A Practical Treatise on Nervous Exhaustion (Neurasthenia): Its Symptoms, Nature, Sequences, Treatment

198 pp. 8vo. George M. Beard was the leading authority on the topic of neurasthenia, having described it in his work Neurasthenia; or Nervous Exhaustion in 1869 (see Garrison-Morton 4843). He was also the co-author, with Alphonse David Rockwell (the inventory of the electric chair), of "the most influential American treatise ever published on electrotherapy." (see Garrison-Morton 1996.4), a treatment that Beard advocated for neurasthenia. While the diagnosis has fallen out of use since Beard's time, many notable figures suffered from it at the time: Virginia Woolf; Charlotte Perkins Gilman; William James; Marcel Proust; etc. James humorously referred to the disease as 'Americanitis.'