George M. Beard

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George M. Beard

George Miller Beard (born May 8, 1839 in Montville (Connecticut) , † January 23, 1883 in New York ) was an American neurologist who in 1869 introduced the term " neurasthenia " as a scientific term.

life and work

Beard studied medicine at Yale College and was already employed as a medical practitioner during the American Civil War before he entered the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1866 and was licensed as a doctor. He took over the use of electrotherapy from an older colleague and began to experiment with it in New York. He determined their effectiveness for a number of nervous weaknesses such as fatigue, anxiety, headache, impotence, neuralgia and depression , and summarized these in an essay from 1869 for the first time as neurasthenia .

Thanks to several book publications in the following years ( A Practical Treatise on the Medical and Surgical Use of Electricity , 1871; A Practical Treatise on Nervous Exhaustion (Neurasthenia) with the follow-up volume American Nervousness, With its Causes and Consequences , both 1880, the first two works he wrote with his doctor colleague Alphonse D. Rockwell) the term enjoyed rapid spread. Several of his books have been translated into German. During the First World War, German soldiers in particular suffered from the fact that "American Nervousness" had also become known in Germany. You have now been stigmatized as "war tremors" ( Erving Goffmann ).

The electrotherapy recommended by Beard was not taken very seriously by the leading neurologists and psychiatrists of the time (e.g. Charcot , Janet , Freud ), or its effectiveness was soon attributed to the suggestion of the doctor. On the other hand, his thesis that neurasthenia was due to the particular stresses and strains of modern, metropolitan life, was evidently a cultural need of the time. The European authors only objected to the fact that it was a special "American" disease, as Beard had claimed in 1880. In two texts from 1895 and 1896, Freud contrasted his own approach with the Beards.

Beard also developed a diverse journalistic and lecturing activity on a wide variety of medical topics. He turned against the death penalty for mentally ill offenders - while his colleague Alphonse David Rockwell is considered one of the inventors of the electric chair .

He is considered to be the first to describe Jumping Frenchman Syndrome .

Publications (selection)

  • Electricity as a Tonic , 1866
  • Our Home Physician , 1869
  • Neurasthenia, or Nervous Exhaustion. In Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. Volume 80, No. 3, 1869, pp. 217-221.
  • Eating and Drinking , 1871
  • Stimulants and Narcotics , 1871
  • (with Alphonse David Rockwell): A Practical Treatise on the Medical and Surgical Use of Electricity, Including Localized and General Electrization , 1871
  • (with AD Rockwell): Clinical Researches in Electro-Surgery , 1873
  • Legal Responsibility in Old Age , 1874
  • Hay-fever or Summercatarrh , 1876
  • The Scientific Basis of Delusions , 1877
  • The Nature and Diagnosis of Neurasthenia , New York Medical Journal, 1879; 29
  • Problems of Insanity , 1880
  • (with AD Rockwell): A Practical Treatise on Nervous Exhaustion (Neurasthenia), Its Symptoms, Nature, Sequences, Treatment. New York 1880. German translation: The nerve weakness (neurasthenia), its symptoms, nature, subsequent conditions and treatment: with an appendix . 2nd, probably German edition Vogel, Leipzig 1883 ( digitized version )
  • American Nervousness, With Its Causes and Consequences. (Nervous Exhaustion, Neurasthenia) , 1880. German translation Leipzig 1881, 1883
  • Sea Sickness: Its Symptoms, Nature and Treatment , 1881
  • The Case of Guiteau: A Psychological Study , 1882
  • Sexual Neurasthenia , 1884. German translation: The sexual neurasthenia, its hygiene, etiology, symptoms and treatment. With a chapter on the diet for the mentally ill , Vienna 1885

literature

  • Philip P. Wiener: GM Beard and Freud on 'American Nervousness' , in: Journal of the History of Ideas 17 (1956), pp. 269-274
  • Volker Roelcke : Illness and cultural criticism. Psychiatric interpretations of society in the bourgeois age (1790–1914) , Frankfurt a. M. / New York 1999, contains a chapter on pp. 112–122 : “George M. Beard's American Nervousness : Neurasthenia as a Disease of Modern Civilization (1869–1885)”
  • Volker Roelcke: Beard, George Miller. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 157 f.

Web links

proof

  1. ^ Wolfgang U. Eckart : Medicine and War: Germany 1914-1924 , Ferdinand Schöningh Paderborn 2014, p. 13; ISBN 978-3-506-75677-0 .
  2. ↑ On the justification of separating a certain complex of symptoms from neurasthenia as “anxiety neurosis” (1895), GW 1, pp. 315–342, especially p. 315; L'Hérédité et L'Étiologie des Névroses (1896), GW 1, pp. 405-422, especially p. 413.
  3. ↑ Rockwell advocated its use as a humane death penalty. For a sympathetic account, see John M. Miskell: Better Than Hanging .
personal data
SURNAME Beard, George M.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beard, George Miller (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American neurologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH Montville, Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1883
Place of death New York City