Neurasthenia, regarded as a reaction of people to the stress and strain of life, has without a doubt increased.  The most casual of observers will tell you that the generation of the Great War is a neurasthenic generation.  It takes its pleasures too intensely, its pains too seriously, its troubles too flippantly.  But what is neurasthenia?  Beard himself regarded it as a chronic fatigue and loss of tone of the nervous system, a literal interpretation of his term.  That the conception, as far as it goes, is valid is proved by the fact that it is the neurasthenics who furnish the majority of the clientele of the cults, the Christian Scientists, the osteopaths and the chiropractors, and who are the subjects of the faith and miracle cures, like those of Lourdes.  That is because their particular disease, or what appears to them to be their very own disease—­and they certainly cherish their ailments—­is but an expression of, a compensation for, indeed a consolation for, the underlying feelings of insufficiency or inferiority.  Were there no moral code, were there no social system, nor the consequent inculcated conscience to be responsible to, there would be no such disguising symptom as the disease which preoccupies the consciousness.  The feeling of insufficiency would be there, and would be recognized as in itself the disease.  To the physiologist and the psychologist, the feeling of insufficiency is the disease, no matter how spectacular the overlaying phenomena—­a cripple on crutches or a man blind and speechless.  Shell shock is now acknowledged to belong to this group.

Now one of the outstanding effects of disease of the adrenal glands is the feelings of muscular and mental inefficiency.  And as a matter of fact, a good number of observations conspire for the idea that a certain number of neurasthenics are suffering from insufficiency of the adrenal gland.  The chronic state of the acute phenomenon, known as the nervous breakdown, really represents in them a breakdown of the reserves of the adrenals, and an elimination of their factor of safety.  In the light of that conception, the great American disease—­dementia americana—­is seen to be adrenal disease—­and the American life to be the adrenal life, often making too great demands upon that life, and so breaking down with it.

ADRENAL EXCESS

The converse of adrenal insufficiency, that of adrenal excess, also exists.  In certain types of the middle-aged, a high blood pressure, accompanied by a great capacity for work, has been shown to be associated with hypertrophy of the cortex.  In women, there is a degree of masculinity, as the adrenal in women makes for masculinity, neutralising more or less the specifically feminine influences of the internal secretions of the ovary.  Such women possess a vigor and energy above the normal, and command responsible positions in society, not only among their own sex, but also among men.  They are the ones who, in the present overturn of the traditional sex relationships, will become the professional politicians, bankers, captains of industry, and directors of affairs in general.