Too many women, especially among the lower classes, think it "pretty" to be nervous.
The country practitioner will tell you of the precious hours he loses every week in hearkening to the recital of personal discomforts as poured into his professional ears by farmers' wives.

And the beginning, middle, and end of all their plaints is "my nerves." Anything, from a sprained ankle to consumption, is attributed to or augmented by these necessary adjuncts to the human anatomy.
Not long ago I was talking to the ignorant mother of a jaundiced, colicky child of two years of age.
"What does she eat ?" I asked.
"Well, she takes fancies, and her latest notion is that she won't eat nothin' but ginger-nuts and bananas.

So she mostly lives on them.
Sometimes she suffers awful." "From indigestion ?" "Oh, no!" patronizingly.

"She inherits all my nervous weakness.

Her nerves get the upper hand of her, and she turns pale and shivers all over, and then she looks as if she would go into the spasms." "But," I suggested, "don't you think that is caused by acute indigestion ?" "No, ma'am.