The Nervous Housewife | Page 6

neurasthenic is to magnify the pins and pricks of life into calamities,
and to be the victim of an abnormal state that is neither health nor
disease._
The more purely physical symptoms constitute almost everything
imaginable.
1. Pains and aches of all kinds stand out prominently; headache,
backache, pains in the shoulders and arms, pains in the feet and legs,
pains that flit here and there, dull weary pains, disagreeable feelings
rather than true pains. These pains are frequently related to disagreeable
experiences and thoughts, but it is probable that fatigue plays the
principal part in evoking them.
2. Changes in the appetite, in the condition of the stomach and bowels,
are prominent. Loss of appetite is complained of, or more often a
capricious appetite, vanishing quickly, or else too easily satisfied. The
capriciousness of appetite is undoubtedly emotional, for disagreeable
emotions, such as worry, fear, vexation, have long been known as the
chief enemies of appetite.
With this change of appetite goes a host of disorders manifested by
"belching", "sour stomach", "logy feelings", etc. What is back of these
lay terms is that the tone, movement, and secreting activity of the
stomach is impaired in neurasthenia. When we consider later on the
nature of emotion, we shall find these changes to be part of the disorder
of emotion.
3. So, too, there is constipation. In how far the constipation is primary
and in how far it is secondary is a question. At any rate, once it is
established, it interferes with all the functions of the organism by its
interference with the mood.

The following story of Voltaire bluntly illustrates a fact of widespread
knowledge. Voltaire and an Englishman, after an intimate philosophical
discussion, decided that the aches and pains of life outnumbered the
agreeable sensations, and that to live was to endure unhappiness.
Therefore, they decided that jointly they would commit suicide and
named the time and the place. On the day appointed the Englishman
appeared with a revolver ready to blow out his brains, but no Voltaire
was to be seen. He looked high and low and then went to the sage's
home. There he found him seated before a table groaning with the good
things of life and reading a naughty novel with an expression of utmost
enjoyment. Said the Englishman to Voltaire, "This was the day upon
which we were to commit suicide." "Ah, yes," said Voltaire, "so we
were, but to-day my bowels moved well."
4. The disturbed sleep, either as insomnia or an unrestful,
dream-disturbed slumber, is a distressing symptom. For we look to the
bed as a refuge from our troubles, as a sanctuary wherein is rebuilded
our strength. We may link work and sleep as the two complementary
functions necessary for happiness. If sleep is disturbed, so is work, and
with that our purposes are threatened. So disturbed sleep has not only
its bodily effects but has its marked results on our happiness.
5. Fundamental in the symptoms of neurasthenia is fear. This fear takes
two main forms. First, the worry over the life situation in general, that
is to say, fear concerning business; fear concerning the health and
prosperity of the household; fear that magnifies anything that has even
the faintest possibility of being direful into something that is almost
sure to happen and be disastrous. This constant worry over the
possibilities of the future is both a cause of neurasthenia and a
symptom, in that once a neurasthenic state is established, the liability to
worry becomes greatly increased.
Second, there is a special form of worry called by the old authors
hypochondriacism, which essentially is fear about one's own health.
The hypochondriac magnifies every flutter of his heart into heart
disease, every stitch in his side into pleurisy, every cough into
tuberculosis, every pain in the abdomen into cancer of the stomach,

every headache into the possibility of brain tumor or insanity. He turns
his gaze inward upon himself, and by so doing becomes aware of a host
of sensations that otherwise stream along unnoticed. Our vision was
meant for the environment, for the world in which we live, since the
bodily processes go on best unnoticed. The little fugitive pains and
aches; the little changes in respiration; the rumblings and movements of
the gastro-intestinal tract have no essential meaning in the majority of
cases, but once they are watched with apprehension and anxiety, they
multiply extraordinarily in number and intensity. One of the cardinal
groups of symptoms in a neurasthenic is this fear of serious bodily
disease for which he seeks examination and advice constantly.
Naturally enough, he becomes the choicest prey for the charlatan, the
faker, or perhaps ranks second to the victim of venereal or sexual
disease. The faker usually assures him that he has the disorders he