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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    stomach may be fmictionally disordered before the brain, or spinal cord, or other parts or organs, show signs of yielding. The tine philosophy is, that ner- vous dyspepsia is a symptom of the same general pathological condition as all the orders of symptoms here noted, and it may follow or accompany as well as lead this multitudinous army. A literary gentle- man whom I once met gave a history of nervous ex- haustion from over-confinement, that after some years broke out through the pneumogastiic nerve, causing profound and obstinate dyspepsia that for a long time made him a complete invalid; the symptoms were al- most as bad as those of cancer of the stomach, and yet the disturbance was entirely functional, and the patient improved. Flatulence, with annoying rumb- ling in the bowels, these patients complain of very frequently; also nausea and diarrhoea. I am accustomed to diagnosticate nervous dyspepsia from other forms of nervous dyspepsia depending on inflammation or other chronic disturbances, by the following considerations: First, in nervous dyspepsia, the patients feel woi'se when the stomach is empty, and are relieved by eat- ing. Patients of this class have the greatest distress before meals, or when a meal is long delayed; even over-eating is a relief to them. With these persons, mental or physical labor on a perfectly empty stomach is very apt to cause distress—pain in the eyes, pain in the head, general nervous distress all over the body, and j)ain in the stomach itself; indeed, there is no jiart of the organism that will not suffer when mind or body is much exercised on a i)erfectly empty stomach. Secondly, the symptoms of nervous dyspepsia are very capricious, coming and going without traceable cause.