Dr. Thomas Clark Hinkle opens his 1921 treatise with a bold claim: the cure for "nerves" lies not in medicine but in the regulation of eating and living. He invokes the biblical story of Naaman to frame his method as deceptively simple—a remedy so straightforward that sufferers may initially dismiss it. Hinkle explicitly denies the need for medical care in nervous breakdowns, positioning himself as a counselor who dictates what, how, and how much the patient should eat and drink, along with how they should spend their time.

The catalog subjects—diet in disease, nervous system diseases and hygiene—accurately reflect the book's focus, but the excerpts reveal a more combative tone than the clinical headings suggest. Hinkle targets overeating and rapid eating as the root causes, and his prescription extends beyond diet to outdoor life and exercise, all delivered with a moralistic fervor that borrows from temperance rhetoric.

The Simplicity of the Cure

Hinkle repeatedly emphasizes that his remedy is simple, almost to the point of being despised, as Naaman despised Elisha's instruction to wash in the Jordan. He quotes Cornaro—"Whosoever wishes to eat much must eat little"—to underscore that longevity requires daily restraint. The author insists that no single measure suffices; the cure demands common sense across several avenues: diet, exercise, and mental attitude. He dismisses the idea that some people are "born to success and long life," calling such reasoning "all nonsense." Instead, he offers a system that, if followed, guarantees recovery from nervous breakdown and prevents it in children of nervous parentage.

Historical Exemplars of Moderation

To bolster his argument, Hinkle cites historical figures who lived long, active lives through moderate eating. He notes that John Wesley, at eighty-eight, walked six miles to a preaching appointment and claimed the only difference from age twenty was that he could not "run quite so fast." Wesley was a "spare eater" who traveled forty to sixty miles daily on horseback. Similarly, Dr. Eliot, ex-President of Harvard, is quoted as saying he "always eaten moderately of simple food in great variety." Chauncey Depew's eighty-seventh birthday speech is invoked to reinforce that liking a thing is reason to give it up. These anecdotes serve as proof that moderation, not medical intervention, leads to health and longevity.

A Warning Against Over-Sympathy

Hinkle uses a striking metaphor to critique misplaced concern: a woman who pities a thin neighbor while herself being a "walking stone quarry" of gallstones. He urges readers not to worry about dieting, assuring them they belong to a "most fortunate class of people" if they adopt his rules. The tone is direct and occasionally sarcastic, as when he mocks "calamity-howlers" who believe some are born to fail. This section reveals Hinkle's rhetorical strategy: he combines dietary advice with a moral rebuke of self-pity and overindulgence, framing nervous disorders as largely self-inflicted through poor habits.

Readers should approach this book as a period piece of early 20th-century self-help medicine, where dietary reform is intertwined with moral exhortation. Hinkle's evidence is anecdotal rather than clinical, drawing on historical figures and hypothetical cases. The work is valuable for understanding how nervous disorders were conceptualized before modern psychiatry, and for observing the rhetorical tactics used to persuade patients to adopt lifestyle changes. The catalog subjects accurately describe the content, but the excerpts show a text more polemical than its headings suggest.