A practical treatise on nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia) : its symptoms, nature, sequences, treatment / by George M. Beard ; ed., with notes and additions, by A. D. Rockwell.

  • Beard, George M. (George Miller), 1839-1883.
Date:
1889, ©1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia) : its symptoms, nature, sequences, treatment / by George M. Beard ; ed., with notes and additions, by A. D. Rockwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    grasp whenever we have attempted to seize them and bring them into science; and in discouragement and disgust, and in a spirit of skepticism, which is the highest form of creduUty, physicians, imitating the unscientific example of the laity, have denied the ex- istence of such symptoms, just as they formerly denied the existence of diphtheria and hay fever. Neuras- thenia, indeed, has been the Central Africa of medicine —an unexplored territory into which few men enter, and those few have been compelled to bring reports that have been neither credited nor comprehended. The present work is the result of the experience and study of my entire professional life in the subject to which it relates. The term neurasthenia (nervous exhaustion) is of Greek derivation ['^edpov nerve, « privative, and (T0£V(><i strength], and literally interpreted means lack of nerve strength. My first paper on this subject, based on the study of thirty cases, was prepared in 1868, was read before the New York Medical Journal Association, and was published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Jour- nal, April 29th, 1869, and subsequently appeared in the first edition of Beard and Rockwell's Electricity. This was, so far as I know, the first systematic treat- ise on neurasthenia ever pubUshed, At first the subject excited absolutely no interest in the profession of this country. In Europe the effect was somewhat different. In England, Dr. Hugh Campbell shortly after published