HYSTERO-NEURASTHENIA, OR NERVOUS EXHAUSTION OF WOMEN, TREATED BY THE S. WEIR MITCHELL METHOD.

Abstract

Hystero-neurasthenia is a name that I will take the liberty of giving to an often recognized class of female difficulties which has not a well defined place in medical literature. The symptoms of this class of cases are as difficult to enumerate and describe as the individual cases are difficult to manage to a successful issue. Under the term hystero-neurasthenia, I wish to include no symptoms which can be traced to a distinct pathological lesion of any one organ, but to a host of symptoms that can be accounted for in no other manner than by being the result of a partial or general nervous inefficiency, or perversion, of the nerves controlling the organs peculiar to women. The first of these conditions, nervous inefficiency, may be congenital, or the result of excessive exercise of the functions of the organs of the pelvis, from a long and prolific child-bearing season, excessive