The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1906-02-04
NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
IS P0sTER|TY's PERIL
British Physician Comments on
the Disease as a National
Calamity.
New York Herald Special Gable Service. Copy.

New York Herald Special Cable Service. Copy
right, 1906, by the New York Herald.
London, Feb. 3.-fB Break down of
the nervous system is no more society
craze which it is fashionable to suffer,
but it is becoming national calamity
which bids fair to rob our descendants
of many of those qualities which have
done so much to make this empire what
it is.
This representation forms striking
passage in an article in the Contempor
airy Review by DR.. Guthrie Rankin, a
London physician.
This article is interesting to Ameri-
can readers from the fact that neuras-
thenia or nervous breakdown was first
completely described by DR.. Beard Of
New York in 1879.
Reviewing the causes of the malady,
DR.. Rankin observes that the old order
of life is changed in dietic usages,
keener and fercer competition, towns
and cities becoming more crowded, and
the demand for more energetic, and
exciting life. The same spirit Of rest
lessness has impaired to all vocations
merly possessed. A holiday to many
people is no longer the rest it once was.
Up to the present the large proper
ton Of patients who suffer from func-
tional disorders Of the nervous system.
spring from among the opulent classes,
but they are to be met with gin all
grades of society, women being the suf-
ferers more frequently than men.
Wear. Tear and Luxury.
Evidently the wear and tear plus
| luxury is telling its story more rapidly
than wear and tear plus unsuitable food
| and insufficient rest.
"The day is rapidly coming says
| DR.. Rankin, "when every class will
suffer-the rich because they are too
easily circumstanced and too self-in-
dulgent, and the poor because they are
insufficiently fed and regardless of
every rudimentary law of health, and
the great middle classes because they
break themselves in their unceasing en-
deavors to outstrip their neighbors and
to amass money!
DR.. Rankin declares that it is among
the women who allow themselves to be-
come neurasthenic from causes within
their control that nervous debility in
the meantime is most rampant.
! The Greatest Sinners.
EThose who belong to the cultured
and leisure classes of society," he pro-
ceeds, care the greatest sinners. They
become, especially in the earlier half Of
their womanhood, swept into the whirl
of social ambition, of the many sacri-
fees, not only to their health, but their
duty to the remorseless demands of the
wooden image at whose shrine they
worship.
"They have neither the time nor the
desire for the ordinary affairs of life.
Domestic obligations have little claim
upon their attention. They find no op-
portunity for the practice of the old
fashioned homely virtues. Their lives
have become dreary worship OF mann
mon, and the restless search after So
cial novelty and physical exercise.
"Children seriously interfere with
. the numerous engagements Of such
women and are regarded as undesirable
accidents which at all hazards are to
be avoided
Several, changes Of custom and habit
are mentioned by the writer in the ex-
animation of the means of prevention
namely, a more rigid adherence to SIM
plicity Of life; secondly, pronounced
social disapproval of the immoderate
2 use of alcohol and tobacco and the for
, bidding of both to children under age;
thirdly, some form of compulsory mill
: tary service, exacted from every
f healthy young man.