MODERN NERVES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13157, 21 April 1906, Page 6 (Supplement)

MODERN NERVES.

RUINED BY LEISURE AND LUXURY. " ' Breakdown- of the nervous system' k no mere society craze which it is fashionable to suffer■"*rom,' bub is becoming a national calamity, "which bids fair to rob our descendants of many of those qualities which have done eo much to make this Empire what it is."

This prognostication forms the most striking passage in an article in the Contemporary Review by Dr. Guthrie Rankin, a London physician.

Neurasthenia, or nervous breakdown, has come so recently into prominence that the first complete description of it was written by Beard, of New York, in 1879. Reviewing the causes of the malady, Dr. Rankin observes that the old order of life is changed—in dietetic usages, keener and fiercer competition, towns and cities becoming more crowded: a demand for a more energetic and exciting life. The same spirit of restlessness has imparted to all vocations a more active character than they formerly possessed: a holiday to many people is no longer the rest it once was.

WOMEN" THE CHIEF SUFFERERS. Up to the present the large proportion of patients who suffer from functional disorders of the nervous system spring from among the opulent classes, but they are met with in all grades of society, women l)eing the sufferers more frequently than men. Evidently wear and tear plus luxury is telling its story more rapidly than wear and tear plus unsuitable food and insufficient rest.

"The day is rapidly coming,"' says Dr. Rankin, "when every class will suffer; the rich because they are too easily circumstanced and too self-indulgent; the poor because they are insufficiently fed and regardless of every rudimentary law of health; and the great middle classes because they break themselves in their unceasing endeavours to outstrip their neighbours and to amass money." Dr. Rankin declares that it is among women who allow themselves to become neurasthenic from causes within their own control that nervous debility is meantime most rampant. DOMESTIC LIFE .SCORNED. " These who belong to the cultured and leisured classes of society," he proceeds. "are the greatest sinners. They become, especially in the earlier half of their womanhood, swept into the whir) of social ambition; and many sacrifice not only their health but their duty to the remorseless demands of the wooden image at whose shrine they worship. They have neither time nor desire for the ordinary affairs of life ; domestic obligations have little claim upon their attention; they find no opportunity for the practice of the old-fashioned homely virtues their lives become a dreary worship of mammon and a restless search after social novelty and physical excitement. Children seriously interfere with the numerous engagements of such women, and are regarded as undesirable accidents, which are at all hazards to be avoided." Several changes of custom and habit are mentioned by the writer in examining the means of prevention: —

More rigid adherence to simplicity of life.

Pronounced social disapproval of the immoderate use of alcohol and tobacco, and the forbidding of both under the age of puberty. Some form of compulsory military service exacted from every healthy young man.

Speaking at Lord Roberts' meeting at Manchester Sir Frederick Treves said that present conditions of life made extraordinary attacks on the nervous system, and the. best remedy was open-air exercise. He could imagine no better open-air exercise than a military training, which encouraged promptness, alertness, capacity, to act in common, and, above all, discipline.