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

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

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    reply to questions, and also voluntarily, that in all their Uves they had never suffered from any other symptom of nervous diseases than that one; whereas, on further examination, I have found that the symptoms which sent them to me was only one of a large family or army of troubles which had annoyed and followed them for years. To study these cases successfully, one must, therefore, give much time and thought, and either by correspondence or personal interview—preferably, of course, the latter—obtain accurate, and as far as possi- ble complete, knowledge of all their symptoms, includ- ing those even the most seemingly trifling and unim- portant, and even fanciful. The effect of this scientific analysis of cases is not to make our patients hypochondriacal, but to remove their hypochondria. The worst enemy of the emotions is the intellect, and by getting a patient intellectually interested in his own case, by assisting him to face the enemy, we can put him in a position to understand that his troubles, serious as they may be, are not so serious as he had feared. It is very often necessary to ascertain the condition of all or nearly all of the important organs and func- tions. The eyes, the ears, the spinal cord, the diges- tion, the reproductive organs should be inquired into with more or less detail. Many of these cases, when we see them for the first time, have passed through certain stages of the disease, symptoms wliicli tliey have forgotten, and the existence of which they will deny, for the sole reason that they have forgotten them, and not from any desire to deceive us. Experiences of this kind are most suggestive illus- trations of the limitations of the human memory—a subject which I have discussed elsewhere. It is one of the blessed orderings of nature that we can and do