Mental strain produces precisely similar effects on the nerve control of the stomach. All types of nervous disturbances of the stomach—merycism (cud-chewing), bulimia (ox appetite), acoria (incapacity for getting enough)—result, as Ewald[187] has shown, from nerve strain, and increase this through auto-intoxication.
The sphincter of bladder often gives way, and is a very frequent expression of nervous exhaustion in the child, often increased by the effects of nerve strain on the kidneys, which do their work of purification imperfectly, while excreting nearly pure water. The enormous quantity of clear urine passed during worry is a generally recognised expression of such strain. This nerve-strain interference with the purifying work of the kidneys leads to increased strain on the liver and other glands, whence result migraine, the uric acid states, rheumatisms, and the other perversions of nutrition. Nerve-strain on either liver, bowel, or other glands, has similar secondary effects on the kidneys. In part this is an organ degeneracy in function whereby man’s liver and kidneys do the work of the sauropsidal liver and kidneys.
Among the nutritive disturbances resulting from nerve-strain is the fatty anæmia of Weir Mitchell, the juvenile obesity of Féré and others. This is generally associated with the uric acid states which so often result from school strain. The apparent improvement shown in increased weight leads to increased strain, and many of these fat victims of school over-pressure enter insane hospitals as puberty lunatics.
Other effects of the nutritive disturbances produced by school strain are local irritations about the sexual organs. These may arise from irritation by uric acid of the mouth of the bladder in boys, or of the vagina and bladder in girls. Neurotic persons are liable to nerve storms, which express themselves in emotional displays or restlessness or nagging tendencies. These often coincide with the uric acid tendency to express itself in “storms,” like other periodical phenomena of the nervous system. In consequence, “sexual storms” result in neuropaths, whether the neuropathy be inherited or acquired. Local genital organ irritation leads to scratching. From this are produced “masturbation storms,” which the subject loathes but cannot control. These occur also from the direct effects of constipation, as well as from the worms and other parasites which constipation fosters in the bowel. Teachers, by compelling children to retain urine through fear of masturbation, often lead to what they intend to prevent. At the outset masturbation and sexual explosions are often a physical expression of school strain destitute of moral significance. They are removable by removing the school strain and its consequences. If strengthened by protracted existence they intensify degeneracy due to school strain.
The states of imperfect nutrition, resultant from nerve strains on gland function, in this way and in others, interfere with the proper evolution of puberty and the involutional changes at the “change of life,” which occurs in both sexes. The conditions of “nervous cough,” of so-called “catarrh,” and its ally, bronchorrhœa, are often found as expressions of the systemic exhaustion from school strain, and are treated as purely local conditions.
School strain, therefore, produces, like all the acquired factors of degeneracy, a systemic nervous exhaustion which may be expressed either in general neuropathy or hysteria after puberty, or in the tropho-neuroses, like gout and allied states, or in epilepsy or arterial change, predisposing to rupture of arteries at periods of stress, with resultant convulsions and paralysis.
CHAPTER X
The Degenerate Cranium