BY FRANK MARSHALL WHITE

The nerve specialist leaned back in his chair behind the great mahogany desk in his consulting-room and studied the features of the capitalist as that important factor in commerce and industry explained the symptoms that had become alarming enough to drive him, against his will, to seek medical assistance.  The patient was under fifty years of age, though the deep lines in his face, with his whitening hair—­consequences of the assiduity with which he had devoted himself to the accumulation of his millions and his position in the Directory of Directors—­made him appear ten years older.  An examination had shown that he had no organic disease of any kind, but he told the physician that he was suffering from what he called “inward trembling,” with palpitation of the heart, poor sleep, occasional dizziness, pain in the back of the neck, difficulty in concentrating his attention, and, most of all, from various apprehensions, such as that of being about to fall, of losing his mind, of sudden death—­he was afraid to be alone, and was continually tired, worried, and harassed.

“You present merely the ordinary signs of neurasthenia,” said the specialist.  “These symptoms are distressing, but not at all serious or dangerous.  You have been thinking a great deal too much about yourself and your feelings.  You watch with morbid interest the perverted sensations that arise in various parts of your body.  You grow apprehensive about the palpitation of your heart, which is not at all diseased, but which flutters a little from time to time because the great nerve of the heart is tired, like the other great nerves and nerve-centers of your body.  You grow apprehensive over the analogous tremor which you describe as ‘inward trembling,’ and which you often feel all through your trunk and sometimes in your knees, hands, and face, particularly about the eyes and mouth and in the fingers.”

The capitalist had started at the mention of the word neurasthenia, and had seemed much relieved when the physician had declared that the symptoms were not dangerous.  “I had been under the impression that neurasthenia was practically an incurable disease,” he said.  “However, you have described my sensations exactly.”

“One hundred per centum of cases of neurasthenia are curable,” responded the specialist.  “Neurasthenia is not, as is usually supposed, an equally diffused general exhaustion of the nervous system.  In my opinion, it is rather an unequally distributed multiple fatigue.  Certain more vulnerable portions of the nervous system are affected, while the remainder is normal.  In the brain we have an overworked area which, irritated, gives rise to an apprehension or imperative idea.  By concentration of energy in some other region of the brain, by using the normal portions, we give this affected part an opportunity to rest and recuperate.  New occupations are therefore substituted for the old habitual one.  A change of interests gives the tired centers rest.”