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
Mrs. G., the daughter of nervous parents, was always a nervous,
over-sensitive, serious child, worked hard at Vassar, broke down,
recovered, returned to college, was attacked with measles, which proved
severe, and by the time she graduated had been made by her own
tendencies and the anxious attention of her family into a devoted member
of the class which I may permit myself to describe as health-maniacs.
Health-foods, health-corsets, health-boots, the deeply serious
consideration of how to eat, on which side to sleep, profound
examination of whether mutton or lamb were the more digestible
flesh,--these were her occupations,--and two or three years before her
panic about her health had been made worse by the discovery of an aortic
stenosis, of which an over-frank doctor had thought it best to inform
her. When I saw her she had been three years married, was childless,
and, between the real cardiac disease and her own anxieties about it,
had driven herself into a state of great physical debility and a mental
condition approaching delusional insanity.
A too restricted diet, lacking both in variety and appetizingness, had
had its usual result of upsetting digestion and destroying desire for
food. Even with the small amounts which she ate she considered it
necessary to chew so carefully and to feed herself so slowly that from
one hour to an hour and a half was used for each meal. The heart,
under-nourished, beat feebly, there was constant slight albuminuria with
evidences of congested kidneys, and she could only rest in a semi-erect
position.
The heart condition, with its renal results, proved the most rebellious
part of the trouble. A firm and intelligent nurse soon overcame the
difficulties and delays about food, and my final refusal to discuss them
disposed for the time of some of the fanciful theories about digestion
and so on. Her meals were ordered in every detail, and she was told that
they were prescribed and to be taken like medicine, and, fed by the
nurse, she began to take more nourishment. Massage relieved some of the
labor of the heart, and gradually the semi-erect posture was exchanged
inch by inch for a semi-recumbent one. Not to prolong the relation of
details, it was found needful to keep this lady in bed for five months
before the heart seemed to recover sufficiently to allow her to get up.
Even then, although improved in color, flesh, and blood condition, she
had to attain an erect station almost as slowly as she had had to reach
recumbency. Slow, active Swedish movements, to which gentle resistance
movements were very gradually added, helped the heart. Her cure was
completed by five or six months' camp-life in the woods, and she is now
the mother of a healthy child and herself perfectly well, the valvular
disease only to be detected by the most careful examination, and never,
even during pregnancy and parturition, causing any annoyance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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