In the doubt I am rather given to insisting on rest, but the rest I like for them is not at all their notion of rest.

To lie abed half the day, and sew a little and read a little, and be interesting as invalids and excite sympathy, is all very well, but when they are bidden to stay in bed a month, and neither to read, write, nor sew, and to have one nurse, who is not a relative,--then repose becomes for some women a rather bitter medicine, and they are glad enough to accept the order to rise and go about when the doctor issues a mandate which has become pleasantly welcome and eagerly looked for.

I do not think it easy to make a mistake in this matter unless the woman takes with morbid delight to the system of enforced rest, and unless the doctor is a person of feeble will.

I have never met myself with any serious trouble about getting out of bed any woman for whom I thought rest needful, but it has happened to others, and the man who resolves to send any nervous woman to bed must be quite sure that she will obey him when the time comes for her to get up.
I have, of course, made use of every grade of rest for my patients, from repose on a lounge for some hours a day up to entire rest in bed.

In milder forms of neurasthenic disease, in cases of slight general depression not properly to be called melancholias, in the lesser grades of pure brain-tire, or where this is combined with some physical debility, I often order a "modified" or "partial rest." A detailed schedule of the day is ordered for such patients, with as much minuteness of care as for those undergoing "full rest" in bed.