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Page 36
"On September 10 a gentleman came to consult me on the case of his wife,
in consequence of his attention having been directed to my former papers
by a relative who is a well-known physician in London. He informed me
that his wife was now fifty-five years of age, and that she had passed
ten years of her married life in India. At the age of thirty she was
much weakened by several successive miscarriages, and then drifted into
confirmed ill health. He wrote, on making an appointment, as follows: 'I
will give you at once a short outline of her case. We have been married
thirty-four years, of which the last twenty have been spent by her in
bed or on the sofa. She is unable even to stand, and finds the pain in
her back too great to admit of her sitting up. She is utterly without
strength, of an intensely nervous temperament, and suffers incessantly
from neuralgia. She has, moreover, an outward curvature of the spine.
There is not the slightest symptom of paralysis. Fortunately, she does
not touch morphia, or any narcotic or stimulant, beyond a glass or two
of wine in the day. That she has long been in a state of hysteria is the
opinion of nearly all the many medical men who have seen her.'
"Although the attempt to cure so aggravated a case as this was certainly
a sufficiently severe test of the treatment, I determined to make the
trial, and had the patient removed from her own home and isolated in
lodgings. I found her in bed, supported everywhere by many small
pillows, and wasted more than, I think, I had ever seen any human being.
She really hardly had any covering to her bones, and looked somewhat
like the picture of the living skeleton we are familiar with. It may
give some idea of her emaciation if I state that, though naturally not a
small woman, her height being five feet five and a half inches, she
weighed only 4 st. 7 lbs., and I could easily make my thumb and
forefinger meet round the thickest part of the calf of her leg. The
curvature of the spine said to exist was a deceptive appearance,
produced by her excessive leanness, and the consequent unnatural
prominence of the spinous processes of the vertebr�. I could detect no
organic disease of any kind. The appetite was entirely wanting, and she
consumed hardly any food beyond a little milk, a few mouthfuls of bread,
and the like. From the first the patient's improvement was steady and
uniform. The way she put on flesh was marvellous, and one could almost
see her fatten from day to day. Within ten days all her pains,
neuralgia, and backache had gone, and have never been heard of since,
and by that time we had also got rid of all her little pillows and other
invalid appliances.
"It may be of interest, as showing what this system is capable of, if I
copy her food diary on the tenth day after the treatment was begun; and
all this, this bedridden patient, who had lived on starvation diet for
twenty years, not only consumed with relish, but perfectly assimilated.
"Six A.M.: ten ounces of raw meat soup. 7 A.M.: cup of black coffee. 8
A.M.: a plate of oatmeal porridge, with a gill of cream, a boiled egg,
three slices of bread-and-butter, and cocoa. 11 A.M.: ten ounces of
milk. 2 P.M.: half a pound of rump-steak, potatoes, cauliflower, a
savory omelette, and ten ounces of milk. 4 P.M.: ten ounces of milk and
three slices of bread-and-butter. 6 P.M.: a cup of gravy soup. 8 P.M.:
a fried sole, roast mutton (three large slices), French beans, potatoes,
stewed fruit and cream, and ten ounces of milk. 11 P.M.: ten ounces of
raw meat soup.
"The same scale of diet was continued during the whole treatment, and,
from first to last, never produced the slightest dyspeptic symptoms, and
was consumed with relish and appetite. At the end of six weeks from the
day I first saw her she weighed 7 st. 8 lb.,--that is, a gain of 3 st. 1
lb. It will suffice to indicate her improvement if I say that in eight
weeks from the commencement of treatment she was dressed, sitting up to
meals, able to walk up and down stairs with an arm and a stick, and had
also walked in the same way in the park. Considering how completely
atrophied her muscles were from twenty years' entire disuse, this was
much more than I had ventured to hope. She has now left with her nurse
for Natal, and I have no doubt that she will return from her travels
with her cure perfected."
"Early in August I was asked to see a lady, aged thirty-seven, with the
following history:--'As a girl of sixteen she had a severe neuralgic
illness, extending over months: excepting that, she seems to have
enjoyed good health until her marriage. Soon after this she had a
miscarriage, and then two subsequent pregnancies, accompanied by
albuminuria and the birth of dead children.' 'During gestation I was not
surprised at all sorts of nervous affections, attributing them to
ur�mia.' The next pregnancy terminated in the birth of a living
daughter, now nearly three years old; during it she had 'curious nervous
symptoms,--_e.g._, her bed flying away with her, temporary blindness,
and vaso-motor disturbances.' Subsequently she had several severe shocks
from the death of near relatives, and gradually fell into the condition
in which she was when I was consulted. This is difficult to describe,
but it was one of confirmed illness of a marked neurotic type. Among
other phenomena she had frequently-recurring attacks of fainting. 'These
were not attacks of syncope, but of such general derangement of the
balance of the circulation that cerebration was interfered with. She was
deaf and blind; her face often flushed, sometimes deadly cold; her hands
clay-cold, often blue, and difficult to warm with the most vigorous
friction. These attacks passed off in from twenty minutes to a couple
of hours.' Soon 'the attacks became more frequent, with the reappearance
of another old symptom,--acute tenderness of the spine, especially over
the sacrum. Then came frequent and persistent attacks of sciatica, and
gradual loss of strength.' About this time there appears to have been
some uterine lesion, for a well-known gyn�cologist went down to the
country to see her. Eventually 'she became unable to do anything almost
for herself, for the nervous irritability had distressingly increased.
To touch her bed, the ringing of a bell, sometimes the sound of a voice,
sunlight, &c., affected her so as to make her almost cry out.' 'If she
stood up, or even raised her hands to dress her hair, they immediately
became blue and deadly cold, and she was done for.' Then followed
palpitations of a distressing character, with loud blowing murmur, and
pulse of 120 to 140, for which she was seen by an eminent physician, who
diagnosed them to be caused by 'slight ventricular asynchronism, with
atonic condition of the cardiac as well as of all other muscles of the
body.' 'She has no appetite whatever.' 'Any attempt at walking brings on
sciatica. She cannot sit, because the tip of the spine is so sensitive;
any pressure on it makes her feel faint. She cannot go in a carriage,
because it jars every nerve in her body. She cannot lie on her back,
because her whole spine is so tender.'
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