This affection, also popularly known as Nervous Prostration, or Nervous Weakness, and, to the medical profession, as Neurasthenia, or Nervous Asthenia, is becoming alarmingly prevalent.
The wear, tear and strain of modern life are concentrated upon the nervous system. The care and consequent fret, worry and labor of this age are greater than ever before known.
The result of this extreme activity, is exhaustion and weakness.
Physical bankruptcy is the result of drawing incessantly upon the reserve capital of nerve force.
We extract the following from an article which recently appeared In the New York _Tribune_:
AN AGE OF NERVOUSNESS.
The stone age, the bronze age and the iron age, we have heard of; likewise of the Dark Ages, and other self-marking eras in human history. As for the present, it might with fitness be known as the age of engineering, or of electricity, both of which proud titles it has won by its achievements. Yet there is also a less roseate view to be taken of it, and another title to be given to it, based upon its too-evident frailties; namely, that it is an age of nervousness.
Such is the view taken by the famous psychologist, Dr. William Erb, of the University of Heidelberg. Nervousness, he says, meaning nervous excitement, nervous weakness, is the growing malady of the day, the physiological feature of the age.
Hysteria, hypochondria and neurasthenia are increasing with fearful rapidity among both sexes. They begin in childhood, if not indeed inherited. Minds are overburdened in school, with too much teaching or misdirected teaching. The pleasures of social life follow, overexerting the already enfeebled nervous system. Business life is made up of hurry and worry and shocks and excitements. Society, science, business, art, literature, even religion, are all pervaded by a spirit of unrest, and by a competitive zeal which urges its victims on remorselessly.
No man knows repose. The result is, wreckage. The pharmacopoeia is overcrowded with nerve tonics, nerve stimulants, nerve sedatives. The medical profession devotes its best energies to the treatment of neuropaths. And as a people we are, or are becoming, excitable, irritable, morbid, prone to sudden collapse through snapping of the overtense chord of the nervous vitality.
Nowhere are the rush and hurry and overstrain of life more marked than in this much-achieving Nation. The comparative youth and freshness and vigor of the American people enable them to do and to endure what would be beyond the power of an older and more worn-out community. Yet there is no disguising the fact that the pace tells even here, and often tells to kill. True, all the tendencies of the age are in that direction. Inventions, discoveries, achievements of science, all add to the sum of that which is to be learned, and widen the field in which there is work to be done. What we need to learn is, however, that all these things are for man, not man for them. If knowledge has increased, we should take more time for acquiring it, knowing that, with the consequent increase of power, we shall be able to achieve as much afterward in the shorter time as our predecessors did in the longer time their briefer study afforded. Greater ability should mean not only greater results wrought, but fuller repose as well. For it would be a sorry ending of this splendid age of learning and of labor to be known as an age of unsettled brains and shattered nerves.
A distinguished medical authority says:
"It is proved beyond any dispute that nervousness is the characteristic malady of the American Nation, growing upon them in a frightfully accelerated ratio every year, and threatening them with disasters at no distant date which the mind shrinks from contemplating."
He continues as follows: "The number of deaths from this cause is already appalling and is steadily and rapidly increasing.
In some of the busy centres the tables of mortality show that the proportion of nerve deaths has multiplied more than twenty times in the last forty years, and that now the nerve deaths number more than one-fourth of all the deaths recorded. What is most shocking in these returns, this fearful loss of life occurs mainly among young people of both sexes."
"This means that the Americans are fast becoming a very short-lived people; and that if they were shut in on themselves for only a few years, without any influx of vitality by immigration, the publication of the census would send a pang of horror and alarm throughout the land."
The annual report of the State Board of Charities of the State of New York for 1894, shows that while the increase in the State's population from 1880 to 1892 was 28 per cent., the increase of the insane in State institutions for the same period was 83 per cent.!
The enjoyment of the fruits of fortune, earned at the expense of the nerve cells, is an impossibility. The quiet and harmony of the nerve centres and nervous system are gone. Rest is impossible, continuance of work only causes increased jarring and discord of that many stringed and wonderful mechanism.
SYMPTOMS. It is well nigh impossible to give the symptoms of this disease in an orderly manner, as the affection gives rise to a thousand and one varying and ofttimes vague symptoms. The particular part of the nervous system affected, and also the cause and character of the attacks modify the symptoms. The eminent Dr. Wood says: "Nervous exhaustion may, in the beginning, affect the whole of the nervous system, or it may be at first purely local, and co-exist with lack of general nervous strength."
SPERMATORRHEA furnishes many examples of the local form of neurasthenia, or exhaustion, the sexual centres being primarily affected. In these cases, however, sooner or later, the whole nervous system becomes Involved. So in other forms of the disorder, the exhaustion at first local, finally, if neglected, implicates the whole organism. Often, in brain exhaustion, the symptoms are at first purely local. Almost always the cause of a local neurasthenia, or exhaustion, is excessive use of the part. Thus, cerebral or brain exhaustion, or debility, is usually the result of mental overwork, while sexual asthenia, or weakness is generally due to abuse of the sexual organs or to sexual excesses. When to the brain fatigue, or exhaustion, are added the depressing effects of excessive anxiety, or allied emotions, the symptoms from the first are more general, and the exhaustion may effect chiefly a single function of the brain. In pure brain exhaustion, the loss of a disposition to work, is usually the first symptom, the sufferer finding that it constantly requires a more and more painful effort of the will to perform the allotted task. At first, there is loss of the power of fixing the attention, and this, by and by, is accompanied by a weakness of the memory; disturbances of sleep are frequent; various abnormal sensations in the head are complained of. In most cases there is not absolute headache, but a feeling of weight or fullness, or an indescribable distress, usually aggravated by mental effort. It is true that in some cases of very dangerous brain tire, mental labor is performed with extraordinary vigor and ease; the power of work, is, for the time, markedly increased, and even the quality of the product may be raised.
The patient may glory in a wild intellectual exaltation, a sense of mental power, with an almost uncontrollable brain activity. It is probable, however, that these cases are not instances of pure neurasthenia, or brain exhaustion, but that there is active congestion of the gray matter of the brain. In these cases the disease is very prone to end in serious organic affection of the brain.
[Illustration: Melancholy. ]
Severe brain exhaustion may be associated with good spirits, but usually there is marked depression, and this perversion of function generally goes on, if the disease be not checked, to decided melancholy. The will power, like all the other functional activities of the brain, is prone to be weakened, morbid fears may finally develop, and at last, that which was at the beginning a single brain exhaustion, may end in persistent hypochondria, followed by insanity.
Peculiar sensations are common in neurasthenia, such as chilliness, unnatural itching, a feeling as though ants or other insects were crawling on the skin. Eruptions are common. Attacks of neuralgia are often frequent and sometimes severe, being usually worse in those persons of nervous ancestry. In some cases there is a lack of proper sensation, in others an unnatural sensitiveness. There is also in many cases a peculiar tenderness over some portion of the spinal column, especially in women.
IN WOMEN, with nervous disturbance of the sexual organs, there is frequently great pain felt during menstruation; in others, ovarian irritation and a so-called "irritable," or sensitive uterus, giving rise to manifold nervous and hysterical symptoms, sometimes culminating in convulsions or "fits." In not a small proportion of the uterine diseases which are generally only locally treated by physicians, the local disease is largely and sometimes solely the expression of a general weakness of nervous origin.
SELF-ABUSE AND EXCESSES.
It is well known that Onanism, or masturbation, as well as sexual excesses, produce an exhaustion of the nerve centres presiding over the sexual functions. This is the common history of spermatorrhea or loss of the virile fluid by nightly emissions, accompanied by lascivious dreams.
GENERAL NEURASTHENIA, or nervous exhaustion, may also produce a local weakness of the sexual centres of the brain and spinal cord, with symptoms at least resembling those of partial impotency and great irritability of the sexual organs, or a complete impotence, with premature seminal discharge whenever coition is attempted. Many times this condition results from excessive intellectual labor, even with no sexual excesses or abuses. Nocturnal, or nightly emissions, are not always experienced in these cases. When they do occur, the debilitating losses of vital fluid react upon the brain, robbing the victim of courage and manliness and exciting various phases of morbid fear and sensitiveness.
Many cases of nervous debility, or exhaustion, are the result of long continued malarial poisoning, diarrhea, Bright's disease, exhausting fevers or other debilitating affections. Numerous are the cases in which the patient is able to trace the origin of the malady back to an attack of influenza, or grip. An epidemic of the latter disease is sure to be followed by numerous cases of nervous prostration, or exhaustion.
CARE SHOULD BE EXERCISED.
In all cases, it is necessary to make careful examinations in order to detect any obscure chronic disease which may exist. In women, nervous prostration often develops without perceptible cause at the age of puberty or at the "change of life." Overwork, especially overwork combined with worry, are fruitful causes of nervous exhaustion in both sexes.
AN OVERWORKED NERVOUS SYSTEM
is always an exhausted nervous system. The nerve cells have been robbed of their vital forces. All the nutritive organs of the body suffer from the lack of nerve control, and the blood-vessels that supply the nerve centres are not in proper tone. Hence the supply of blood and the action of the heart are greatly interfered with. Many times, the most troublesome symptom, early in the disease, is an excessive perspiration of the hands and feet.
IMPOVERISHED OR POOR BLOOD.
A badly nourished nervous system is irritable. Many of the symptoms of weakness and lack of nutrition resemble those found in congestion, or stimulation from excess of blood. Then, too, we find sometimes that poor, thin, watery blood, not suitable for nourishment although sent in large amount to the brain, does not properly nourish that organ. There will still be brain exhaustion, as the nervous structures have lost their power of absorbing the nutrient materials from the blood which, being poor in quality, does not vitalize and strengthen the nerve centres as it should. In such cases thought is an effort and sustained mental exertion is impossible; the memory is uncertain, and the patient drowsy. Occasionally, after rest, there may be flashes of brilliancy, but generally they are brief.
DANGER OF CONTRACTING INTEMPERANCE.
The patient often learns that a small amount of wine or spirits is a temporary aid, and sometimes its habitual use is begun in this way.
Stimulants only make a bad matter worse when their use is continued for any considerable length of time. The sufferer becomes more and more dependent upon them and the nervous exhaustion is much aggravated as large quantities are taken to satisfy the morbid craving that has been acquired.
WAKEFULNESS, OR INSOMNIA, is present in many cases; in others, there is unusual drowsiness but sleep gives neither rest nor strength; often it is disturbed by dreams that exhaust the vitality and leave the patient more tired than when rest was sought.
HEADACHE is one of the most annoying symptoms and sometimes is very persistent. It may incapacitate the patient for the ordinary duties of life. After laying down awhile and being quiet, the headache may be relieved, but recurs on attempting to go about.
FRETFULNESS. Sometimes, owing to the discomfort experienced, there is likely to be a change of disposition, irritability of temper, fretfulness and peevishness; a tendency to an irascibility all out of proportion to the real provocation. In many cases there is dizziness, and frequently noises in the head, ringing in the ears, spots before the eyes, twitching of the muscles, eyelids or eye muscles, and at times dimness of vision, or sudden spells when the sight is not satisfactory.
At times there is a feeling of discomfort, as if the quantity of good air were not sufficient to aerate the blood, and there is sighing or a desire to sit in an open window, or a strong desire to be fanned. The pulse and temperature are usually normal, or a little below, but may rise if any local irritation exists. At times the face is flushed and at others pale. The skin may be dry, or in other cases bathed in perspiration on slight exertion or mental worry. When there is weakness of the nervous system, the disease manifests itself through various organs. Hence, the palpitation of the heart, dyspepsia or acute attacks of indigestion, with colicky pains and heaviness after meals, with eructations or belchings of gas, or local discomfort and unnatural action affecting, at different times, almost every organ of the body. It is well known that insanity may result from the loss of sleep and constant brooding over the symptoms that the patient fails to properly understand.
TREATMENT.
In no class of diseases is greater care, scientific knowledge and skill more necessary than in the treatment of nervous affections. Almost every case is a law unto itself, and must receive careful consideration, pains-taking advice and specially prescribed treatment suited to the peculiarities of the individual. Hereditary influences, causes of the disease and constitutional peculiarities of the patient must all be taken into account.
VALUE OF EXPERIENCE.
Only through extensive experience can the medical practitioner become expert at detecting and successfully meeting, by rational scientific and carefully adapted treatment, the many phases and complications incident to the different forms and stages of this very prevalent malady.
For more than a quarter of a century, the Specialists of the Invalids Hotel and Surgical Institute having charge of this department of practice, have been actively engaged battling with diseases of the nervous system. As a result of this long time and vast experience, they have naturally developed and thoroughly tested many valuable remedial agencies for the relief and cure of this class of sufferers. Many of these can be successfully prescribed and used at the patients' homes without a personal consultation; while others can only be brought into use at our Institution.
TREATMENT AT HOME.
Many cases, especially when the exciting cause of the malady can be easily ascertained, as in spermatorrhea from self-abuse, or sexual excesses, or in women when arising from uterine affections, can be very successfully managed and cured at home. This is also true when the disease is due to the excessive use of tobacco, opium and other narcotics.