Quite a number of Luther’s minor ills seem to have been the result of overwrought nerves due partly to his work and the excitement of his life. Here again it is difficult to judge of the symptoms; unquestionably some sort of connection exists between his nervous state and his depression and bodily fears;[325] the fainting fits are even reckoned by some as simply due to neurasthenia.
There can be no doubt that his nervousness was, to some extent inherited, to some extent due to his upbringing. His lively temper which enabled him to be so easily carried away by his fancy, to take pleasure in the most glaring of exaggerations, and bitterly to resent the faintest opposition, proves that, for all the vigour of his constitution, nerves played an important part.
Already in his monastic days his state was aggravated by mental overstrain and the haste and turmoil of his work which led him to neglect the needs of the body. His uninterrupted literary labours, his anxiety for his cause, his carelessness about his health and his irregular mode of life reduced him in those days to a mere skeleton. At Worms the wretchedness of his appearance aroused pity in many. It is true that when he returned from the Wartburg he was looking much stronger, but the years 1522-25, during which he led a lonely bachelor’s life in the Wittenberg monastery, without anyone to wait on him, and sleeping night after night on an unmade bed, brought his nervous state to such a pitch that he was never afterwards able completely to master it. On the contrary, his nervousness grew ever more pronounced, tormenting him in various ways.
So little, however, did he understand it that it was to the devil that he attributed the effects, now dubiously, now with entire conviction.
Among these effects must be included the buzzing in the head and singing in the ears, to which Luther’s letters allude for many a year. When, at the end of Jan., 1529, the violent “agonies and temptations” recurred, the buzzing in the ears again made itself felt. He writes: “For more than a week I have been ailing from dizziness and humming in the head (‘vertigo et bombus’), whether this be due to fatigue or to the malice of the devil I do not know. Pray for me that I may be strong in the faith.”[326] He also complains of this trouble in the head in the next letter, dating from early in Feb.[327] He was then unable to preach or to give lectures for nearly three weeks.[328]
He goes on to say of himself: “In addition to the buffets of the angel of Satan [the temptations] I have also suffered from giddiness and headache.”[329] It was, however, as he himself points out, no real illness: “Almost constantly is it my fate to feel ill though my body is well.”[330]
In the new kind of life he had to lead in the Castle of Coburg in 1530, when, to want of exercise, was added overwork and anxiety of mind, these neurasthenic phenomena again reappeared. He compares the noises in his head to thunder, or to a whirlwind. There was also present a tendency to fainting. At times he was unable even to look at any writing, or to bear the light owing to the weakness of his head.[331] Simultaneously the struggle with his thoughts gave him endless trouble; thus he writes: “It is the angel of Satan who buffets me so, but since I have endured death so often for Christ, I am quite ready for His sake to suffer this illness, or this Sabbath-peace of the head.”[332] “You declare,” he says laughingly in a letter to Melanchthon, “that I am pig-headed, but my pig-headedness is nothing compared with that of my head (‘caput eigensinnigissimum’); so powerfully does Satan compel me to make holiday and to waste my time.”[333] Towards the middle of August his head improved, but the tiresome buzzing frequently recurred. Luther complained later that, during this summer, he had been forced to waste half his time.[334]
When, from this time onwards, “we hear him ever saying that he feels worn-out (‘decrepitus’), weary of life and desirous of death … all this is undoubtedly closely bound up with these nerve troubles.”[335] The morning hours became for him the worst, because during them he often suffered from dizziness. After his “prandium,” between nine and ten o’clock, he was wont to feel better. As a rule he slept well.
The attacks which occurred early in 1532 must also be noted.