David G. Schuster
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 674
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This dissertation proposes a metaphor for the years 1869 to 1930 drawn from medicine and unique to the period itself. This metaphor is the disease neurasthenia, a nervous condition affecting the mind and body that was thought to be unique to modern societies. Whereas past studies of neurasthenia have typically relied upon medical articles or literary accounts to understand the disease, this dissertation adds to the analysis patent medicine advertisements, newspapers stories, archived correspondence between physicians and patients, the work of progressive reformers, and archived clinical patient records. By situating neurasthenia at the intersection of private and public life in American society, this dissertation seeks to show how neurasthenia went from being a medical condition defined and diagnosed by professional physicians to being a popularized condition defined and diagnosed by advertisers, journalists, teachers, faith healers, managers, and, importantly, patients themselves. Once popularized, neurasthenia helped create conversations, both public and private, that went beyond narrowly defined medical issues to help people negotiate changes commonly associated with "modernity," including urbanization, the growth of white-collar jobs, professionalization, the rise of the leisure industry, therapeutic religious movements, the commercialization of popular culture, the reevaluation of gender roles, and mass public education. Ultimately, this dissertation seeks to define the United States, as it emerged from the nineteenth century, as a "Neurasthenic Nation," a place where people saw their personal health inextricably linked to the pitfalls and possibilities of the changing world around them.