"'Your trouble is nervous. There is nothing we can cut out and there is nothing we can give medicine for.' With these words a young college student was dismissed from one of our great diagnostic clinics. The physician was right. In a nervous disorder there is nothing to cut out and there is nothing to give medicine for. Nevertheless there is something to be done--something which is as definite and scientific as a prescription or a surgical operation. Psychotherapy, which is treatment by the mental measures of psycho-analysis and re-education, is an established procedure in the scientific world to-day. Nervous disorders are now curable, as has been proved by the clinical results in scores of cases from civil life, under treatment by Freud, Janet, Prince, Sidis, DuBois, and others; and in thousands of cases of war neuroses as reported by Smith and Pear, Eder, MacCurdy, and other military observers.
In this 1873 short novel for children--by an author who influenced Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and many other fantasy writers--young Willie's wise father, a doctor, lets his son learn by himself how to first work with his hands, then his mind. His resulting benefit Willie, his family, and the world at large.
