teeth on edge, and the charge is instantly filed against the railroad company of creating nervous disorders. Whereas, the facts are I was nervous already, and the letter carrier's shrill whistle only demonstrated it, and if I had not been a sufferer from nervousness the elevated noises would simply have had no effect upon my mind whatever. And if I sat down and wrote to the newspapers complaining against all these manifold noises I should only advertise my nervous condition to the whole community.

I am aware that I shall run counter to the popular theory when I assert that noises have nothing whatever to do with nervousness. The nervous person will jump higher and quicker when silently approached from the rear, being unexpectedly confronted silently in the dark, being suddenly touched by some one till that moment unseen or unheard, or even prove more nervous under conditions of absolute silence. It can be easily demonstrated that a man who can sleep like a babe on the line of the elevated road will be awakened at the crow of chickens in the country, and yet be unable to sleep at no sounds at all. The man who is disturbed by the noises of the city is a nervous man who would toss all night on a sleepless couch in the dead quiet of the country. The only reason there is more nervousness is because our mode of life creates nervousness. We drink more, smoke more, eat more and go the pace generally—and then lay it on to noises.—New York Herald.