all in your head.
and indeed i do find the history of neurasthenia very interesting, and asked him if he had read the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman, who, interestingly, was also the mother of home economics, which started out as an actual economic field of study.
harriet beecher stowe's niece.
it's the true story of how she was driven crazy by the "rest cure" for neurasthenia promulgated by the then-foremost-expert, silas weir mitchell. i remembered reading that when mitchell read the story, he changed his whole approach to neurasthenia, but couldn't find any verification of it. i did, however, find this fascinating blog post:
9/19/06 - So this Silas Weir Mitchell fellow I'm working on, he was a doctor first, a herpetologist second... In addition to "the rest cure," for which he's unfairly but universally reviled, Mitchell's also known as a pioneer in the treatment of snake bites... An amateur herpetologist specializing in the chemical composition of venoms, Mitchell collected poisonous snakes... His father and friends thought this could hurt his medical practice:
"The late Professor Henry Smith said to me, "What nonsense to bother yourself about snake poisons!" And a larger man, Professor Samuel Jackson, warned me that every experiment in the laboratory would lose me a patient."
Not to belabor the obvious, but...
okay well i thought this was hilarious.
