Episode 6: Neurasthenia, Cowboys, and Feminists

Neurasthenia: The “National Disease of America” In 1881 an American neurologist named George Miller Beard published a hugely influential book: American Nervousness. In it, he laid out the symptoms, cures, and implications of what he called “neurasthenia”, essentially what one might call nervous exhaustion. Beard didn’t coin the term but read more…