The role of neurasthenia in the formation of the physiotherapy profession.

Background: Neurasthenia was one of the most commonly diagnosed disorders in the later years of the 19th century. Its most widely used treatment, known as the Rest Cure, relied heavily on physical therapies, but little is known about the practitioners who administered the treatment. In this paper, I argue that the nurse-masseuses who delivered the massage and electricity so vital to the success of the Rest Cure, used the opportunity to develop approaches to treatment that would form the backbone of the physiotherapy profession in England after 1894. Methods: Extensive primary and secondary texts were drawn from a wide range of sources and critically reviewed. Findings: This study argues that the management of neurasthenic cases in the 1880s and 90s created the conditions necessary for the development of the profession's relationship with medicine and the establishment of new practice roles for women, and that these would play an important role in shaping the physiotherapy profession in Britain after 1894. Read through the critical sociological writings of Magali Sarfatti Larson and Anne Witz, I argue that the work of the nurse-masseuses can be seen as a complex gendered negotiation between the need to be deferential to the dominant male medical profession; distinct from emerging notions of the angelic, motherly nurse; obedient, technically competent and safe. The creation of a space in the clinic room for a third practitioner who could deliver a different form of care to the doctor or the nurse, established an approach to practice that physiotherapists would later adopt almost without amendment. Discussion: I argue that this approach owes much to the work done by nurse-massueses who established and tested its principles in treating cases of neurasthenia.

[Urology goes electric-electrotherapy : Modern therapies in the treatment of modern diseases-examples from urology]. / Die Urologie wird elektrisch ­ Elektrotherapie : Moderne Therapien zur Behandlung moderner Erkrankungen ­ Beispiele aus der Urologie.

The significance of electricity for medicine in the modern industrial age should not be underestimated. Particularly in connection with neurasthenia, electrotherapeutic approaches also experienced a boom for domestic use. Thus, electrotherapy reached urology just as it was becoming established as a medical specialty. We analyzed urological manuals and textbooks and objects in the W. P. Didusch Center for Urologic History and the Museum zur Geschichte der Urologie in Berlin to present the wide range of indications for electrotherapy in the emerging field of urology from impotence to urethral strictures and try to highlight the variability of their importance over time.

Straighten the Back to Sit: Belly-Cultivation Techniques as "Modern Health Methods" in Japan, 1900-1945.

In Japan, the first half of the twentieth century saw a remarkable revival of concern with the cultivation of the belly, with a variety of belly-cultivation techniques, particularly breathing exercise and meditative sitting, widely practiced for improving health and treating diseases. This article carefully examines some practitioners' experiences of belly-cultivation practice in attempting to understand its healing effects for them within their life histories and contemporary intellectual, social and cultural contexts. It shows that belly-cultivation practice served as a medium for some practitioners to reflect on and retell their life stories, and that the personal charisma of certain masters and the communities developing around them provided practitioners with a valuable sense of belonging in an increasingly industrialized and urbanized society. Moreover, these belly-cultivation techniques provided an embodied way for some to explore and affirm their sense of self and develop individual identity. While they were increasingly promoted as cultural traditions capable of cultivating national character, they also served as healing practices by inspiring practitioners with a sense of collective identity and purpose. With these analyses, this article sheds light on the complicated meanings of belly-cultivation for practitioners, and provides illustrative examples of the multitude of meanings of the body, bodily cultivation and healing.

A Disorder of Qi: Breathing Exercise as a Cure for Neurasthenia in Japan, 1900-1945.

Neurasthenia became a common disease and caused widespread concern in Japan at the turn of the twentieth century, whereas only a couple of decades earlier the term "nerve" had been unfamiliar, if not unknown, to many Japanese. By exploring the theories and practices of breathing exercise-one of the most popular treatments for neurasthenia at the time-this paper attempts to understand how people who practiced breathing exercises for their nervous ills perceived, conceived, and accordingly cared for their nerves. It argues that they understood "nerve" based on their existing conceptions of qi Neurasthenia was for them a disorder of qi, although the qi had assumed modern appearances as blood and nervous current. The paper hopes to contribute to the understanding of how the concept of nerves has been accepted and assimilated in East Asia. It also points out the need to understand the varied cultures of nerves not only at the level of concept and metaphor, but also at the level of perception and experience.

[Neurasthenia in Norway 1880-1920]. / Nevrasteni i Norge 1880-1920.

Neurasthenia was introduced as a diagnostic category in America in 1869, and rapidly spread to Europe. Many have drawn parallels between the historical disease entity of neurasthenia and contemporary conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalopathy and burn-out, but we have little knowledge about the early history of neurasthenia in Norway. On the basis of Norwegian medical journals from the period 1880-1920, we have sought to study the introduction, understanding and application of the concept of neurasthenia in Norwegian medical practice, with particular emphasis on symptoms, causes, treatment, prognosis and prevalence. Results show that the term was probably used in a Norwegian medical journal for the first time in 1876, and during the 1880s there followed an increasing number of reports of people who had been diagnosed with neurasthenia. The condition was defined as a weakness of the nervous system. The symptom picture was extensive, with exhaustion as the main symptom. The causes of the symptoms could not be objectively verified or located, and theories abounded. Overexertion was a common explanation, although traumas, infections, malnutrition, heredity and sexual excesses were also assumed to be causes. The recommended treatment focused on strengthening the nervous system, for example through rest and electrotherapy. The condition was described as typical of its time, as a response to the «Zeitgeist¼ and modern life.

Treating emotion-related disorders in Japanese traditional medicine: language, patients and doctors.

This paper analyses how the conceptual and therapeutic formation of Japanese traditional medicine (Kampo) has been socially constructed through interactions with popular interpretations of illness. Taking the example of emotion-related disorders, this paper focuses on the changing meaning of constraint (utsu) in Kampo medicine. Utsu was once a name for one of the most frequently cited emotion-related disorders and pathological concerns during the Edo period. With the spread of Western medicine in the Meiji period, neurasthenia replaced utsu as the dominant emotion-related disorder in Japanese society. As a result, post-Meiji doctors developed other conceptual tools and strategies to respond to these new disease categories, innovations that continue to influence contemporary practitioners. I begin this history by focusing on Wada Tokaku, a Japanese doctor of the Edo period who developed a unique theory and treatment strategy for utsu. Secondly, I examine. Yomuto Kyushin and Mori Dohaku, Kampo doctors of the early twentieth century, who privileged neurasthenia over utsu in their medical practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of the flexibility and complexity of Kampo medicine, how its theory and practices have been influenced by cross-cultural changes in medicine and society, while incorporating the popular experience of illness as well.

[Acupuncture in the treatment of neurasthenia].

Neurasthenia--is the exhaustion of the nervous system, mental disorder that belongs to a group of neuroses. Doctors sometimes briefly describing him "irritable weakness" or "irritable fatigue." This term is justified: a person who suffers asthenic-neurotic syndrome, while experiencing fatigue and increased nervous excitability. Reasons neurasthenia quite a lot. Unfortunately, the lifestyle of modern man gives many reasons for the emergence of asthenic-neurotic syndrome.

[Effectiveness of balneotherapy in patients with neurasthenia using baths of mineral water under conditions of low-mountain health-resort Nunisi].

Total of 118 patients with neurasthenia were investigated. Among them in 62 persons a hypersthenic form and in 56 -- a hyposthenic form of the pathology were noted. It has been established that balneotherapy using baths of mineral water, which is low-mineralised weakly sulfide, chloride-hydrocarbonate mineral sodic water under conditions of low-mountain health-resort Nunisi induces a decrease right up to disappearance of complaints and pathological changes in neurological status in patients with mentioned pathology. At the same time it improves indices of perception, attention and memory, state of vegetative nervous system and functional state of the brain, has a normalising action on the indices of cardiohemodynamics and lipid metabolism as well as on the excretion with urine of adrenaline and noradrenaline, neutral 17-ketosteroids, free and total 17-oxicorticosteroids. Mentioned positive shifts were more pronounced at hypersthenic form of neurasthenia. The treatment carried on had a positive influence in 62 (100%) patients with hypersthenic form of neurasthenia and in 51 (91,07%) -- with hyposthenic form.

[Balneotherapy of children with complications of craniocerebral injuries]. / Bal'neolechenie detei s posledstviiami cherepno-mozgovoi travmy.

Children with aftereffects of craniocerebral trauma have received sanatorium treatment including exercises, massage, mineral baths of different chemical composition. Adequate therapeutic measures taken in due time diminish the number of the aftereffects and their severity.

[The effect of potable mineral waters on the hormonal and psychological status (experimental and clinical research)]. / Vliianie pit'evykh mineral'nykh vod na gormonal'nyi i psikhologicheskii statusy (éksperimental'no-klinicheskoe issledovanie).

Experiments on 80 Wistar rats revealed the ability of Essentuki mineral waters to stimulate the reserves and sensitivity of the intestinal serotonin-producing system. A clinical trial on two groups of children (exposed to low-dose ionizing radiation or with posttraumatic astheno-neurotic syndrome) found out pronounced positive changes in the psychological status of the children which progressed in correlation with an increase of the blood serotonin levels.