124 PElilLS. — INTEMPERANCE. 



principle ; but it is also true tliat the springs of human 

 sympathy were never so easily touched as now. Such 

 wide differences in men's sensibilities argue not only a 

 difference of education, but a change in the world's 

 nerves.^ 



Pliysicians tell us that going from the equator north, 

 and from the arctic regions south, nervous disorders in- 

 crease until a climax is reached in the temperate zone. 

 An eminent physician of New York, the late Dr. George 

 M. Beard, who has made nervous diseases a speciality, 

 says that they are comparatively rare in Spain, Italy and 

 the nortiiern portions of Europe, also in Canada and the 

 Gulf States, but very common in our Northern States 

 and in Central Europe. And this belt, it will be ob- 

 served, coincides exactly with the zone of the world's 

 greatest activity; and further, where this activity is 

 greatest; viz., in the United States, these nervous disor- 

 ders are the most frequent. Dr. Beard begins an exceed- 

 ingly interesting work 2 on nervous exhaustion with 

 these sentences : " There is a large family of functional 

 nervous disorders that are increasingly frequent among 

 the indoor classes of civilized countries, and that are 

 especially frequent in the northern and eastern parts of 

 the United States. The sufferers from these maladies 

 are counted in this country by thousands and hundreds 

 of thousands ; in all the Northern and Eastern States 

 they are found in nearly every brain -working house- 

 hold. " After speaking of certain numerous and wide- 

 spread nervous diseases among us, he adds: " In Europe 

 these affections are but little known." They are all 

 diseases of civilization, and of modern civilization, and 

 mainly of the nineteenth century, and of the United 

 States. " Neurasthenia," which is the name he gives to 

 nervous exhaustion, "is," he says, "comparatively a 



1 Since writing the above, I find the following sentence in Dr. Geo. M. 

 Beard's American Nervousness, p. 118: " Fineness of organization, which 

 is essential to the development of the civilization of modern times, is accom- 

 panied by intensified mental susceptibility." 



2 Entitled Neurasthenia. 



