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Query: UMLS:C0013395 (dyspepsia)
 4,879 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

In the 18th century the main varieties of nervous illness - hypochondria, hysteria, the spleen, the vapours and dyspepsia - became included under the general term 'nervous disorders'. When no physical disorder of the nerves could be detected in such conditions, the hypothesis of nervous disorder was replaced by the more vague concept of 'nervous temperament'. The fact that there is still no evidence of pathological change in such cases continues to expose physicians to the alternative hypothesis of a purely psychological cause. The modern era in our understanding of the nervous system may be said to date from 1843 when Du Bois Reymond showed the electrical nature of nervous conduction. The publication of Jorden's Briefe Discourse in 1603 may be taken to represent the start of a discrete period (1600 to 1840) in the history of neurotic illness.
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PMID:The history of 'nervous disorders' from 1600 to 1840, and a comparison with modern views. 188 78

This study examines experiences of individual patients and psychiatrists in the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins between 1913 and 1917. The dynamics of these patient-psychiatrist interactions elucidate the well-known conceptual shift in explanations of mental illness during the twentieth century, from somatic models rooted in the logic of "neurasthenia" and damaged nerves to psychodynamic models based on the notion of "subconscious conflict." A qualitative analysis of 336 cases categorized as functional disorders (a catchall term in this period for illnesses that could not be confirmed as organic diseases), shows that patients explained their symptoms and suffering in terms of bodily malfunctions, and, particularly, as a "breakdown" of their nervous apparatus. Psychiatrists at the Phipps Clinic, on the other hand, working under the direction of its prominent director, Adolf Meyer, did not focus their examinations and therapies on the body's nervous system, as patients expected. They theorized that the characteristic symptoms of functional disorders-chronic exhaustion, indigestion, headaches and pain, as well as strange obsessive and compulsive behaviors-resulted from a distinct pathological mechanism: a subconscious conflict between powerful primal and social impulses. Phipps patients were often perplexed when told their physical symptoms were byproducts of an inner psychological struggle; some rejected the notion, while others integrated it with older explanations to reconceptualize their experiences of illness. The new concept also had the potential to alter psychiatrists' perceptions of disorders commonly diagnosed as hysteria, neurasthenia, or psychoneuroses. The Phipps records contain examples of Meyer and his staff transcending the frustration experienced by many doctors who had observed troubling but common behaviors in such cases: morbid introspection, hypochondria, emotionalism, pity-seeking, or malingering. Subconscious conflict recast these behaviors as products of "self-deception," which both absolved the sufferer and established an objective clinical marker by which a trained specialist could recognize functional disorder. Using individual case studies to elucidate the disjunction between patients' and psychiatrists' perspectives on what all agreed were debilitating illnesses, this analysis helps to illuminate the origins of a radical transformation in psychiatric knowledge and popular culture in the twentieth century-from somatic to psychodynamic explanations of mental illness.
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PMID:"MY RESISTING GETTING WELL": NEURASTHENIA AND SUBCONSCIOUS CONFLICT IN PATIENT-PSYCHIATRIST INTERACTIONS IN PREWAR AMERICA. 2691 53

During most of his adult life, in counterpoint to his fame in describing the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin was chronically ill. He consulted many doctors with only limited and temporary success. His symptoms were many and varied. His doctors favoured dyspepsia or suppressed gout as the diagnosis. The Water Cure was only effective initially. Many diagnoses have been proposed by physicians since then. Perhaps he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), not instead of but as well as other physical problems. His symptoms match with criteria for PTSD. Traumatic episodes from his life are considered in this paper: his mother's painful, sudden death from an acute abdominal event when he was eight; his reaction to seeing operations without anaesthetic; the deaths of three of his children, including his beloved daughter, Annie, aged ten; and being overwhelmed by his chronic, unrelenting symptoms. Trauma had not been conceptualised as a diagnosis in Darwin's time. Rather, hysteria and, in war, irritable heart were names given to what is now called PTSD.
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PMID:Charles Darwin's (1809-1882) illness - the role of post-traumatic stress disorder. 2763 31