For about thirty years I suffered almost constantly from so-called nervous diseases until March, 1902. In my experience human existence was very largely a torture of dyspepsia, insomnia, and melancholia, which I now know to be illusions of mortal sense, and which are not comprised in the facts of Being. I struggled with sleeplessness for nearly twenty years. Three times I was compelled to abandon business, and I was unfitted for work altogether for nearly five years. Only those who have assumed domestic and commercial responsibilities under similar conditions can conceive of the disadvantages which these so-called hereditary handicaps impose on men who have their own way to make in business life. The constant mental turmoil and irritability caused me, in ignorance of man's true status in the realm of existence, to desire death much of the time.
In 1901 I went to Europe in search of health, but before going I was told by a physician for whom I hold a high personal regard, and who was very kind in many ways but very wrong in his predictions, that I could never be well. Similar statements were made by a physician in Berlin where I took medical treatment after suffering severely for several months.
After returning to America some improvement was evidenced, and for business reasons I declared to my friends that I was in excellent health. At that time I thought the human will sufficient,—that a sufferer need only "to think himself well" and so proclaim his condition, in order to be well. But in a very few months I was again slipping backward, relying on material remedies to induce sleep, and was realizing that nothing had been gained by the experiment. The outlook was dark and forbidding. It was seriously augmented by business and other complications which were exceedingly trying.
