Neurasthenia / by Gilbert Ballet ; translated from the third French edition by P. Campbell Smith.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Neurasthenia / by Gilbert Ballet ; translated from the third French edition by P. Campbell Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    This last clause is in decided disagreement with the statement on p. 15 that the cases in which heredity acts as a predisposing cause amount to only 40 per cent, of all cases. As against this, Prof. Dana, of New York, holds that there is inherited weakness of nerve structure in the vast majority of the patients.^ Apart from certain objections to the word inherited in this connection, my experience goes to confirm Prof. Dana's opinion. I have very rarely been unable to trace either a neurotic family history, or a personal history of neurasthenia minor, in patients with the major complaint, and anatomi- cal stigmata of degeneracy are very common. Here it may be pointed out that the word neurotic, when it is not applied to some recognised and well defined neurosis or psychosis, always refers to neurasthenia minor. In what way do worry, emotion, and intoxica- tions exacerbate the congenital form of neuras- thenia, so as to produce the major complaint? Neurasthenic symptoms occur in certain diseases in which there have been found products of imperfect metabolism (such as ^-oxybutyric acid in diabetes) which give rise to phenomena of fatigue in a muscle that is irrigated with them.'' Now the condition of degeneracy is accompanied by faulty metabolism, and this is increased by 1 Twentieth Century Practice of Medicine, Vol. X, p. 753. 2 See paper read at the meeting of the Brit. Med. Assoc., 1906, by Prof. Lee, New York.