About the year 1840, I had a patient who was exceedingly afflicted with this painful disease. She was, at the same time, consumptive. The neuralgia was but a recent thing; the consumption had been of many years' standing, and was probably inherited. The physicians of her native region had exhausted their skill on her to no purpose. There was no hope of aid, in her case, from medicine. The only thing to be done was to invigorate her system, and thus palliate the neuralgia and postpone the consumption. She was accordingly placed under the most rigid restrictions which the code of physical law could demand. She was required to attend to exercise and bathing with great care; to avoid over anxiety and fretfulness; to drink water, and to eat the plainest food. It was not intended to interdict _nutritious_ food; but only that which was _over-stimulating_. It required considerable time to show her and her friends the practical difference between nutrition and stimulation. They thought, as thousands have thought beside them, that without a stimulating diet she could not be properly nourished. But they learned at length that good bread of all sorts, rice, peas, beans, and fruits, especially the first two, while they were unstimulating, were even more nutritious than the more stimulating articles of flesh, fish, fowl, butter, and milk and its products. The treatment to which she was directed was at length pretty carefully followed. The Friends--of which religious connection she was a member--are generally thorough, when we gain their full confidence. Her health was so far restored, that at one period I entertained strong hopes of her ultimate recovery; or, at least of a recovery which would permit of her continuance some twenty or twenty-five years longer. But after seven or eight years of comfortable though not very firm health, she again declined. She died at forty years of age. CHAPTER LXVIII. COLD WATER IN FEVER. My daughter, then about three years of age, was feverish; and as the lung fever was somewhat prevalent, the family became considerably alarmed. On examination, I found a strong tendency to the head. The eye was heavy, the head hot and painful, and the tongue thickly coated. The digestive system was disordered, and the skin was collapsed, inactive, and cold. The extremities, especially the feet, were particularly cold and pale. The days of hydropathy had now arrived; but I was not a full convert, as I have already told you, to the exclusive use of cold water in disease. However, a case was before me which obviously demanded it. So I proceeded to make frequent applications of Nature's drug to the top of her head, and to the temples, while I ordered warm and stimulating applications to the feet and ankles.