This article presents the medical category of neurasthenia and its etiological hypotheses in the medical writings of George Beard and other European writers who were his contemporaries. We present the main features and symptoms of neurasthenia and an overview of the etiological hypothesis attributed to the disease at that time, that is: the American civilization in the late 19th century, nervous diathesis and the concept of functional lesions of the nervous system.
Neurasthenia; civilization; functional lesion; hereditary factors