Neurasthenia explained France’s defeat in the 1870 war.

Evidence

The warm reception given Beard’s book and the success of neurasthenia are not so much imputable to effective medication – none existed – as to one of the era’s important issues: the physical fatigue of manual labourers as well as the exhaustion of young intellectuals, the middle and upper classes, and those occupying liberal professions in the big cities. Overworked individuals explained not only the degeneracy of the French population but also the defeat in the war of 1870. — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self, 215

Categorization

• XREF: National defeat explained via national fatigue echoes the reader’s interest in how moralized medical discourse maps onto politics (cf. Frankfurter school interest). — connects to: Neurasthenia was attributed to modern life, not heredity. — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing…, 213; French Orientalism intensified to compensate for 1870 defeat and rival Britain

Broader Connections

• French Orientalism intensified to compensate for 1870 defeat and rival Britain #responds-to (0.85)