People say a man is nervous when they mean he is subject to attacks of anger, an emotional state.  Likewise he is nervous when he is a victim of fear, a state literally the opposite of the first.  Or, if he is restless, is given to little tricks like pulling at his hair, or biting his nails, he is nervous.  The mother excuses her spoiled child on the ground of his nervousness, and I have seen a thoroughly bad boy who branded his baby sister with a heated spoon called “nervous.”  A “nervous breakdown” is a familiar verbal disguise for one or other of the sinister faces of insanity itself.

It should be made clear that what we are dealing with in the nervous housewife is not a special form of nervous disorder.  It conforms to the general types found in single women and also in men.  It differs in the intensity of symptoms, in the way they group themselves, and in the causes.

Physicians use the term psychoneuroses to include a group of nervous disorders of so-called functional nature.  That is to say, there is no alteration that can be found in the brain, the spinal cord, or any part of the nervous system.  In this, these conditions differ from such diseases as locomotor ataxia, tumor of the brain, cerebral hemorrhage, etc., because there are marked changes in the structure in the latter troubles.  One might compare the psychoneuroses to a watch which needed oiling or cleaning, or merely a winding up,—­as against one in which a vital part was broken.

The most important of the psychoneuroses, in so far as the housewife is concerned, is the condition called neurasthenia, although two other diseases, psychasthenia and hysteria, are of importance.

It is interesting that neurasthenia is considered by many physicians as a disease of modern times.  Indeed, it was first described in 1869 by the eminent neurologist Beard, who thought it was entirely caused by the stress and strain of American life.  That not only America, but every part of the whole civilized world has its neurasthenia is now an accepted fact.  Knowing what we do of its causes we infer that it is probably as old as mankind; but there exists no reasonable doubt that modern life, with its hurry, its tensions, its widespread and ever present excitement, has increased the proportion of people involved.

Particularly the increase in the size and number of the cities, as compared with the country, is a great factor in the spread of neurasthenia.  Then, too, the introduction of so-called time-saving, i.e. distance-annihilating instruments, such as the telephone, telegraph, railroad, etc., have acted not so much to save time as to increase the number of things done, seen, and heard.  The busy man with his telephone close at hand may be saving time on each transaction, but by enormously increasing the number of his transactions he is not saving himself.