Clinical lectures on neurasthenia / by Thomas Dixon Savill.

  • Savill, Thomas Dixon, 1856-1910.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

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

    10/250
    (March, 1899) The first of these lectures was deUvered as part of the post- graduate course which was organised at the Paddington Infir- mary in the year 1891. AU the other lectures were delivered at the Welbeck Street Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System, during more recent years, and formed part of the post-graduate course of lectures delivered by different mem- bers of the staff. Some of them appeared in The Clinical Journal; and it was at the suggestion of several friends that they are now collected and published. I more readily acceded to this suggestion for three reasons. In the first place, I wished to appeal to a wider audience on a topic always interesting to me, namely, the wealth of clinical material—especially of mental and nervous disorders—in the Metropohtan Workhouses and Infirmaries. Secondly, it has always seemed to me that the profession has taken an unjusti- fiably hopeless view concerning the curabihty of diseases of the nervous system in general, and of the so-called functional disorders, which form so large a part of them in practice, in particular. And, thirdly, it is surely a mistake that the study of neurasthenia, and the methods of coping with the various, and often trivial, symptoms which these patients present, should be omitted from current text-books. As a result of this, not only do many curable patients go unreheved, but a good number have recourse to charlatans. In preparing these lectures for the press the details of the cases have been considerably amphfied, their number supple- mented, and the whole has been carefuUy revised as it passed through the press. Exception may be taken to an absence of reference to the views and works of others. But these lectures do not aim at being anything more than a record of personal experience. The omission—^if the absence of such references can be counted an omission in clinical lectures—is remedied to some extent by an Addendum and Bibliography, which has been prepared under my supervision, by Miss Agnes F. Black- adder, M.D., to whom I am also indebted for valuable assist- ance in the work of revision. Without her aid these lectures would probably not have seen the light for many years to come. Vlll