Produced by Kathryn Lybarger, Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net FAT AND BLOOD: AN ESSAY ON THE TREATMENT OF CERTAIN FORMS OF NEURASTHENIA AND HYSTERIA. BY S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D., LL.D. HARV., MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. _EIGHTH EDITION._ EDITED, WITH ADDITIONS, BY JOHN K. MITCHELL, M.D. PHILADELPHIA: J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. LONDON: 5 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1911. Copyright, 1877, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. Copyright, 1883, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. Copyright, 1891, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. Copyright, 1897, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. Copyright, 1900, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. Copyright, 1905, by S. WEIR MITCHELL. ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A. PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION. The continued favor which this book has enjoyed in Europe as well as in this country has rendered me doubly desirous to make it a thorough and clear statement of the treatment of the kind of cases which it discusses as carried out in my practice to-day. In the endeavor to do this, the present edition, like the last two, has been carefully revised by my son, Dr. John K. Mitchell, and there is no chapter, and scarcely a page, where some alteration or addition has not been made, besides those of the sixth and seventh editions, as the result of added years of experience. Especially in the chapters on the means of treatment some details have been thought worth adding to help the statement so often repeated in the book that success will depend on the care with which details are carried out. The chapter on massage, rewritten for the last edition, has been once more revised and somewhat extended, in order to make it an accurate as well as a scientific, if brief, statement of the best method which use and observation have taught us. A chapter on the handling of several diseases not described in former editions has been added by the editor. S. WEIR MITCHELL. SEPTEMBER, 1899. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY 9 CHAPTER II. GAIN OR LOSS OF WEIGHT CLINICALLY CONSIDERED 14 CHAPTER III. ON THE SELECTION OF CASES FOR TREATMENT 33 CHAPTER IV. SECLUSION 50 CHAPTER V. REST 67 CHAPTER VI. MASSAGE 80 CHAPTER VII. ELECTRICITY 108 CHAPTER VIII. DIETETICS AND THERAPEUTICS 119 CHAPTER IX. DIETETICS AND THERAPEUTICS--(_Continued_) 171 CHAPTER X. THE TREATMENT OF LOCOMOTOR ATAXIA, ATAXIC PARAPLEGIA, SPASTIC PARALYSIS, AND PARALYSIS AGITANS 197 INDEX 233 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. For some years I have been using with success, in private and in hospital practice, certain methods of renewing the vitality of feeble people by a combination of entire rest and excessive feeding, made possible by passive exercise obtained through the steady use of massage and electricity.