Fat and Blood: An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and HysteriaMitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir)
Science
Fat and Blood: An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria
Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir)
Hysteria; Neurasthenia; Rest
It is difficult to treat any of these cases without a resort at some
time more or less to the use of milk. In most dyspeptic cases--and few
neurasthenic women fail to be obstinately dyspeptic--milk given at the
outset, and given alone by Karell's method for a fortnight or less,
enormously simplifies our treatment. Even after that, milk is the best
and most easily managed addition to a general diet. As to its use with
rest and massage as an exclusive diet in obesity alone or in extreme
fatness with anæmia, I spoke in a former edition with a confidence
which has been increased by the added experience of physicians on both
sides of the Atlantic. Finally, there are exceptional cases of
intestinal pain of obscure parentage or seemingly neuralgic, of
dyspepsia incorrigible by other treatments, which, having resulted in
grave general defects of nutrition, are best treated by several weeks of
milk diet, combined with rest, massage, and electricity. Milk,
therefore, must be so much used in these cases in connection with the
general treatment I am describing that it is perhaps as well to say more
clearly how it is to be employed when given alone or with other food. I
am the more willing to do this because I have learned certain facts as
to the effects of milk diet which have, I believe, hitherto escaped
observation. In fact, the study of the therapeutic influence and full
results of exclusive diets is yet to be made; nor can I but believe that
accurate dietetics will come to be a far more useful part of our means
of managing certain cases than as yet seems possible.
We are indebted chiefly to Dr. Karell, of St. Petersburg, for our
knowledge of the value of milk as an exclusive diet, and to Dr. Donkin
for the extension of Karell's treatment to diabetes. I shall formulate
as curtly as possible the rules to be followed in using milk as an
exclusive diet in dyspeptic states, and in anæmia with obesity, and in
the latter state uncomplicated by defective hæmic conditions.
For fuller statements as to the reasons for the various rules to be
observed in using milk, I must refer the reader to Karell's paper and to
Donkin's book.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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