Note 605 — Chapter VI

In the active part of the bourgeoisie, among the manufacturers, merchants, etc., the case is different. They are constantly absorbed in the question of how to increase their wealth, or, if they are unfortunate, they live in fear of losing the position gained. They are in a state of agitation, of permanent overexcitement. So there are numbers in the bourgeois class who overtax their minds, with the resulting chance of neurasthenia, even where the individual is not predisposed to it. All this applies also to the liberal professions, though in a smaller degree; there also the great competition has harmful consequences for the nerves. In “La famille névropathique” Dr. Féré thus describes the consequences of overdriving: “… excessive cerebral labor, intellectual and, still more, moral overwork, the continual preoccupations of the struggle for existence are conditions eminently fit to bring on functional troubles in the nervous system. Neurasthenia, like hysteria, may be considered as a chronic fatigue. The fatigue, to be sure, gives place to a number of troubles peculiar to neurasthenia. And these troubles, even if only temporary, cannot fail to have the most harmful effect upon children conceived under these conditions.”605