overtense

At the same time we must learn to keep our instrument, the body, in the best possible condition; for the greatest artist, endowed with a profound knowledge of the laws of music and possessed of the most perfect technique, cannot produce musical and harmonious sounds from an instrument with strings relaxed or overtense, or with its body filled with rubbish.

Nature Cure Henry Lindlahr 1893

Its cathartic or purgative function regulates irritability, which may otherwise be drained or vented in wrong directions, exactly as Breuer [24] shows psychic traumata may, if overtense, result in "hysterical convulsions."

Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene G. Stanley Hall 1885

And as a people we are, or are becoming, excitable, irritable, morbid, prone to sudden collapse through snapping of the overtense chord of the nervous vitality.

The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred and Fifty Thousand Ray Vaughn Pierce 1877

"By the sensations that so incessantly pour in from the overtense excited body the overtense and excited habit of mind is kept up; and the sultry, threatening, exhausting, thunderous inner atmosphere never quite clears away.

Increasing Human Efficiency in Business: A Contribution to the Psychology of Business 1910