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Page 56
In the condition known as neurasthenia, which is often taken as a type
of a functional disease, the basal and intrinsic cause is activity of
the nervous system with the using up of material which is not
compensated for by the renewal which comes in repose and sleep.
Neurasthenia is one of the common conditions of our civilization,
found among children and adults, the poor and rich, the idle and the
factory worker; it is rife in the scholastic professions and among
those who earn their living by brain work. It seems to be more common
in the upper classes and particularly in the women, but this is
because these are more subject to medical care and the condition is
more in evidence. There are all sorts of symptoms attached to the
condition, for the unusual mental action can be variously expressed.
The cerebral form has been thus described by a well-known medical
writer: "One of the most characteristic features of cerebral
neurasthenia is a weary brain. The sensation is familiar enough to any
fagged man, especially if he fall short of sleep. Impressions seem to
go half into one's head and there sink into a woolly bed and die.
Voices sound far off, the lines of a book run into one another and the
meaning of them passes unperceived. Doors bang and windows rattle as
they never did before; if a shoestring breaks, an imprecation is upon
the lips. Business matters are in a conspiracy to go wrong. Letters
are left unopened partly from want of will, partly from a senseless
dread lest they contain bad news. At night the patient tosses on his
bed possessed by all the cares which blacken with darkness. Headache
is common, loss of memory is distressing, and in severe cases it is
wider and deeper than mere inattention can explain. There is often the
torture of acute hearing, or an inability to suppress attention; the
hater of clocks and crowing cocks is a neurasthenic." The disease is
especially common in the women players of the social game, and its
unhappy victims too often seek relief from the nervous irritability
which is a common early symptom in still greater nervous excitement.
It is a sad commentary on our civilization that one of the means of
treatment for these persons which has been found efficacious is to
supply them with some restful household occupation such as knitting or
plain sewing, and there are institutions which combine refuge from
social activities, often called duties, with simple occupation.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] By structure as used in this wide sense, there must be
understood not merely the anatomical structure, which is revealed by
the dissecting knife and microscope, but molecular structure, or the
manner in which elements are arranged to form the molecule, as well.
CHAPTER XII
THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF MEDICINE IN THE LAST FIFTY YEARS.--THE
INFLUENCE OF DARWIN.--PREVENTIVE MEDICINE.--THE DISSEMINATION OF
MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE.--THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONDITIONS IN RECENT YEARS
WHICH ACT AS FACTORS OF DISEASE.--FACTORY LIFE.--URBAN LIFE.--THE
INCREASE OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN PEOPLES.--THE INTRODUCTION OF PLANT
PARASITES.--THE INCREASE IN ASYLUM LIFE.--INFANT MORTALITY.--WEALTH
AND POVERTY AS FACTORS IN DISEASE.
Certain conditions have arisen in the past fifty years which have
profoundly affected the thoughts, the beliefs and the activities of
man. Within this period what is generally known as Darwinism,
including under this evolution, has developed. Unlike theories which
came from philosophical speculation only, the theory of evolution was
one which could be subjected to observation and experiment. It freed
man's mind from dogmas, it stimulated the imagination, it enlarged the
territory in which it seemed possible to extend knowledge by the
methods of science, and has resulted in an enormous increase of
knowledge. This has been more striking in medical science than
elsewhere, and in this of more far-reaching influence. Evolution
coincided with another important development. History shows that all
great periods of civilization have at their back sources of energy. In
the civilizations of the past such sources of energy have come from
the enslavement of conquered peoples or from commerce, or more direct
forms of robbery, which have enabled a favored class to appropriate
for its purposes the results of the work of others. While these
sources have not been absent in the development of our civilization,
the great source of energy has come from the rapid, and usually
wasteful and reckless, utilization of the stored energy of the earth.
The almost incredible advance in medical and other forms of scientific
knowledge and the utilization of this knowledge is largely due to the
greater forces which we have become possessed of.
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