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 that one of the means of treatment for these persons which has been found efficacious is to supply them with some restful household occupation such as knitting or plain sewing, and there are institutions which combine refuge from social activities, often called duties, with simple occupation.

FOOTNOTE:  [1] By structure as used in this wide sense, there must be understood not merely the anatomical structure, which is revealed by the dissecting knife and microscope, but molecular structure, or the manner in which elements are arranged to form the molecule, as well.

CHAPTER XII

THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF MEDICINE IN THE LAST FIFTY YEARS.—­THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN.—­PREVENTIVE MEDICINE.—­THE DISSEMINATION OF MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE.—­THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONDITIONS IN RECENT YEARS WHICH ACT AS FACTORS OF DISEASE.—­FACTORY LIFE.—­URBAN LIFE.—­THE INCREASE OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN PEOPLES.—­THE INTRODUCTION OF PLANT PARASITES.—­THE INCREASE IN ASYLUM LIFE.—­INFANT MORTALITY.—­WEALTH AND POVERTY AS FACTORS IN DISEASE.

Certain conditions have arisen in the past fifty years which have profoundly affected the thoughts, the beliefs and the activities of man.  Within this period what is generally known as Darwinism, including under this evolution, has developed.  Unlike theories which came from philosophical speculation only, the theory of evolution was one which could be subjected to observation and experiment.  It freed man’s mind from dogmas, it stimulated the imagination, it enlarged the territory in which it seemed possible to extend knowledge by the methods of science, and has resulted in an enormous increase of knowledge.  This has been more striking in medical science than elsewhere, and in this of more far-reaching influence.  Evolution coincided with another important development.  History shows that all great periods of civilization have at their back sources of energy.  In the civilizations of the past such sources of energy have come from the enslavement of conquered peoples or from commerce, or more direct forms of robbery, which have enabled a favored class to appropriate for its purposes the results of the work of others.  While these sources have not been absent in the development of our civilization, the great source of energy has come from the rapid, and usually wasteful and reckless, utilization of the stored energy of the earth.  The almost incredible advance in medical and other forms of scientific knowledge and the utilization of this knowledge is largely due to the greater forces which we have become possessed of.