Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Neurasthenia
/ˌnʊrəsˈθiːniə/noun
An obsolete diagnosis of chronic exhaustion, headache and irritability attributed to depleted nervous energy.
The Greek roots
νεῦρον
neûron
sinew, nerve
ἀσθένεια
asthéneia
weakness, lack of strength
Literally: “nerve weakness”
The story of the word
George Miller Beard put the word into print in 1869 and made it a national story, calling it the American disease and blaming the telegraph, the railway, the newspaper and the education of women. The diagnosis flattered the patient: it meant a fine nervous system worn down by modern life, not a moral failure. Western medicine dropped it in the twentieth century, but it stayed in the Chinese and Japanese and Russian nosologies for decades longer.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1869
Same family
neuronneurologyastheniacalisthenics
In a sentence
Her doctor diagnosed neurasthenia and prescribed six weeks in the country.