of impending financial
disaster. Even the confused and disagreeable sound due to the clatter
of high-pitched women's voices at teas and receptions may, when
frequently repeated, be productive of changes in the nerve cells
sufficiently marked to give rise to the unusual reactions which are
evidence of disease.

In the condition known as neurasthenia, which is often taken as a type
of a functional disease, the basal and intrinsic cause is activity of
the nervous system with the using up of material which is not
compensated for by the renewal which comes in repose and sleep.
Neurasthenia is one of the common conditions of our civilization,
found among children and adults, the poor and rich, the idle and the
factory worker; it is rife in the scholastic professions and among
those who earn their living by brain work. It seems to be more common
in the upper classes and particularly in the women, but this is
because these are more subject to medical care and the condition is
more in evidence. There are all sorts of symptoms attached to the
condition, for the unusual mental action can be variously expressed.
The cerebral form has been thus described by a well-known medical
writer: "One of the most characteristic features of cerebral
neurasthenia is a weary brain. The sensation is familiar enough to any
fagged man, especially if he fall short of sleep. Impressions seem to
go half into one's head and there sink into a woolly bed and die.
Voices sound far off, the lines of a book run into one another and the
meaning of them passes unperceived. Doors bang and windows rattle as
they never did before; if a shoestring breaks, an imprecation is upon
the lips. Business matters are in a conspiracy to go wrong. Letters
are left unopened partly from want of will, partly from a senseless
dread lest they contain bad news. At night the patient tosses on his
bed possessed by all the cares which blacken with darkness. Headache
is common, loss of memory is distressing, and in severe cases it is
wider and deeper than mere inattention can explain. There is often the
torture of acute hearing, or an inability to suppress attention; the
hater of clocks and crowing cocks is a neurasthenic." The disease is
especially common in the women players of the social game, and its
unhappy victims too often seek relief from the nervous irritability
which is a common early symptom in still greater nervous excitement.
It is a sad commentary on our civilization th