Weary of Work | Lapham's Quarterly
Wednesday, April 28, 2021 Industry at Night, by Horatio C. Forjohn, c. 1940. Smithsonian American Art Museum, transfer from the General Services Administration. Most discussions of fatigue at the turn of the twentieth century begin with neurasthenia (from a Greek term meaning nervous exhaustion), the diagnosis popularized by neurologist George M. Beard in 1869. Like other physicians at the time, Beard viewed the body as a machine powered by energy produced by the nerves. The depletion of that energy resulted in the condition he called neurasthenia. Although sufferers reported an array of vagu...
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