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
"When consulted about this lady, I gave it as my opinion that any
attempt at cure was hopeless as long as she remained in the country
house in which she lived. I was informed that it was absolutely
impossible to get her away, as she could not bear the motion of any
carriage, still less of a railway, without the most acute suffering.
Eventually the difficulty was got over by anæsthetizing her, when she
was carried on a stretcher to the nearest railway station, and then
brought over two hundred miles to London, being all the time more or
less completely under the influence of the anæsthetic, administered by
her medical attendant, who accompanied her. I found this lady's state
fully justified the account given of her. She was intensely sensitive to
all sounds and to touch. Merely laying the hand on the bed caused her to
shrink, and she could not bear the lightest touch of the fingers on her
spine or any part near it. She lay in a darkened room at the back of the
house, to be away from the noise of the streets, which distressed her
much. She was a naturally fine and highly-cultivated woman, greatly
emaciated, with a dusky, sallow complexion, and dark rims round her
eyes. I could find no evidence of organic disease of any kind. Whatever
lesion of the uterine organs had previously existed had disappeared, and
I therefore paid no attention to them. Within a week I had the patient
lying in a bright sunlit room in the front of the house, with the
windows open, and she complained no longer of the noise. Within ten days
the whole spine could be rubbed freely from top to bottom, and from the
first I directed the masseuse to be relentless in her manipulation of
this part of the body. In a few weeks she had gained flesh largely, the
dusky hue of her complexion had vanished, and she looked a different
being. The only trouble complained of was sleeplessness, but it did not
interfere with the satisfactory progress of the case, and no hypnotic
was given. After the first few days we had no return of the nerve-crises
which in the country had formed so characteristic a part of her illness.
Her hands and feet also, at first of a remarkable deadly coldness, soon
became warm, and remained so. In five weeks she was able to sit up, and
before the fifth week of treatment was completed I took her out for a
drive through the streets in an open carriage for two hours, which she
bore without the slightest inconvenience, and the result of which she
thus described in a letter the same evening: 'I never enjoyed anything
more in my life. I cannot describe my delight and my astonishment at
being once more able to drive with comfort. My back has given me no
trouble, and I was not really tired.' This lady has since remained
perfectly well, and I need give no better proof of this than stating
that she has started with her husband on a tour round the world, _viâ_
India, Japan, and San Francisco, and that I have heard from her that she
is thoroughly enjoying her travels."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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