Excerpt from The Autobiography of a Neurasthene: As Told by One of Them
This is the biography of a physician. The actual conditions are recorded. It does not matter whether it was really a man or a woman. The complete exhaustion of supreme nerve centres as in this case rarely befalls a woman. So far as the fulfillment of professional duties, the achievement of a definite purpose with this tremendous handicap is concerned, it was done. The physician whose story is told, and also the physician in attendance both knew from their own experience the worst of this condition without a pathology, but which evidences a definite pathological physiology. Never for one moment did either the one or the other abate their interest in their professional work, nor their manifold duties in relation to life. The physician in attendance did not know from his own experience the anguish of pain, inability and all it meant to keep up courage and activity until after fully eight years of attendance upon the patient whose biography is recorded. There had been premonitions as early as at the time of his patients complete break.