Nervous disorder

“ For the other chief form of functional nervous disorder no more appropriate term can be found than that which I have used in this report. The meaning of anxiety-neurosis is also at once apparent. It indicates in direct fashion that anxiety is both the main factor in causation and at the same time one of the leading symptoms. ”

“ Disease may be caused by physical or by psychic forces. A "nervous" disorder is not a physical but a psychic disease. It is caused not by lack of energy but by misdirected energy; not by overwork or nerve-depletion, but by misconception, emotional conflict, repressed instincts, and buried memories. Seventy-five per cent. of all cases of ill-health are due to psychic causes, to disjointed thinking rather than to a disjointed spine. ”

“ On the other hand the subject which has become debilitated by overwork, underfeeding, exhausting disease, or the generation in the system of some depressing poison is likely to show a similar nervous susceptibility, so that at the two extremes of plethora and nervous susceptibility, on the one hand, and anæmia and neurasthenia on the other, we find a corresponding tendency to nervous disorder under comparatively slight causes. ”

“ Paradoxical as it may sound, there is nothing the matter with a nervous person's nerves. The faithful messengers have borne the blame for so long that their name has gotten itself woven into the very language as symbolic of disease. When we speak of nervous prostration, neurasthenia, neuroses, nervousness, and "nerves" we mean that body and mind are behaving badly because of functional disorder. ”

“ The basis of neurasthenia, however, is often or even generally a hereditary taint, a nervous weakness inherited from the parents.
Psychasthenia is a neurosis or psychoneurosis similar to neurasthenia, characterized by an exhaustion of the nervous system, also by weakness of the will, overscrupulousness, fear, and a feeling of the unreality of things.
Neuropathy is a disease or disorder of the nervous system. Psychopathy is a disease or disorder of the mind.
Of late years we often hear people referred to as neurotics, neurasthenics, psychasthenics, neuropaths or psychopaths. ”

“ In both diseases we are dealing essentially with a profound disorder of the nerves and nerve-centres, commencing in local skin-affections which come and go and at length settle, proceeding to implicate the nervous functions generally, impairing the efficiency of the individual, and bringing him to a miserable end. ”

“ These two facts suggest a bright as well as a dark view of disorders of the brain and nervous system in early life. If disorder is more frequent, it is excited by slighter causes, is more likely to be temporary, and even its gravest symptoms, such as convulsions and paralysis, have a less serious import in the one case than in the others. If the grown man has a fit, and still more, if that fit is followed by paralysis, we fear and with reason that some vessel in the brain-substance has given way, or that some grave, probably irreparable damage [Pg 89] has been inflicted on it. ”

“ It cannot happen that it shall ever be extensively inflamed without a coincident exhibition of the greatest disorder in the functions of the nervous organs directly implicated in its structure, or possessing with it physiological relations that could not be safely disturbed. ”

“ Through the brain and spinal cord, thoughts can lead to a paralysing or stimulation of the sympathetic ganglion nodes, and consequently to blushing or blanching of certain peripheral parts. Through disturbance of this mechanism, many nervous disorders arise, such as chilblains, sweats, bleeding of the nose, chills and congestions, various disturbances of the reproductive organs, and, if it lasts long enough, nutritional disturbances in the part of the body supplied by the blood vessels affected. ”

“ It is known only too well today by those who seek to know, that back of all such physical conditions as nervousness, prostration, temporary insanity, nervous disorders, pains resembling rheumatism, hay fever, heart troubles, mental symptoms, nervous chills, morbid forebodings and mild mania, there lurks the abnormal activity of the psychic or "thought body" caused by thoughts and feelings acting abnormally upon the vital centers of the nervous system and mind. ”

“ When, however, that powerful cause of nervous disorders takes the lead, we find far more remarkable symptoms developed, and it then depends on the mental condition of the people among whom they appear whether in their spread they shall take a narrow or an extended range—whether confined to some small knot of zealots they are to vanish without a trace, or whether they are to attain even historical importance. ”

“ Because men, in business and the professions, women, at home or in society, and children at school overtax their mental and nervous forces by work, worry and care. This brings about nervous disorders, indigestion, and eventually mania.
It is not always trouble with the head that causes insanity. It far oftener arises from evils in other parts of the body. The nervous system determines the status of the brain. ”

“ When studying the physiology of nerve-action as we see it in animals, children, and men, and the pathology as we see it in various nervous disorders, as acute insanity, 'delirium tremens, and the like, we soon become aware of the fact that the well-being of the entire nervous system depends mainly on its renovation during a state of repose; and that for the higher portion of the brain, at any rate, this state of repose and rest is synonymous with healthy sleep. ”

“ It is a system which is not peculiar to the Roman Church, nor even to the Christian religion, and it need the less detain our attention, as its effects, so far as they are evil, are mainly seen in general nervous and mental enfeeblement, rather than in the outbreak of explosive nervous disorders, such as convulsion, insanity, or neuralgia. ”

“ It cannot be denied, that the numerous phenomena of nervous disorders, especially the diversified symptoms displayed by hypochondriacal and hysterical persons, doubtless originate chiefly from the same source. We often smile at such complaints as are supposed to arise from a diseased mind, but certainly not with justice. ”

“ In the latter belong our doubts and fears and worries, as well as the other more easily controlled factors in the causation of these purely functional nervous disorders. But even in the case of heredity, it is more the unstable nervous equilibrium that is transmitted than the specific form in which it is manifested in any individual case; and this unstable equilibrium is capable, in no small degree, of being influenced by reeducation along the lines of which we have been speaking. ”

“ He affirmed, therefore, that in science the rejection of average human testimony is the beginning of all wisdom. In his work on "American Nervousness," he treated of the causes of nervous disorders, and of nervousness in general, and of their greater prevalence in America, demonstrating that the great cause of nervous diseases is civilization, other accredited causes being secondary and stationary, and that the cause of the great prevalence of nervous diseases in America is dryness of the air and extremes of heat and cold. ”

“ If perturbation of nerve-function—a disturbance quite different from mere exaltation of the normal development of nerve-force—be the essence of pain, how comes it that pains of the severest type may be produced by changes in structures which are usually described, for practical purposes, as lying outside the nervous system? We must, in the first place, remark that the externality of any bodily tissue to the nervous system is more apparent than real. ”

“ There is no more genuine and obstinate malady on earth than a nervous disease. Because nerves lie in that twilight borderland between mind and matter, body and soul, the real and the ideal, the impression has got abroad that they are little better than figures of speech. Though their disturbances give rise to visions of all sorts there is nothing visionary about them; they are just as genuine and substantial a part of our bodily structure as our bones, muscles, and blood-vessels. ”

“ The technical term for nervousness is psycho-neurosis—disease of the psyche. There are certain "real neuroses" such as paralysis and spinal-cord disease, which involve an organic impairment of nerve-tissue. However, as this book deals only with psychic disturbance, we shall, throughout, use the term neuroses and psycho-neuroses indiscriminately, to denote nervous or functional disorders.
To still other people nervous trouble means fear,—just terrible fear without object or meaning or reason (anxiety neuroses) ; or a definite fear of some harmless object (phobia) ”

“ When we add to this the abnormal strain that is being put on the brain, in many cases, by a forcing plan of mental education, we shall perceive a source not merely of exhaustive expenditure of nervous power, but of secondary irritation of centres like the medulla oblongata, that are probably already somewhat lowered in power of vital resistance, and proportionably irritable. ”

“ It does not apparently shorten life, and does not bring on, so far as I can learn, any other form of nervous disease. It can not, therefore, be said to be in any sense a disease of nervous debility. Those who suffer most from it are the very opposite of neurasthenics or anæmics; they have none of the symptoms detailed in my work on nervous exhaustion; they are full-blooded and strong-nerved, capable of working hard and long at the most toilsome service, and will hold themselves up full and sturdy and enduring, side by side with the hardiest men in the nation. ”

“ Nature will mend the break, but tired, worn, stretched, abused nerves take time to restore. These nerve ailments call for most vigorous mental treatment.
Neurasthenia means debilitated or prostrated nerves and it shows itself first of all by worry. Worry means the inability to relax the attention from a definite fear or fancied hard luck. Worry leads to many physical and mental disorders.
Left alone this worry stage develops into an acute state and brings with it nervous prostration, and sometimes a complete collapse of the will power. ”

“ Neuralgia may be defined as a disease of the nervous system, manifesting itself by pains which, in the great majority of cases, are unilateral, and which appear to follow accurately the course of particular nerves, and ramify, sometimes into a few, sometimes into all, the terminal branches of those nerves. ”

“ The more carefully and exhaustively and dispassionately we study the disorders of the nervous system which come in the field of medicine, the more irresistibly we are drawn to the conclusion that from neurasthenia and hysteria to insanity and paralysis they are every one of them the result of some definite morbid change in some cell or strand of the nervous system. ”

“ I do not say that strong men with robust constitutions never take neuralgia, but all my experience, and that I believe of nearly all medical men, go to prove that it is more frequently an accompaniment of a weakened frame of body, with a nervous system below par. This may have been occasioned by bodily fatigue combined with want of sleep, anxiety of mind, worry, &c., or from debility from whatever cause. ”

“ Men frequently do break down, of course, at an age when their tissues generally are sound enough, and there is no reason, except on the side of their nervous system, why they should not remain in vigorous health for years. But it is greatly more common for the nervous collapse to take the form of insanity, [25] or hypochondriasis, or paralysis, then that of neuralgia. ”

“ This case, the full significance and interest of which will be better seen when we come to discuss the subject of pathology, is an example of physical changes in the nervous system, which are usually delayed to an advanced period of life, occurring altogether prematurely, and bringing with them a kind of neuralgic pain which is far more common in the decline than in morning of life. ”

“ It imagines that powerful peripheral excitements exhaust the irritability of the nerve, and through that of the centres, and induce a state of unimpressibility—analogous to that which exists in a nerve or nerve-centre, which is included in the circuit of a constant current. The nervous force is wasted, and, until an opportunity of repose is afforded to the centre, the faculty of impressibility cannot again revive. ”

“ Distortion is apt to produce nerve-deterioration in both sexes, but especially in the highly strung nervous systems of women.
Unfortunately, the Modern Malady is at present so little understood, that the very people who are betraying the most serious symptoms of nervous weakness are often declared by those about them to be in excellent health, a mistake which the sufferers themselves, eager to avoid the imputation of nervousness, are careful to foster. ”

“ When we consider the extensive distribution and exposed position of the peripheral nerves, their liability to mechanical injury and to the vicissitudes of heat and cold, we cannot but anticipate that they will be the frequent seat of lesions and morbid disturbances. It may be that not a few of their diseased conditions have escaped observation from a too exclusive looking to the central nervous system as the starting-point of morbid nervous symptoms. ”

“ Third stage: neuralgic attacks become rare and comparatively unimportant; tendency to trophic changes greatly lessened; local anæsthesia persists. Presumption, that the nutrition of the nerve-centre has nearly recovered itself, but that that centre is still the locus minimæ resistentiæ of the central nervous system, liable to suffer from any cause of general nervous depression. ”