He keeps a record of hourly changes in his condition, and pesters his family doctor to death. He goes from physician to physician, from hospital to hospital. Having been induced by his friends to see a specialist, he bores that good man—who knows him all too well—with a minute description of his symptoms, presenting for inspection carefully preserved prescriptions, urinary examination records, differential blood counts, and the like. Coming away with precious advice, he feels he omitted to describe all his symptoms, begins to doubt if the specialist really understands his case, and so the pitiful farce goes on—for years.
The extraordinary fact is that while he is suffering (sic) from cancer, or heart disease, or Bright's disease, and spasmodically from minor affections like tuberculosis, arterio-sclerosis, and liver-fluke, he is probably running a successful business. While making money he forgets his ills; the moment his attention is diverted from the "root of evil" he proceeds to further "diagnosis".
In the end, he makes a pleasant hobby of his imaginary maladies, trying each patent nostrum, and
giving herbalists, electric-belt men, Christian Scientists, and dozens of other weird "specialists" a chance to cure him.
Sexual Neurasthenia occurs chiefly in young men given to self-abuse or sexual excesses. Erections and emissions are frequent, first at night with amorous dreams, then in the day as a result of sexual thoughts; weakness and pain in the back follow, and the sexual act may become impossible. The patient usually studies a quack advertisement, and passes into the hands of men who make a living by bleeding such wretches dry. Cold baths and the treatment outlined in [Chapter IX] will cure him.
Course and Outlook. Neurasthenia is very curable. If the cause be removed, and vigorous treatment instituted, the victim may be well in a couple of months, but in most cases there are obstacles to radical treatment, and the disease drags on indefinitely.
Egoism, moral cowardice, and sexual excess play a part in much neurasthenia, but relatives must not forget, in their indignation at these laxities, that the patient really is ill; it is unkind, unjust and useless to tell an ailing man the unpalatable truth that it is his own fault.
CHAPTER VIII