Nerve troubles, causes and cures / [Cecil Webb-Johnson].

  • Webb-Johnson, Cecil, 1879-1930.
Date:
[1929]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nerve troubles, causes and cures / [Cecil Webb-Johnson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and they will make a long detour rather than pass a hospital. Astrophobia makes nervous women crouch trembling in the cellar when there is a thunder¬ storm. Some people suffer from a rare complaint called bataphobia, in which the patient is obsessed with the dread that the ceiling may come down on him or pictures fall from the wall and strike him. Some people have a nervous horror of high places and dread even to look out of a window in a room on a fourth or fifth floor. A dread of coming down the stairs is allied with this phobia, though the victim will run upstairs without the slightest distress. The descent of the stairs is impossible unless there is a good stout handrail to which the victim can cling. Creeping things, frogs, cats, and mice are dreaded by some people, especially women. The late Lord Roberts, one of the bravest soldiers that England ever had, and a holder of the V.C., had a horror of cats, and could not remain in the same room with one. Other well-known examples of phobias are dread of some specific ill such as appendicitis, and the dread of being destitute, which produces misers and those odd characters who starve themselves to death while lying upon bundles of banknotes hidden in the bed. Some people are haunted all their lives by the fear of going blind or * having a stroke \ These apprehen¬ sions are very common and are purely of nervous origin, as is the dread of insanity. A neurasthenic may tell his doctor that he is terribly afraid he is going mad. (It may relieve the minds of thousands haunted by this dread that people who experience this do not go mad.) A lunatic is convinced that he is sane, even in the earliest stages of mental disease. Those around