1. Shorter, From Paralysis , 201-232.

2. Despite Beard's contribution to American neurology, his life work has failed to arouse the interest of any potential biographer. Several insightful articles contain interesting bits and scraps about his life. A good place to start is with Charles Dana, "Dr. George M. Beard: A Sketch of His Life and Character, with Some Personal Reminiscences," Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 10 (1923): 427-435. For more recent examples, see Charles E. Rosenberg, "George M. Beard and American Nervousness," in No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 98-108; Barbara Sicherman, ''The Use of Diagnosis," 33-54; Eric T. Carlson, "George Beard and Neurasthenia," in Essays on the History of Psychiatry , ed. Edwin R. Wallace IV and Lucius C. Pressley (Columbia: W. S. Hall Psychiatric Institute, 1980), 50-57.

3. E. H. Van Deusen, "Observation on a Form of Nervous Prostration (Neurasthenia) Culminating in Insanity," American Journal of Insanity 25 (1868-1869): 445-461. Van Deusen's role in the discovery of neurasthenia was frequently overlooked by Beard's neurological colleagues. This neglect generated considerable frustration among members of the AMSAII. C. H. Hughs, writing in an 1880 issue of the Alienist and Neurologist made it a point to credit Van Deusen's "original" paper: "In this instance, as in many others, the medical superintendents of the hospitals for the insane, in this country, have anticipated the profession outside of them in important contributions of clinical medicine." "Notes on Neurasthenia," Alienist and Neurologist 1 (1880): 439.

4. Van Deusen, "Observation," 445.

5. Ibid., 445.

4. Van Deusen, "Observation," 445.

5. Ibid., 445.

6. George M. Beard, "Neurasthenia, or Nervous Exhaustion," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 3 (1869): 218.

7. W. A. McClain, "The Psychology of Neurasthenia," Medical Record 48 (1895): 81-83.

8. See Nathan G. Hale, Jr., James Jackson Putnam and Psychoanalysis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), and Bonnie Ellen Blustein, Preserve Your Love for Science: Life of William Alexander Hamilton, American Neurologist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); also see Rosenberg, "George Beard," 98.

9. McClain, "Psychology of Neurasthenia," 81-83.

10. See George Cheyne, The English Malady: or, A Treatise of Nervous Diseases of All Kinds (London: Wisk, Ewing, and Smith, 1733).

11. Edward Cowles, "The Mechanism of Insanity," American Journal of Insanity 48 (1890-1891): 55.

12. J. S. Greene, "Neurasthenia: Its Causes and Its Home Treatment," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 109 (1883): 76.

13. In many respects, Beard's class-conscious conception of neurasthenia resembled a disease described by George Cheyne in his 1733 treatise, The English Malady . As Roy Porter explains, "[N]ervous diseases were thus class-specific, affecting the cream, refined and delicate spirits, high flyers, those explained Cheyne, 'who have a great deal of sensibility, are quick thinkers, feel pleasure and pain the most readily, and are of the most lively imagination.'" Porter, Mind Forg'd in Manacles , 84.

14. Marrs, Confessions , 2.

15. McClain, "Psychology of Neurasthenia," 81-83.

16. Barbara Sicherman, The Quest for Mental Health in America, 1880-1917 (New York: Arno Press, 1980), 175. Not all historians share this appraisal. Anson Rabinbach contends, "Clearly, fatigue was perceived as both a physical and a moral disorder—a sign of weakness and the absence of will." The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (New York: Basic Books, 1990), 38-39. Rabinbach's use of the passive voice is problematic, however. Perceived by whom? As the above quotations make evident, many, in fact, regarded fatigue as a virtue of sorts—it implied that one was a hardworking "brain worker." See Haller, ''Neurasthenia," 2489.

17. Beard, Practical Treatise , 81.

18. Paul Dubois, The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders , trans. William Alanson White and Smith Ely Jelliffe (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1904), 18.

19. George Beard, American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences, a Supplement to Nervous Exhaustion (Neurasthenia) , introd. Charles E. Rosenberg (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1881; New York: Arno Press, 1972), vi-vii.

20. Annie Payson Call, Power Through Repose (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1891), 13.

21. George M. Beard, "Certain Symptoms of Nervous Exhaustion," Virginia Medical Monthly 5 (1878): 184.

22. Regarding the European context, Edward Shorter maintains, "The disease represented a way of bringing into the office of the nerve doctor rather than internists the lucrative clientele of middle-class businessmen." From Paralysis , 224.

23. Typically, the word sex , rather than the word gender , is used to denote

the "biological" rather than the "cultural" dimensions of various issues concerning the differences between males and females. Such a distinction, while certainly not arbitrary, nonetheless remains problematic. As Thomas Laqueur explains, "[On] the basis of historical evidence ... almost everything one wants to say about sex—however sex is understood—already has in it a claim about gender." "So-called biological sex," Laqueur adds, ''does not provide a solid foundation for the cultural category of gender, but constantly threats to subvert it." Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 11, 124.

24. For a discussion of the doctrine of separate spheres, see Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres: The Intellectual Origins of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).

25. Cowles, "The Mechanism of Insanity," 249.

26. H. C. Sharpe, "Neurasthenia and Its Treatment," Journal of the American Medical Association 32 (1899): 72. "To place a woman outside of a domestic setting, to train a woman to think and feel 'as a man,'" Carroll Smith-Rosenberg notes, "violated virtually every late-Victorian norm. It was literally to take her outside of conventional structures and social arrangements." "The New Women as Androgyne: Social Disorder and Gender Crisis, 1870-1936," in Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 252.

27. Lears, No Place of Grace , 51.

28. Beard, American Nervousness , 20.

29. J.S. Jewell, "Nervous Exhaustion, or Neurasthenia, in Its Bodily and Mental Relations," Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases 6 (1879): 47.

30. Donald Meyer, The Positive Thinkers: Religion as Pop Psychology from Mary Baker Eddy to Oral Roberts (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965), 24.

31. Beard, American Nervousness , 10.

32. Beard, "Certain Symptoms," 182.

33. Thomas Stretch Dowse, On Brain and Nerve Exhaustion (Neurasthenia) and on the Exhaustion of Influenza (London: Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, 1892), 2.

34. John P. Savage, "Hints on Nervous Exhaustion (Neurasthenia)," Cincinnati Lancet and Clinic (1880): 153.

35. A.D. Rockwell, "Electricity in Neurasthenia and Other Functional Neuroses," International Clinics 2 (1891): 283.

36. C.P. Hughs, "Notes on Neurasthenia," Alienist and Neurologist 1 (1880): 439.

37. Louis Faugeres Bishop, "A Study of the Symptomatology of Neurasthenia in Women," Medical News 71 (1897): 71.

38. W.R. Gowers, Diseases of the Nervous System (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son, 1889), 1341-1342. Emphasis in original.

39. Philip Coombs Knapp, "The Nature of Neurasthenia and Its Relation to Morbid Fears and Imperative Ideas," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 135 (1896): 410.

40. Both Erwin Ackerknecht and Charles E. Rosenberg point out that the discovery of neurasthenia was partially attributable to interaction with a particular type of patient. Unlike asylum superintendents who saw predominantly incurable patients, Beard came across a number of men and women with whom he could work, and who appeared to benefit from medical intervention. See Ackerknecht, A Short History of Psychiatry , 2d ed. (New York: Hafner, 1968), 95, and Rosenberg, "George Beard," 98.

41. Henri Ellenberger attributes the first modern psychotherapeutic exploitation of the healer-patient rapport to Mesmer. "This term was used from the beginning by Mesmer and was handed down by generations of magnetizers and hypnotists to the beginning of the twentieth century while the concept was gradually being developed and perfected." Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious , 152.

42. Russell C. Maulitz, "'Physician versus Bacteriologist': The Ideology of Science in Clinical Medicine," in The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine , ed. Charles E. Rosenberg and Morris J. Vogel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), 94-96.

43. John Harley Warner, The Therapeutic Perspective: Medical Practice, Knowledge, and Identity in America, 1820-1885 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 264; Maulitz makes the important point that "'science,' in medicine, came to mean different things to different people." "'Physician versus Bacteriologist,'" 104.

44. Martin S. Pernick, A Calculus of Suffering: Pain, Professionalism, and Anesthesia in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 311 n.93; Warner, The Therapeutic Perspective , 247.

45. Pernick, Calculus , 143. Warner explains that "[the] movement in therapeutics from empiricism and specificity toward rationalism and universalism was accompanied by a growing belief that the quest for invariant therapeutic laws had again become a legitimate enterprise." Warner, The Therapeutic Perspective , 250.

46. See Gosling, Before Freud .

47. Warner, The Therapeutic Perspective , 250; Pernick, Calculus , 135-146.

48. Neurasthenic discourse is by no means the only example of this phenomena. An 1882 article, appearing in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal , asserted that "[no] two patients have the same constitution or mental proclivities. No two instances of typhoid fever, or of any other disease, are precisely alike. The intelligent and efficient care of any case of illness demands a consideration of all the circumstances which are peculiar to itself and of the traits of the body and mind which are peculiar to the patient." "Routine Practice," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 108 (1883): 42-43, quoted in Pernick, Calculus , 144.

49. T.W. Fisher, "Neurasthenia," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 9 (1872): 72.

50. Howell T. Pershing, "The Treatment of Neurasthenia," Colorado Medical Journal 1 (1903-1904): 83.

51. Pritchard, "The American Disease," 19.

52. McClain, "Psychology of Neurasthenia," 81-83.

53. For an excellent and nuanced discussion of medical conservatives who championed the role accorded to the individual, see Pernick, Calculus , 135-141.

54. Warner, The Therapeutic Perspective, passim.

55. The significance that physicians attached to doctor-patient rapport was by no means confined to neurasthenia and other functional nervous diseases. It applied to various organic and structural diseases as well.

56. Pritchard, "The American Disease," 19-20.

57. John Punton, "Modern Aspects of Neurasthenia and Its Treatment," Texas Journal of Medicine 1 (1905-1906): 203.

58. William Harvey King, "Some Points in the Treatment of Neurasthenia," Transactions of the American Homeopathic Association (1901): 493. It is tempting to make more of King's phallic metaphor than he doubtless intended.

59. James Jackson Putnam, "Remarks on the Psychical Treatment of Neurasthenia," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 132 (1895): 506.

60. Jeanne Cady Solis, "The Psychotherapeutics of Neurasthenia," Physician and Surgeon 27 (1905): 315.

61. William Broaddus Pritchard, "The American Disease: An Interpretation," Canadian Journal of Medicine and Surgery 18 (1905): 12.

62. Beard, Practical Treatise, 12.

63. Beard, American Nervousness, 276.

64. Cowles, "The Mechanism," 209.

65. Anna Hayward Johnson, "Neurasthenia," Philadelphia Medical Times (1881): 738.

66. Rabinbach, The Human Motor, 162.

67. The impact of alternative healing, and more particularly of the American mind cure movement, on the regular medical community is the subject of my next chapter. See Putnam, "Remarks," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 132 (1895): 505.

68. Morton Prince, discussion following Putnam, "Remarks," 517.

69. Susan Leigh Star mistakenly attributes the wide array of somatic therapies designed to treat various nervous disorders to what she refers to as diagnostic uncertainty. "Clinicians responding to diagnostic uncertainty," she writes, "were forced to treat each patient with a wide variety of therapies. In the absence of simple testing procedures or pathognomonic signs, they had only the hope that by giving patients a number of different therapies one would succeed. Patients at Queen Square were massaged, electrified, and given steam baths and mud plaster, potassium bromide, 'metallotherapy' (an obscure treatment that involved placing metal disks over different parts of the body), and even leeches." Star, Regions of the Mind: Brain Research and the Quest for Scientific Certainty (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 76. What Star fails to appreciate is that for late-nineteenth-century physicians, even diagnostic certainty rarely inspired therapeutic certainty. It was rare indeed that the realm of diagnostics might affect the realm of treatment. In fact, the response to therapy was, and often still is, a key factor in diagnosis.

70. William F. Hutchinson, "Three Typical Cases of Neurasthenia," Medical Record 18 (1880): 399.

71. McClain, "The Psychology of Neurasthenia," 81-83.

72. A. D. Rockwell, "Neurasthenia and Its Relation to Other Disease," Medical Record 51 (1897): 307-310 (emphasis in original). For a contrary view,

see Ann Hayward Johnson, who contends, "The importance of making a correct differential diagnosis between functional and organic nervous disease cannot be overestimated. In general, prognosis and treatment are directly opposite." "Neurasthenia," 740.

73. Beard, "Neurasthenia, or Nervous Exhaustion," 217.

74. Rosenberg, "George Beard," 104.

75. Hale, Freud and the Americans, 67.

76. See Susan E. Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women's Health (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); for an excellent survey of the history of baleonology, see Roy Porter, ed., The Medical History of Water and Spas (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1990). For a more detailed discussion of water cure in the United States, see Jane B. Donegan, "Hydropathic Highway to Health": Women and Water-Cure in Antebellum America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986); and M. S. Legan "Hydropathy, or the Water-Cure," in Pseudo-Science and Society in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. A. Wroebel (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 74-99.

77. L. Reuben, "Imaginary Disease," Water-Cure Journal (1850): 120, quoted in Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed, 64-65. Emphasis in original.

78. Bernard Sachs, "Functional Nervous Troubles: Neurasthenia, Its Occurrence in Young and Old, Symptomatology, and Treatment," International Clinics 1 (1891): 241.

79. Harold N. Moyer, "The Treatment of Neurasthenia," Journal of the American Medical Association 37 (1901): 1568.

80. Solis, "Psychotherapeutics of Neurasthenia," 312-316.

81. G. Manley Ransom, "Neurasthenia—Its Cure by Thermal Therapy," Medical Record 47 (1895): 366.

82. Putnam, "Neurasthenia and Its Treatment," 21.

83. Daniel R. Brower, "The Treatment of Neurasthenia," Journal of the American Medical Association 36 (1901): 232-235.

84. Putnam, "Neurasthenia and Its Treatment," 21.

85. H. C. Patterson, "Practical Experience in the Treatment of Neurasthenia," Medical Times 29 (1901): 360.

86. Wharton Sinkler, "Use of Hydrotherapy in Neurasthenia and Other Nervous Affections," Therapeutic Gazette 25 (1901): 590.

87. Beard, "Certain Symptoms," 184.

88. Rockwell, "Neurasthenia and Its Relation to Other Disease," 306.

89. For an exception, see Morton Prince, "The Educational Treatment of Neurasthenia and Certain Hysterical States," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 139 (1898): 333.

90. John D. Quackenbos, "Causes and Recent Treatment of Neurasthenia," New Hampshire Medical Society (1897-1898): 97.

91. C. F. Hodge, "A Microscopic Study of Changes Due to Functional Activity in Nerve Cells," reprinted from Journal of Morphology 7 (1892): 112-113.

92. Ibid., 158-159. Emphasis in original.

91. C. F. Hodge, "A Microscopic Study of Changes Due to Functional Activity in Nerve Cells," reprinted from Journal of Morphology 7 (1892): 112-113.

92. Ibid., 158-159. Emphasis in original.

93. References to Hodge's work may be found in the following articles: H. C. Patterson, "Practical Experience in the Treatment of Neurasthenia," Medical Times 29 (1901): 360-362; Campbell Meyers, "Neurasthenia in Some

of Its Relations to Insanity," Canadian Medical Journal 16 (1904): 89-94; Solis, "The Psychotherapeutics of Neurasthenia," 312-316; and Punton, "Modern Aspects of Neurasthenia, 201-205.

94. Robert T. Edes, "The New England Invalid," The Shattuck Lecture 1895 (Boston: David Clapp and Son, 1895), 32.

95. Quackenbos, "Causes and Recent Treatment," 97.

96. Moses Allen Starr, "The Toxic Origins of Neurasthenia and Melancholia," Medical Record 59 (1901): 721.

97. J. G. Biller, "Treatment of Neurasthenia," Journal of the American Medical Association 38 (1902): 4-6.

98. Archibald Church, "Treatment of Neurasthenia," Chicago Medical Recorder 20 (1901): 324.

99. George Beard, Sexual Neurasthenia (Nervous Exhaustion): Its Hygiene, Causes, Symptoms and Treatment, 5th ed. (New York: E.B. Treat, 1900), 271.

100. Ibid., 255-272.

99. George Beard, Sexual Neurasthenia (Nervous Exhaustion): Its Hygiene, Causes, Symptoms and Treatment, 5th ed. (New York: E.B. Treat, 1900), 271.

100. Ibid., 255-272.

101. Dowse, On Brain and Nerve Exhaustion, 61.

102. Margaret Rowbottom and Edward Susskind, Electricity and Medicine: History of Their Interaction (San Francisco: San Francisco Press, 1984); idem, "Psychiatric Treatment During the Nineteenth Century," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 22 (1948): 156-177; and Harry S. Holcombe, "Electrotherapy," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 22 (1967): 180-182.

103. Holcombe, "Electrotherapy," 180.

104. Rowbottom and Susskind, Electricity, 71-89.

105. Ibid., 113.

104. Rowbottom and Susskind, Electricity, 71-89.

105. Ibid., 113.

106. George M. Beard and A. D. Rockwell, A Practical Treatise on the Medical and Surgical Uses of Electricity (New York: William Wood, 1867).

107. Rowbottom and Susskind, Electricity, 113.

108. As early as 1846, John Galt referred to the clinical use of electricity. See John Galt, The Treatment of Insanity (New York, 1846), and S. Weir Mitchell, G.R. Morehouse, and W.E. Keen, Gunshot Wounds and Other Injuries of Nerves (Philadelphia, 1864).

109. Beard, "Neurasthenia or Nervous Exhaustion," 218.

110. Francis B. Bishop, "The Cause of Some Cases of Neurasthenia, and their Treatment by Electricity," Transactions of the American Electro-Therapeutic Association (1901): 331.

111. Daniel R. Brower, "Cerebral Neurasthenia, or Failure of Brain Power, with Special Reference to Electrotherapeutics," Transactions of the American Electro-Therapeutic Association (1901): 337.

112. Rockwell, "Electricity in Neurasthenia," 282.

113. Margaret A. Cleaves, "Franklinization as a Therapeutic Measure in Neurasthenia," Journal of the American Medical Association 27 (1896): 1043.

114. W.F. Robinson, "The Electrical Treatment of Certain Phases of Neurasthenia," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 20 (1893): 34.

115. Robinson, "Electrical Treatment," 38.

116. Putnam, "Neurasthenia and Its Treatment," 22.

117. W.B. Miller, "Static Electrical Treatment of Neurasthenia," Galliard's Southern Medicine 83 (1905): 26.

118. Gerald N. Grob explains, "Medical intervention reflected shared faith

between patient and physician that assumed it would be effective. The alternative belief in therapeutic nihilism was never seriously entertained, partly because physicians rejected an approach that might impair their social legitimacy, and partly because these patients and families eagerly sought treatment." Mental Illness and American Society, 122.

119. Van Deusen, "Observation," 457.

120. For examples of medication recommended to treat neurasthenia, see Van Deusen, "Observation," 445-461; Beard, "Neurasthenia, or Nervous Exhaustion," 217-219; Beard, "Cases of Hysteria," 438-451; and Dana, "On the Pathology,'' 57-62.

121. Savage, "Hints on Nervous Exhaustion," 153-154.

122. J.P.C. Foster, "Suggestive and Hypnotic Treatment of Neurasthenia," Yale Medical Journal 8 (1901-1902): 14-22.

123. Greene, "Neurasthenia," 78.

124. Patterson, "Practical Experience," 361.

125. Harold N. Moyer, "The Treatment of Neurasthenia," Journal of the American Medical Association 37 (1901): 1657.

126. Beard, American Nervousness, 313.

127. See Beard, "Neurasthenia, or Nervous Exhaustion," 217-219; idem, American Nervousness, 253-277; William A. Hammond, Cerebral Hyperaemia: The Result of Emotional Strain or Emotional Disturbance, the So-called Nervous Prostration of Neurasthenia (Washington: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1878); Savage, "Hints on Nervous Exhaustion," 153-154; Johnson, "Neurasthenia," 737-744; Greene, "Neurasthenia," 75-78; Cowles, "The Mechanism," 49-70; 209-252; Sachs, "Functional Nervous Troubles: Neurasthenia," 237-246; Putnam, "Neurasthenia and Its Treatment," 17-28; Quackenbos, "Causes and Recent Treatment," 92-103; Landon Carter Gray, "Neurasthenia: Its Symptoms and Treatment," Medical News 75 (1899): 788-791; Carlin Phillips, "The Etiology and Treatment of Neurasthenia: An Analysis of Three Hundred and Thirty-three Cases," Medical Record 55 (1899): 413-422; Frederick A. McGrew, "Neurasthenia and the Rest Cure," Journal of the American Medical Association 34 (1900): 1466-1468; Church, "Treatment of Neurasthenia," 320-325; King, "Some Points," 493-506; Patterson, "Practical Experience," 360-361; Moyer, "The Treatment of Neurasthenia, 1656-1658; Brower, "The Treatment of Neurasthenia," 232-235; Biller, "Treatment of Neurasthenia," 4-6; S. Weir Mitchell, "The Evolution of the Rest Treatment," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 31 (1904): 368-373; Pershing, "The Treatment of Neurasthenia," 82-87; and Solis, "The Psychotherapeutics of Neurasthenia," 312-316.

128. Mitchell, "Rest in Nervous Disease."

129. For biographical information on Mitchell, see Ernest Earnest, S. Weir Mitchell, Novelist and Physician (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950); D. M. Rein, S. Weir Mitchell as a Psychiatric Novelist (New York: International Universities Press, 1952).

130. Mitchell, "The Evolution of the Rest Treatment," 372.

131. Sicherman, "The Use of a Diagnosis," 40.

132. Mitchell, "Rest in Nervous Disease," 84.

133. Ibid., 85.

134. Ibid., 102.

132. Mitchell, "Rest in Nervous Disease," 84.

133. Ibid., 85.

134. Ibid., 102.

132. Mitchell, "Rest in Nervous Disease," 84.

133. Ibid., 85.

134. Ibid., 102.

135. Patterson, "Practical Experience," 360.

136. My use of feminine pronouns stems largely from the fact that most, though not certainly not all, rest cure patients were women.

137. Mitchell, Fat and Blood, 58.

138. Ibid., 59.

137. Mitchell, Fat and Blood, 58.

138. Ibid., 59.

139. Mitchell, "Rest in Nervous Disease," 61.

140. Ibid., 95.

141. Ibid., 96.

142. Ibid.

139. Mitchell, "Rest in Nervous Disease," 61.

140. Ibid., 95.

141. Ibid., 96.

142. Ibid.

139. Mitchell, "Rest in Nervous Disease," 61.

140. Ibid., 95.

141. Ibid., 96.

142. Ibid.

139. Mitchell, "Rest in Nervous Disease," 61.

140. Ibid., 95.

141. Ibid., 96.

142. Ibid.

143. Quackenbos, "Causes and Recent Treatment," 98.

144. Ann Douglas Wood may be correct when she asserts that "Mitchell's treatment depended in actuality not so much on the techniques of rest and overfeeding, as on the commanding personality and charismatic will of the physician." "'The Fashionable Diseases.'" Little evidence exists, however, which can support the claim that Mitchell himself subscribed to such a belief. Although Mitchell readily conceded the role of the physician's personality in his ''cure," he went to great lengths to emphasize the somatic aspects of his therapy. A similarly misplaced claim can be found in the writing of Kenneth Levin. "Without using the term 'unconscious,'" Levin proclaims, "Mitchell makes extensive use of the concept." True enough. But in making such a claim, Levin must rely on an anachronistic reading of Mitchell's writings that neglects to take seriously Mitchell's self-professed somaticism. Levin, "S. Weir Mitchell."

145. Smith-Rosenberg, "The Hysterical Woman," 195-216.

146. She continues: "Though much has been made recently of the painful procedure of cauterization for female complaints, it was actually a common therapy for venereal disease. Male genitals were cauterized by the same complacent physicians who cauterized their female patients." See Regina Morantz-Sanchez, "The Lady and Her Physicians," in Clio's Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women, ed. Mary S. Hartman and Lois Banner (New York: Octagon Books, 1976), 44.

147. Bromberg, The Mind of Man, 204.

148. Mitchell, "The Evolution of the Rest Treatment," 373.

149. Prince, "The Educational Treatment," 334.

150. McGrew, "Neurasthenia and the Rest Cure," 1466.

151. Church, "Treatment of Neurasthenia," 323.

152. Patterson, "Practical Experience," 362.

153. Arthur E. Mink, "Neurasthenia, with Special Reference to the Best Mode of Treatment," Medical Bulletin (Philadelphia) 20 (1898): 466.

154. Pritchard, "The American Disease," 22.

155. H. V. Halbert, "The Management of Neurasthenia," Clinique (Chicago) 24 (1903): 494-495.

156. Pritchard, "The American Disease," 22.

157. Herbert J. Hall, "The Systematic Use of Work as a Remedy in Neurasthenia and Allied Conditions," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 152 (1905): 30.

158. King, "Some Points in the Treatment of Neurasthenia," 493.

159. Gray, "Neurasthenia: Its Symptoms and Treatment," 790.

160. For examples of works that make this mistake, see Kuttner, "Nerves"; Bunker, "From Beard to Freud"; Wiener, ''G. M. Beard and Freud"; and Levin, "S. Weir Mitchell," 168-173.