A practical treatise on nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia) : its symptoms, nature, sequences, treatment / by George M. Beard ; edited, with notes and additions, by A.D. Rockwell.

  • Beard, George M. (George Miller), 1839-1883.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia) : its symptoms, nature, sequences, treatment / by George M. Beard ; edited, with notes and additions, by A.D. Rockwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    strongly to resist exhaustive influences, but, even when those influences prevail, has inherent power of rapid recuperation after the disappearance of the exciting cause. These exciting causes, unquestion- ably the same in the hereditary and acquired neu- roses, are, broadly speaking, two—namely, fatigue and autotoxis. As to the relative importance of these two provocative causes, who can say? Both are accompaniments of civilization, especially the former, and the higher the civilization the greater the ravages of fatigue. There is, moreover, no defin- ite line of demarcation enabling us to say that in this case the results are due to fatigue and in that to autotoxis. Fatigue in itself brings autotoxis and autotoxis fatigue, but primarily the pathologic changes are due to one or the other. It is not alone, nor principally, muscular fatigue from over-exertion, nor mental fatigue from over- intellectual strain, that is meant when speaking of fatigue as the cause of neural disease. Psychic excitation, when repeated and prolonged, is to the last degree destructive to mental and phy- sical stability. Excessive and long-continued mental effort is undoubtedly responsible for many cases of nervous breakdown. If to this is added the strain of continual worry, the danger is materially in- creased ; but these combined agencies, so inimical to the normal functioning of the pyramidal or psychic cells of the cortex, cannot be compared in deadly energy to the constant impact upon the nerve units