The keynote of neurasthenia is _increased liability to fatigue_. The
tired feeling that comes on with a minimum of exertion, worse on arising
than on going to bed, is its distinguishing mark. Sleep, which should
remove the fatigue of the day, does not; the victim takes half of his
day to get going; and at night, when he should have the delicious
drowsiness of bedtime, he is wide-awake and disinclined to go to bed or
sleep. This fatigue enters into all functions of the mind and body.
Fatigue of mind brings about lack of concentration, an inattention; and
this brings about an inefficiency that worries the patient beyond words
as portending a mental breakdown. Fatigue of purpose brings a
listlessness of effort, a shirking of the strenuous, the more
distressing because the victim is often enough an idealist with
over-lofty purposes. Fatigue of mood is marked by depression of a mild
kind, a liability to worry, an unenthusiasm for those one loves or for
the things formerly held dearest. And finally the fatigue is often
marked by a lack of control over the emotional expression, so that anger
blazes forth more easily over trifles, and the tears come upon even a
slight vexation. _To be neurasthenic is to magnify the pins and pricks
of life into calamities, and to be the victim of an abnormal state that
is neither health nor disease._
The more purely physical symptoms constitute almost everything
imaginable.
1. Pains and aches of all kinds stand out prominently; headache,
backache, pains in the shoulders and arms, pains in the feet and legs,
pains that flit here and there, dull weary pains, disagreeable feelings
rather than true pains. These pains are frequently related to
disagreeable experiences and thoughts, but it is probable that fatigue
plays the principal part in evoking them.
2. Changes in the appetite, in the condition of the stomach and bowels,
are prominent. Loss of appetite is complained of, or more often a
capricious appetite, vanishing quickly, or else too easily satisfied.
The capriciousness of appetite is undoubtedly emotional, for
disagreeable emotions, such as worry, fear, vexation, have long been
known as the chief enemies of appetite.
With this change of appetite goes a host of disorders manifested by
"belching", "sour stomach", "logy feelings", etc. What is back of these
lay terms is that the tone, movement, and secreting activity of the
stomach is impaired in neurasthenia. When we consider later on the
nature of emotion, we shall find these changes to be part of the
disorder of emotion.
3. So, too, there is constipation. In how far the constipation is
primary and in how far it is secondary is a question. At any rate, once
it is established, it interferes with all the functions of the organism
by its interference with the mood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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