ite
stirred up by a publication of Max Nordau on "Degeneration," in which
a number of revered artists and intelligents were held up to public
scorn as degenerates and neurasthenics. So wrought up were they, in
fact, that Bernard Shaw was moved to compose a defense entitled "The
Sanity of Art." In spite of the Great Vegetarian's dialectics, it
remains to be explained why a certain species of creative ability has
been combined with the fatigability, variability and general wretched
irritability of every organ and tissue in the body which taught them
that they were sensitive souls imprisoned in the flesh. Going from
doctor to doctor as from pillar to post, from this medical creed to
that hygienic cult, lucky to escape the worst, often landing upon the
bosom of New Thought for succor. We have noted in previous chapters
the relation of neurasthenia to the glands of internal secretion
in general, and to adrenal insufficiency in particular. A closer
examination of neurasthenic genius will show it to consist essentially
of a pituitocentric in whom for one reason or another, congenital (the
persistence of the thymus) or acquired (shocks, accidents, diseases)
there has been failure of the adrenals, thyroid or the interstitial
cells, about in the order of their occurrence.

THE CASE OF NIETZSCHE

Friedrich Nietzsche is about as good a case as there is on record of a
genius blasted by migraine. The originality and force of his mind, as
well as the articulate music of an imaginative poet, places Nietzsche
among the philosophic elect of the race. Showing that he was an
unstable pituitary-centered of a certain type will throw light upon
his malady, as well as upon his life and work.

In a set of volumes, entitled Biographic Clinics, Dr. George M. Gould
of Philadelphia contended that the ill health of a number of men and
women of genius of the nineteenth century was due to unconnected eye
troubles. In attempting to bolster up his thesis he has collected
biographic material useful to the student of personality. He never
appears to have asked himself what was behind the eye trouble. The
evidence relating to Nietzsche's endocrine personality is derived from
some of the data he collected, as well as from the two volume life of
the philosopher written by his sister, and the other biographies of
him extant.

To reconstruct the endocrine formula or equation of Nietzsche
inductively, one should analyze first the information available
con