Since we know that the basis of many nervous diseases is an obliteration of certain cells of the brain or of the spinal cord, or certain tracts of the central nervous system through which impulses must pass if they are to be effective as motion, sensation or function in some other form, we realize that we cannot recreate these portions of highly organized tissue and that therefore organic nervous diseases are beyond the action of any remedies we now know or may even hope to discover.

The development of pathology has shown us that once there has been serious nephritis or cirrhosis of the liver certain portions of the glands are destroyed and therefore there cannot be any question of cure. There is no possibility of redintegration of destroyed tissues when they are of highly organized character, and so the patient will always be maimed. One might as well talk of causing an amputated finger to grow again as talk of curing diseases that involve destruction of specialized cells. When this first dawned on modern medicine as the result of the careful study of pathology a period of therapeutic nihilism developed during which physicians trained in the pathological schools were prone to distrust drugs entirely, or at least to a very great degree. The effect of this wave of nihilism has not entirely disappeared in our time, though we have learned that even where serious damage to an organ has been done by disease we may still hope to compensate for defect of tissue by stimulation of other organs and to replace its function by certain physiological remedies or biological products; and if we can do nothing more, we can at least alleviate the symptoms which develop as a consequence of the organic affection.

Nature's Compensation.—Physicians are prone to forget nature's wonderful powers of compensation. Apparently even some regeneration may take place in diseased organs of highly organized type if the patient's general condition is kept up to its highest point of nutritive efficiency. How far this may go we do not know, but observations show some marvelous examples of unexpected regeneration.

These counteracting processes can be stimulated sometimes by drugs, but oftener they can be best brought into play by keeping the patient in just as good condition of body and favorable condition of mind as possible for a prolonged period, so that nature accustoms herself to the defect and her powers of compensation have full play.{509}

Unfavorable Suggestion.—What is true of organic diseases of all kinds is especially true of organic nervous diseases, and in spite of the fact that most of these are essentially incurable, so much can be done for patients that their condition is made more tolerable and indeed some of them improved to such an extent that they consider themselves quite relieved of their organic affection. One of the most serious burdens that the patient laboring under an organic nervous disease has to suffer is the consciousness drummed into him by successive physicians, by his reading, and by every possible means of suggestion, that his malady is incurable. This makes every symptom as severe in its effects as it can possibly be. Hope does not buoy up and discouragement weighs down every effort of the organism to compensate for the serious defect under which it is laboring. Nothing can be done for the disease itself, but much can be done for the patient. Many of the symptoms from which the patient suffers most are really due to his own discouragement, to that sluggish condition which develops in his body as a consequence of his lack of hope, to the absence of exercise and of air and of diversion of mind consequent upon the gloom that settles over him when he is told that his condition is incurable.

Adventitious Symptoms.—If the adventitious symptoms that are always present in cases of organic nervous disease are eliminated, if the conditions which develop from the unhygienic condition in which the patient lives because of his discouragement and retirement are removed, as a rule he feels so much better that it is hard to persuade him that some change has not come in his underlying nervous disease and that a process of cure is not at work. It is because of this that irregular practitioners so often succeed in apparently doing much more for these patients than the regular physician. The irregular does not insist on the incurability of the disease, but, on the contrary, he promises a cure. He then proceeds to relieve many bothersome symptoms that are quite extraneous to the underlying disease, but thus makes the patient ever so much more comfortable than before, gives a cheerful air to his life for a time, makes him sleep better as a consequence and it is not surprising that the patient thinks that his disease has been bettered, if not cured.

Suggestive Prophylaxis.—While we are optimistic just as far as possible since genuine nervous disease has declared itself, it must not be forgotten that we can by suggestion and warning often prevent or delay the development of nervous degenerations. This, too, is psychotherapy and must be employed wherever it seems advisable.

Post-syphilitic nervous conditions of so many kinds are likely to develop that it is important to warn the patients who are sufferers from this disease from taking up the more strenuous forms of existence. This may seem an exaggerated view of the condition, but it is amply justified by the results of the opposite rule of life in almost any physician's experience in city practice. A man who has had syphilis must be warned of the danger, one may almost say likelihood, if he takes up any of the professions in which there is much mental strain and nervous worry, that he will almost surely not live out the normal span of life without some serious nervous incident. Locomotor ataxia, and, above all, general paralysis develop, as a rule, in men who, having had syphilis, have some occupation in life that calls for considerable mental strenuosity, and involves excitement and worry. Actors, brokers, soldiers and sailors, speculators of all kinds, race-track gamblers, these are the classes from {510} which victims of paresis and locomotor ataxia are particularly recruited. People who have suffered from syphilis and who live the ordinary unemotional life of a teacher, or a merchant, or a writer, do not, as a rule, develop the postsyphilitic and parasyphilitic conditions.

Precocious apoplexy is especially likely to occur in patients who have had syphilis and who have then spent themselves at very hard work. I doubt if hard work alone, without some such antecedent condition, ever produces this result. Of course, it is not alone syphilis, but other serious conditions which affect the nervous system that ought to be guarded against in this same way. If there has ever been any affection of the kidneys, as a complication, for instance, of scarlet fever, then it has always seemed to me to be the duty of the family physician to warn such patients that their kidneys are more prone than those who have not suffered from such an incident to break down under any severe strain that may be put upon them by worry, especially worry following a period of strenuous work. In these cases the affection of the kidneys nearly always makes itself felt in the nervous system, and especially in the brain, and so this warning has a proper place here. Where there has been severe cerebro-spinal meningitis this warning seems also to be needful, though here our records have not been kept with sufficient care to enable us to speak positively of the necessity for the warning.

Treatment.—It is important to remember that as physicians we do not treat disease but patients. We care for patients, that is the real etymological significance of the Latin curare, we do not cure diseases in the modern sense that has come to be given to that term, of completely removing the materies morbi and setting the patient on his feet once more just as well as he was before his illness.

Relieving Incurable Disease.—A new cure for locomotor ataxia, for instance, is announced every now and then, and the evidence for its beneficial action is the testimony of patients who have been relieved of many symptoms that they thought connected directly with their spinal affection. All sorts of remedies have been employed with announced success. One man builds a particular kind of shoe for them and has a number of witnesses to his skill in curing them. Another does some slight operation on their nose or their throat or their urethra and straightway the patient feels so much better that he talks confidently about being cured. All the characteristic symptoms of the affection remain. Their knee-jerks are gone, their pupils do not react normally, they have some incoordination in their walk, but a number of other symptoms have disappeared and their walk is probably much improved because of their confidence and a certain amount of practice that they have gone through. The new hope born of confident assurance that they could be relieved gives them an appetite, makes their digestion better. This lessens the sluggishness of their bowels, gives them confidence to get out and see their friends, life takes on a new hope, they sleep better and it is no wonder they talk of having been helped or even cured.

There is a definite relation between the nervous affection in these cases and many visceral symptoms. There is no doubt, for instance, that certain cases of intractable dyspepsia are associated with tabes and that in nearly the same way obstinate constipation frequently develops. Notwithstanding the connection of these symptoms with an incurable condition of the spinal cord {511} that is no reason for thinking that they cannot be relieved even though no improvement of the spinal-cord lesions is expected.

Frequently, indeed, gastric dyspepsia is due more to worry over discomfort somewhere in the stomach region than to any real disturbance of the digestive functions. It may then be considerably ameliorated simply by the assurance that the trouble is local and is localized outside of the stomach itself, though there may be some sympathetic irritation of the gastric nerve supply. Probably Dr. Head and those who have studied reflexes so enthusiastically would not agree with this explanation of the relief of the gastric symptoms in some of the cases they have described, as due rather to suggestion than to the local treatment, and, as a matter of fact, we are not quite sure which factor may be the more important. Counter-irritation probably plays quite an important role in the relief of discomfort, but I am sure that the suggestive influence of acute sensory feelings at the surface produced by counter-irritation serves to divert the mind from the duller ache or the functional disturbance below. However, Dr. Head's paragraph should be given in his own words, for it furnishes a scientific basis for one aspect of these cases.

Throughout the study of cases of nervous diseases, evidence of the relation between pathological condition of certain viscera and sensory disturbances in the superficial structures of the body is constantly manifested. For instance, a man with caries of the spine suffered from a girdle sensation round the area of the eighth dorsal segment. At the same time he was greatly troubled by flatulent dyspepsia which was untouched by drugs. It was, however, greatly relieved by counter-irritation applied to the maximum tender point of the eighth dorsal area in the eighth space and mid-axillary line.

Optimistic Suggestions.—Our most prominent neurologists have in recent years insisted on the necessity for encouraging patients and for not permitting them to brood upon the worst side of what is to be expected from their ailment. Patients are entirely too prone to read up about their disease and the worst symptoms of the extreme cases impress their minds and are constantly recurring as suggestions of possible ills to come. Prof. Oppenheim in his "Letters to Nervous Patients" states in a striking way the optimistic view that it always seems advisable to give a patient in the initial stages of a serious, incurable or even progressive nervous disease. That letter is worth quoting:

I cannot conceal from you the fact, which you have already ascertained from other sources, that you show the premonitory symptoms of a disease of the spinal cord. This admission is not, however, as you fear, synonymous with the sentence "the beginning of the end." There is no reason for you to despair. We doctors regard and welcome it as a marked advance in our scientific knowledge that we are now in a position to diagnose a nervous disease of this kind in its first commencement. This is undoubtedly a great gain for the patient, as on account of this knowledge a judicious, experienced physician may, at least in many cases, by the timely regulation of the mode of life and the prescription of certain remedies, arrest the progress of the disease or retard its development. This advice may, however, and should as a general rule, be given without the patient himself being made aware of the diagnosis, for the ideas as to the nature of this disease which prevail in lay circles, and indeed among many doctors of the old school, arise from the knowledge of the disease in its advanced and fully established form, since it was only in this completely developed stage that it was recognized. Then, indeed, its very noticeable symptoms were obvious even to the uninitiated. This picture, sad enough indeed in itself, was rendered still gloomier by {512} the misery and despair which popular fancy has associated with the conception of locomotor ataxia.

Arteriosclerosis.—Even with regard to so serious a disease and, of course, absolutely fatal in its progress as arteriosclerosis, it must not be forgotten that much can be done for the patients and especially for the nervous symptoms that develop in connection with the condition. For the progressive hardening of the arteries on which the nerve symptoms depend absolutely nothing can be done. A man is as old as his arteries, and we cannot bring back the years even though the patient has become prematurely old. For the symptoms so frequently seen in connection with arteriosclerosis, the paresthesia, the burnings, the numbness, the pruritus, the pains around joints and the difficulties in connection with them, even for the intermittent claudication which develops, much can be done. Above all, the patient must not be allowed to cherish the notion that his disease is not only incurable, but that nothing can be done for it. It is inevitable and progressive, but then according to one definition, life is a progressive disease and every day brings us nearer death. "Life is a dangerous thing at best," as an American humorist once said, "and very few of us get out of it alive."

These patients can be relieved of many physical symptoms, they can be encouraged, their attention can be diverted from their symptoms, and it is concentration of mind on them that often makes them intolerable, while occupation with something, especially if it is interesting, will often prove an efficient remedy for the discomforts complained of. Old people who have no interests, who have retired from business, who did not have the opportunity when young to acquire tastes in art and literature, above all, those who have no interests in children, no grandchildren nor close relatives near them, are likely to become centered on their ills in the midst of their arteriosclerosis, and this more than the advancing degeneration of arteries itself is at the root of their symptoms. The ideal old age is that which is passed in the midst of younger people, with an occasional happy hour during the day with children in whom one is deeply interested. This is the best psychotherapeutic factor that we have.

Prof. Oppenheim has given the optimistic side of arteriosclerosis so suggestively that most patients suffering in this way should have the opportunity to read it. It occurs in his "Letters to Nervous Patients":

An eminent physician for whom I have much esteem has told you that your troubles, especially your vertigo, are caused by calcification of the arteries. You, sir, heard in this your death sentence, and since then the encyclopedia has revealed to you all the sufferings and terrors with which you may expect to be overtaken.
I would, however, explain to you, as the result of the most careful examination and the most absolute conviction on my part, that your anxiety is unfounded.
Since you have a certain amount of information and scientific knowledge, I may speak to you upon this matter almost as a colleague. One is certainly justified, when a man of your age complains of vertigo, in suspecting calcification of the arteries to be the cause of the trouble, since it constitutes the common senile change, and vertigo forms one of its most frequent symptoms. But—apart from the fact that in senile calcification of the vessels this vertigo is frequently a temporary and not always a serious sign—one is by no means justified in assuming that the appearance of this symptom in later life is in itself, and without further evidence, the sign of such a cause. This is an error which in my experience is {513} far too frequently made, to the detriment of the patient. It is first of all essential to closely examine and analyze the symptom in itself. . . . Two years ago, after having overloaded your stomach, you had a real attack of vertigo, which was repeated several times during the day, until, by vomiting and diarrhea, the contents of your stomach were evacuated. Since that time the fear of vertigo has overpowered you. In my experience it is neither new nor uncommon to find that a man who has shown his intrepidity and his contempt of death on many a battlefield, who is a hero in war, may be overcome by some dread of illness, by some anxiety, or even by some pain, and may be distressed by it in a way that is in sharp contrast to his whole personality. Your remembrance of that vertigo is so lively that the mere idea of it suffices to reawaken the symptom, or at least an imitation of it which very nearly approaches the reality. That this idea is present in your case is quite certain from the consideration of your symptoms. You admit that you almost never have vertigo at home, but as soon as you leave the house, and especially if you find yourself alone in the street far from home, the remembrance of the vertigo comes over you, puts you into a state of anxiety, and is followed by a sensation of tottering and swaying, so that you have to stand still; and at last it has gone so far that you no longer venture to go out alone. And so the hero of X sits like a timid woman in his arm chair, making life bitter for himself and for those around him.
Even were I to find that signs of arterial calcification were present, I should still be satisfied that your vertigo is not due to this cause, but that it is a vertigo of recollection and of fear.