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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    EDITOR'S PREFACE. Neurasthenia is now almost a household word, and, equally with the term malaria, affords to the profes- sion a convenient refuge when perplexed at the recital of a multitude of symptoms seemingly without logical connection or adequate cause. [The diagnosis of neu- rasthenia, moreover, is often as satisfactory to the patient as it is easy to the physician, and by no means helps to reduce the number who have been duly cer- tified to as neurasthenic, and who ever after, with an air too conscious to be concealed, allude to themselves as the victims of nervous exhaustion. The doctrine to be taught and strongly enforced is that many of these patients are not neurasthenic, and under hardly any conceivable circumstance could they become neuras- thenic. They do not belong to the type out of which neurasthenia is born, either mentally or physically. Many of them are unintellectual, phlegmatic, and intolerably indolent, and are pleased at a diagnosis which touches the nerves rather than the stomach, bowels, and liver. Instead, therefore, of rest, quiet, and soothing draughts, they need mental and physi- cal activity, less rather than more food, depletion rather than repletion.] These patients are lithaemic and not neurasthenic.