Clinical lectures on neurasthenia / by Thomas D. Savill.

  • Savill, Thomas Dixon, 1856-1910.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical lectures on neurasthenia / by Thomas D. Savill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    methods. This hardly embodies my conception of neur¬ asthenia, which presents in most instances both mental and physical symptoms. Undoubtedly mental symptoms may predominate, but the clinical picture of the disease points rather to a derangement of the entire nervous system— brain,spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and sympathetic system. The problem which I set before me was to ascertain what was the pathological cause underlying this derange¬ ment of the nervous system, and my investigations into the Etiology of Neurasthenia have led me to the conclusions, first, that there exists in all cases some degree of weak¬ ness of the nervous system, inherent or acquired, which renders the nervous system vulnerable; and secondly, that this may be developed into neurasthenia by a great variety of determining causes. Among such determining causes, undoubtedly, in a certain number of instances, a mental element predominates in the causation as well as in the symptoms, such for example as overwork, mental strain, or some other cause intrinsically nervous in origin. In these cases the disease may be said to be essentially an affection of the mind, and they are capable of amelioration by “ suggestion ” and other psychological methods. I do not deny the influence of the mind upon the body—a fact which has been so ably demon¬ strated by the late Dr. Hack Tuke1 and others. However, I could not regard the foregoing as the sole explanation of all or even the majority of cases of neurasthenia, and a laborious analysis of hospital cases first led me to the conclusion that the gastro-intestinal symptoms, which several eminent observers had hitherto regarded as part of the disease, indicated in many instances an antecedent causal gastro-intestinal derange¬ ment. I was further led to conclude that this gastro- 1 The Influence of the Mind upon the Body, Dr. Hack Tuke. Churchill. London, 1884.