“Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.”
—Walt Whitman.
CHAPTER VI.
INTRODUCTORY.
IN individual cases of nerve-trouble, the illness is generally traced to some cause, serious or trivial, real or imaginary, as the case may be. Quite as much harm as good is wrought by the practice. If the patient has suffered from some accident or malady leaving nerve-weakness as its legacy, the large development of the supposed phrenological organ called “Causality” on the part of the patient’s attendants will probably have its uses. The invalid will not then be considered a criminal. If his ailments cannot be cured, at all events he will meet with a certain amount of consideration, and his sufferings will not be aggravated by harshness. But if the cause of the mischief defy investigation, then a false one will assuredly be invented to take its place; the natural love of detraction, constantly recurring in consequence of the feeling of superiority which indulgence in detraction gives us, will find an outlet in action; and the sorrows of the patient, already great enough, will be increased tenfold. Since all intelligent human beings like to know the reason of the phenomena they observe, however imperfectly; since a belief in non-existent causes brings with it disastrous results; it behoves us to open our eyes to the true causes of nerve-deterioration in our community, with a view to removing them as completely as lies in our power.
In the first place, we must recognise the fact that we have contracted the habit of transposing causes and symptoms. Evil practices, such as drunkenness, for example, are blamed for the deterioration, instead of being regarded as the outcome of nerve-instability; while, on the other hand, nerve-instability itself is often regarded as criminality and the outcome of an evil disposition, punishments and deterrents are resorted to, time, money, and brains are wasted, criminal and lunatic classes are perpetuated, jails and lunatic asylums are multiplied, simply because we lack the knowledge to recognise that no amount of modification will ever put right the nerve-structure which is radically wrong from the birth. Excepting ignorance, the foundation of all woe, the first great cause of neurasthenia which we must honestly face is HEREDITY.
We shall find, I think, that the second great cause is to be sought in IMPERFECT SOCIAL CONDITIONS, and the third in AN IMPERFECT SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.
Other minor causes we may easily enumerate, but they will all be more or less secondary to these three, and dependent upon them. I propose, therefore, to consider each of these in turn.
CHAPTER VII.
HEREDITY.
ALL those to whose lot it has fallen to minister to the wants of sufferers from nervous disease must have come across cases which they were expected to benefit, but for whom, manifestly, very little could be done. So great is human perversity, that though cases of epilepsy and nervous exhaustion are every day regarded as incurable merely because the most efficacious modes of treatment remain untried, these persons of defective nervous system and perverted growth are often supposed capable of development into ordinary people after a few weeks or months of special attention on the part of those to whose care they are confided.
It seems useless to point out the wide difference between the two classes. The non-medical mind cannot or will not understand it. Our ignorance on such matters is boundless.