The paper presents the conceptual framework surrounding the category of nervousness in Brazilian psychiatry in the early twentieth century as represented in an article by Henrique Roxo published in Arquivos Brasileiros de Psiquiatria, Neurologia e Medicina Legal in 1916, and contextualizes it in the history of psychiatric classifications and representations about nerves and the nervous system. As such, it intends to contribute towards mapping out physicalistic naturalism (or epiphenomenalism), which can be seen throughout the representations of the human person and their disturbances in modern western culture.
Nervousness; psychiatry; nervous system; nosography; mental disorder