He draws up (or copies) a special diet-sheet, and talks of “proteids”, notices a slight cloudiness in his urine, and underlines “The Uric-Acid Diathesis” in one of his pamphlets.  Then his heart bumps, he diagnoses anew, and so goes on, usually ending by taking phosphorus for his “brain fag”.  Then he finds he has a disease unknown to the faculty, which discovery interests him as intensely as it irritates his unfortunate friends.

This prince of pessimists has a conviction that, compared with him, Job was a happy man, and that he will go insane.  He does not know that it is only when there are flaws in the brain from inheritance or organic disease that mental worry leads to lunacy; a sound brain never becomes unhinged from intellectual stress alone.

Books and friends are daily questioned about his “diseases”, and in spite of reassuring replies, he continues to doubt, re-question and cross-examine endlessly, feeding his hopes on the same assurances, consoling himself with the same sympathies, and worrying himself with the same fears.

Other folk may be “nervy”, he is seriously ill; he knows it because he feels it.  He expects the greatest consideration himself, denies it to others, and then complains he is “misunderstood”.

“Every symptom becomes magnified; the trifling ache or pain, the trivial flatulence, the disinclination or mere hesitation of the bowels to adhere to a strict schedule, all minor events such as occur to the majority of healthy men from time to time unheeded, come to be of vast importance to the psychasthenic individual.”

He keeps a record of hourly changes in his condition, and pesters his family doctor to death.  He goes from physician to physician, from hospital to hospital.  Having been induced by his friends to see a specialist, he bores that good man—­who knows him all too well—­with a minute description of his symptoms, presenting for inspection carefully preserved prescriptions, urinary examination records, differential blood counts, and the like.  Coming away with precious advice, he feels he omitted to describe all his symptoms, begins to doubt if the specialist really understands his case, and so the pitiful farce goes on—­for years.

The extraordinary fact is that while he is suffering (sic) from cancer, or heart disease, or Bright’s disease, and spasmodically from minor affections like tuberculosis, arterio-sclerosis, and liver-fluke, he is probably running a successful business.  While making money he forgets his ills; the moment his attention is diverted from the “root of evil” he proceeds to further “diagnosis”.

In the end, he makes a pleasant hobby of his imaginary maladies, trying each patent nostrum, and giving herbalists, electric-belt men, Christian Scientists, and dozens of other weird “specialists” a chance to cure him.

Sexual Neurasthenia occurs chiefly in young men given to self-abuse or sexual excesses.  Erections and emissions are frequent, first at night with amorous dreams, then in the day as a result of sexual thoughts; weakness and pain in the back follow, and the sexual act may become impossible.  The patient usually studies a quack advertisement, and passes into the hands of men who make a living by bleeding such wretches dry.  Cold baths and the treatment outlined in Chapter IX will cure him.