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One of the book’s through-lines is the concept of “neurasthenia,” an old-fashioned term describing a collection of symptoms including headaches, listlessness and low-grade depression.

Idleness in the poor became neurasthenia in the rich.

As a child, Jacob was treated for neurasthenia by Jean-Martin Charcot, Freud’s mentor.

The latter, which made use of ultraviolet irradiation, was considered an effective treatment for hysteria, epilepsy, neurasthenia, migraine, melancholia, mania, insomnia, and a wide variety of other psychiatric, neurological, and general medical disorders.

During the eighteen-sixties, doctors in America diagnosed an illness called “neurasthenia,” which was characterized by tiredness, headaches, and insomnia, and was thought to be brought on by the anxieties of urbanization.