Neurasthenia, meaning nerve weakness, was ‘invented’ in the United States as a disorder of modernity, caused by the fast pace of urban life. Soon after, from the early 1880s onwards, this modern disease crossed the Atlantic. Neurasthenia became much less ‘popular’ in Britain or the Netherlands than in Germany. Neurasthenia’s heyday continued into the first decade of the twentieth century. The label referred to conditions similar to those currently labelled as chronic fatigue syndrome. Why this rise and fall of neurasthenia, and why these differences in popularity This book, which emerged out of an Anglo-Dutch-German conference held in June 2000, explores neurasthenia’s many-sided history from a comparative perspective.

In the 1840s novelists such as Brontë and Dickens began to explore the inner world of the child. Simultaneously the first psychiatric studies of childhood were appearing. Moving between literature and science, this book explores issues such as childhood fears, imaginary lands, sexuality, and the relation of the child to animal life