78 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



as the unstable adrenal-centered individual, there is evidence for 

 explaining the process as the effect of an insufficiency of secretion 

 by the adrenal gland. 



Shock, collapse, heart failure and sudden death following ab- 

 normal emotion, like an attack of rage, or the terrors of a railroad 

 accident, or bad news, or excessive exertion like running a long 

 race or climbing a high mountain when in poor general health, 

 as the phrase goes, or in the terminal stages of infections like 

 epidemic influenza or Asiatic cholera, have been put down to an 

 acute insufficiency of the adrenal gland. A lowered temperature, 

 blood pressure, and blood vessel tone, exhibited in tests of the 

 response of the skin to stroking, are present in all of these and 

 point the same moral. 



In the second half of the 19th century, an American physician, 

 Beard, described Neurasthenia, a general disturbance of the body 

 and mind, not properly classifiable as a disease, but serious 

 enough to incapacitate or at least greatly limit the sufferer. The 

 neurasthenic is to be recognized by the fact that the most pains- 

 taking objective examination of his organs reveals nothing the 

 matter with them. Yet, according to his complaint, everything 

 is the matter with him. He cannot sleep when he lies down, he 

 cannot keep awake when he stands up. He cannot concentrate, 

 but still he is pitifully worried about his life. The slightest irri- 

 tant causes him to go off the handle. As he works himself up into 

 his hysterical state as a reaction to a disagreeable person or prob- 

 lem, irregular blotches may appear on his face and neck. Gen- 

 erally, his hands and feet are clammy and perspiring, his face is 

 abnormally flushed or pallid, the eyes are worried or starey, un- 

 wonted wandering sensations involving now this area of the body, 

 or now that obsess him. As the blood pressure is too low for 

 the age, the circulation is nearly always inadequate and palpita- 

 tion of the heart is a frequent complaint. So frequent, that 

 attention is often centered upon the heart, a diagnosis of heart 

 disease is made, and the unfortunate is doomed for life — to brood 

 over horrible possibilities. The brooding over themselves and 

 their troubles is one of the distinctive features of the whole com- 

 plex. Neurasthenia may masquerade as any organic disease. An 

 individual with a soil for a neurasthenic reaction to life will 

 ome neurasthenic when confronted by any stone wall, includ- 

 ing a serious ailment within himself. 

 - Beard's Neurasthenia leaped at once into the limelight. It 

 was seized upon and applauded in Europe as a good new name 



