Strange New England

My name is George Miller Beard and I have a strange tale to tell you, a story so bizarre and truly unbelievable that I am certain people will doubt my report and perhaps even question my motives in discussing this subject. Still, what I have to reveal to you is the honest truth, witnessed only lately from my long journey to the northern woods of Maine in this year, 1878. Now, before I reveal my discovery, which I am certain you will doubt, you should know that I am a graduate of Yale College, class of 1862, and I received my medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York in 1866. During the War, I was an assistant surgeon in the West Gulf Squadron of the Union Navy aboard the gunboat New London. I have published several articles concerning the mental conditions suffered by so many after the war and was the first to name exhaustion of the central nervous system as Neurasthenia.  My entire professional life has been devoted to helping those afflicted by the stresses of the modern