Clinical lectures on neurasthenia / by Thomas D. Savill.

  • Savill, Thomas Dixon, 1856-1910.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical lectures on neurasthenia / by Thomas D. Savill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    122/196 (page 102)
    question which I ought to pursue further on the present occasion. These are probably the two chief causes in operation among the lower classes; but there is a third, which is perhaps the chief cause of the increase in the disease among the upper and great middle classes: to wit, the greater pace at which we live. The introduction of railways and other improved means of communication, the large proportional increase of town dwellers, as compared with rural folk, all tend largely to increase the rate at which life is carried on. This is especially so in the metropolis, where nearly every other person you meet seems to be trying to get two days' work into one. There is possibly a fourth cause in operation. In modern times the increased prosperity of the masses has led, I am persuaded, to a proportionate increase in the amount of drinking amongst them. This I have had many oppor¬ tunities of observing, and especially at Warrington—which may be taken as a very fair type of an average provincial town—where day after day, for nearly two years, I mixed freely with the masses.1 It was quite a remarkable event when I came across what could be really called a “ steady man,” and a comparatively rare one, a steady woman. Much the same may be observed among the masses in the Metro¬ polis, though not perhaps to quite the same extent. The conditions now compare unfavourably with those of former times, when these same people had more limited means and less opportunity to drink. Now, the effects of alcoholism on the nervous system of the individual are well known, but the effects upon the progeny are not sufficiently realised. Again and again have you had the opportunity here of seeing these 1 Having been deputed by the Royal Commission on Vaccination to investigate the small-pox epidemic, 1892-3, in that town.