“Stop, doctor. I take in the fact,” said I, “which is evident in your high-sounding phrases, that nervous prostration is a killing complaint and you are going to treat me for it.”
“Perhaps so,” said the doctor. “It often happens that an exaltation or diminution of activity in some one portion of the nervous system causes perverted action in another part, as when any unusual strain has been thrown upon you.”
“For instance,” said I, “when a friend came last Sunday and allowed me to carry up-stairs her grip-sack with books in it?”
“Politeness should never require you to do such a thing,” said the doctor, “but the strain may not be any physical exertion or overwork; deficient sleep, any sudden shock of joy or fear, especially terror, might prove fatal.”
“I was much frightened last summer,” said I, “by a stroke of lightning which destroyed an immense oak tree in front of the door. It was a worse panic than that which seizes one on seeing one’s husband bringing three gentlemen to dinner, when there is only one good little porter-house steak in the house.”
“Allow me to say,” continued the doctor, “nervousness characterizes women more than men. It sometimes comes on as a sequence of severe illness, some grave anxiety, some physical or moral shock, like the unexpected discovery of perfidy or disloyalty on the part of a friend. Then, too, nervous prostration is brought on by unremitting or monotonous duties, which keep the same paths of action from day to day.”
“I was told,” said I, “of a lawyer who entering his office the other day read upon his slate the statement that he would be back in half an hour; in a fit of absence of mind he took a seat and waited for himself, and it was some time before he realized that he was in his own office, and that he was not one of his own clients.”
“That,” replied the doctor, “was no worse than the case of the reverend gentleman who on going out one morning gathered up an ordinary business coat and carried it around the whole day, thinking it was his overcoat, and was more surprised than anybody else when informed of his mistake. These examples are evidences and symptoms of nervous disorder. I never knew a man to hurt himself by mere bodily labor; but excessive mental toil is certainly capable of damaging the nervous tissues. Any calamity, misfortune, pecuniary loss, or accident is liable to bring on nervous prostration. What are the symptoms? Loss of sleeping power, incapacity and aversion to work, lassitude, headache, an anxious and cross expression of countenance, heart disturbance, cramp—all these may be indications of local nervous exhaustion.”
“Doctor, how do you propose to exterminate this formidable enemy?”
“For the treatment of nervous diseases,” said he, “we have at our disposal invaluable remedies whose action is more or less special. There is strychnine, bromide of potassium, possessing the opposite properties of increasing and diminishing the reflex excitability of the nervous system, in addition to other beneficial modes of action. Then we have chloral and morphine, acting directly and indirectly as hypnotics, thus allowing the curative action of rest to come into play. For pain, we have opium, Indian hemp, subcutaneous injections of morphia, and the galvanic current. We have any number of drugs for influencing, relaxing, mitigating pain, reinforcing the nutrition of wasted muscles. Then there are nervine tonics, preparations of zinc, arsenic, iron, quinine, phosphorus, cod-liver oil, to say nothing of cold or tepid douches, and the massage treatment.”