Clinical lectures on neurasthenia.

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

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Clinical lectures on neurasthenia. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    175/196 (page 155)
    histories of gastric dilatation often exhibit no nervous symptoms. Erb (1893) speaks of the increasing nervousness of our times, of which neurasthenia is the most common form. There is a disturbance in the nutrition of the nerve elements, occurring more especially after mental overwork, emotional overstrain, or a combination of those two factors. In other cases only a physical cause is present ; of such the chief are muscular over-exertion, sexual excesses, convalescence from fevers and influenza, and the abuse of alcohol, tea, or tobacco. Ldwenfeld (1893) considered that the conditions of physiological fatigue must be better understood before we can satisfactorily explain neurasthenia. In health the nerve- tissues are repaired during sleep ; but in neurasthenia the balance is not made up during sleep. The condition of the brain being so dependent on its blood-supply, as evidenced by the exhaustion or even unconsciousness consequent on hunger or haemorrhage, it is possible that a chronic cerebral exhaustion is due to a defective development of the cerebral vessels. The term Traumatic Neurosis is employed to express any functional nervous condition arising after an accident. The three forms usually met with are, hysteria, neurasthenia, and hystero-neurasthenia. In Charcot's experience the last- named was the most frequent; Lowenfeld in Germany found neurasthenia more common, and was the first to show that Traumatic Neurasthenia differed in no way, excepting in its cause, from the recognised form of neurasthenia. Various opinions are held as to the origin of Traumatic Neurasthenia ; some ascribing its origin chiefly to the mental, others to the physical, effects of the accident.