How often we can trace all the forms of the first-named protean disease
to such causes is only too well known to every physician, and their
connection with cardiac troubles is also well understood. Happily,
functional troubles of heart or stomach are far from unfrequent
precursors of the graver mischief which finally falls upon the
nerve-centres if the lighter warnings have been neglected; and for this
reason no man who has to use his brain energetically and for long
periods can afford to disregard the hints which he gets from attacks of
palpitation of heart or from a disordered stomach. In many instances
these are the only expressions of the fact that he is abusing the
machinery of mind or body; and the sufferer may think himself fortunate
that this is the case, since even the least serious degrees of direct
exhaustion of the centres with which he feels and thinks are more grave
and are less open to ready relief.
When affections of the outlying organs are neglected, and even in many
cases where these have not suffered at all, we are apt to witness, as a
result of too prolonged anxiety combined with business cares, or even of
mere overwork alone, with want of proper physical habits as to exercise,
amusement, and diet, that form of disorder of which I have already
spoken as cerebral exhaustion; and before closing this paper I am
tempted to describe briefly the symptoms which warn of its approach or
tell of its complete possession of the unhappy victim.
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