Fat and Blood

Fat and Blood

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Title: Fat and Blood An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of
Neurasthenia and Hysteria
Author: S. Weir Mitchell
Editor: John K. Mitchell
Release Date: July 7, 2005 [EBook #16230]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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FAT AND BLOOD:
AN ESSAY ON THE TREATMENT OF CERTAIN FORMS OF
NEURASTHENIA AND HYSTERIA.

BY
S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D., LL.D. HARV.,
MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.

_EIGHTH EDITION._
EDITED, WITH ADDITIONS, BY
JOHN K. MITCHELL, M.D.

PHILADELPHIA:
J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
LONDON: 5 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
1911.

Copyright, 1877, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
Copyright, 1883, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
Copyright, 1891, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
Copyright, 1897, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
Copyright, 1900, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
Copyright, 1905, by S. WEIR MITCHELL.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT
COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.

PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION.
The continued favor which this book has enjoyed in Europe as well as
in this country has rendered me doubly desirous to make it a thorough
and clear statement of the treatment of the kind of cases which it
discusses as carried out in my practice to-day.
In the endeavor to do this, the present edition, like the last two, has
been carefully revised by my son, Dr. John K. Mitchell, and there is no
chapter, and scarcely a page, where some alteration or addition has not
been made, besides those of the sixth and seventh editions, as the result
of added years of experience. Especially in the chapters on the means
of treatment some details have been thought worth adding to help the
statement so often repeated in the book that success will depend on the
care with which details are carried out. The chapter on massage,
rewritten for the last edition, has been once more revised and somewhat
extended, in order to make it an accurate as well as a scientific, if brief,
statement of the best method which use and observation have taught us.
A chapter on the handling of several diseases not described in former
editions has been added by the editor.
S. WEIR MITCHELL.
SEPTEMBER, 1899.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY 9

CHAPTER II.
GAIN OR LOSS OF WEIGHT CLINICALLY CONSIDERED 14

CHAPTER III.
ON THE SELECTION OF CASES FOR TREATMENT 33

CHAPTER IV.
SECLUSION 50

CHAPTER V.
REST 67

CHAPTER VI.
MASSAGE 80

CHAPTER VII.
ELECTRICITY 108

CHAPTER VIII.

DIETETICS AND THERAPEUTICS 119

CHAPTER IX.
DIETETICS AND THERAPEUTICS--(_Continued_) 171

CHAPTER X.
THE TREATMENT OF LOCOMOTOR ATAXIA, ATAXIC
PARAPLEGIA, SPASTIC PARALYSIS, AND PARALYSIS
AGITANS 197
INDEX 233


CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
For some years I have been using with success, in private and in
hospital practice, certain methods of renewing the vitality of feeble
people by a combination of entire rest and excessive feeding, made
possible by passive exercise obtained through the steady use of
massage and electricity.
The cases thus treated have been chiefly women of a class well known
to every physician,--nervous women, who, as a rule, are thin and lack
blood. Most of them have been such as had passed through many hands
and been treated in turn for gastric, spinal, or uterine troubles, but who
remained at the end as at the beginning, invalids, unable to attend to the
duties of life, and sources alike of discomfort to themselves and anxiety

to others.
In 1875 I published in "Séguin's Series of American Clinical Lectures,"
Vol. I., No. iv., a brief sketch of this treatment, under the heading of
"Rest in the Treatment of Nervous Disease," but the scope afforded me
was too brief for the details on a knowledge of which depends success
in the use of rest, I have been often since reminded of this by the many
letters I have received asking for explanations of the minutiæ of
treatment; and this must be my apology for bringing into these pages a
great many particulars which are no doubt well enough known to the
more accomplished physician.
In the preface to the second edition I said that as yet there had been
hardly time for a competent verdict on the methods I had described.
Since making this statement, many of our profession in America have
published cases of the use of my treatment. It has also