[58] “Everybody agrees,” say Déjerine and Gauckler (_op. cit._, p. 214_f_), “that neurasthenia is a neurosis, _i.e._, a nervous disease without any known lesions.... Neurasthenia is due wholly to psychological factors which are essentially, if not exclusively determined by emotion.” They then proceed to compare the “materialistic” theories of neurasthenia, showing that they are all still merely speculative. [59] _Cf._ pp. 19 _et seq._ [60] _Cf._ Déjerine and Gauckler, _op. cit._, p. 214_f._ [61] As Professor Kraepelin says, “Nervenkranker sind Geisteskranker” (“Those ‘suffering from nerves’ are _sick in spirit_.”). [62] The reader should consult Mr. W. McDougall’s excellent treatment of this subject in his _Introduction to Social Psychology_—especially pp. 45-89. [63] The remarks of Mr. George Bernard Shaw on Max Nordau’s “Degeneration” (_The Sanity of Art_, especially p. 88) might be consulted in this connection. [64] _Cf._ E. Régis, “Les Troubles Psychiques et Neuro-Psychiques de la Guerre,” _Presse Médicale_, 23, p. 177, May 27th, 1915. [65] This term is derived from the Greek word for the womb. Hysteria was once thought to be due to the wanderings of the uterus about the body. The term well deserves its place beside that other ornament of psychological medicine—the word “lunacy.” [66] _The Diagnosis of Nervous Diseases_, 3rd Edition, London, 1911, p. 355. [67] Italics ours. [68] p. 355. [69] This was seen repeatedly in the treatment of the relatively uneducated soldiers who had become slightly neurasthenic as a result of the war, especially of those whose life had been spent in open-air manual work, or in the strict and healthy routine of the regular army. They complained of emotional irritability, minor lapses of memory such as the forgetting of relatively unimportant names or of errands, disturbed sleep, soon “getting fed up” with their amusements (_e.g._, “jig-saws,” or billiards for hours every day, month after month in a converted schoolroom or outhouse!). Not only did these phenomena disturb them, but in a great many cases they seemed to prove to these unfortunate men that they were insane, or rapidly becoming so. They would anxiously ask such questions as, “What is it that makes me so irritable at a slight noise, or at being brushed against by another patient? I used not to be like that.” Their conduct was also regarded as unusual by their companions. Now would not the head of a business firm, an over-worked medical man, a university professor or an army officer in a position of responsibility, confidently expect to be allowed _ex-officio_ a certain number of these eccentricities without being called “diseased?” But let him drop the privileges and shelter of his rank, live for a few weeks as a private in a barracks with a number of high-spirited and thoroughly healthy soldiers and his behaviour might certainly be considered by them to be queer, if nothing worse.