19th.—She took, on awaking at 7, coffee; at 7.30, a half-pint of milk; and the same at 10 A.M., 12 M., 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 P.M. The soup at 11, 5, and 9.
23d.—She took for breakfast an egg and bread-and-butter; and two days later (25th) dinner was added, and also iron.
On the 28th this was the schedule:
On waking, coffee at 7. At 8, iron and malt. Breakfast, a chop, bread-and-butter; of milk, a tumbler and a half. At 11, soup. At 2, iron and malt. Dinner, closing with milk, one or two tumblers. The dinner consisted of anything she liked, and with it she took about six ounces of burgundy or dry champagne. At 4, soup. At 7, malt, iron, bread-and-butter, and usually some fruit, and commonly two glasses of milk. At 9, soup; and at 10 her aloe pill. At 12 M., massage occupied an hour. At 4.30 P.M., electricity was used for an hour in the manner which I have described.
This heavy diet-list, reached in a few days by a woman who had been unable to digest with comfort the lightest meal, seemed certainly surprising. I have not given in full the amount of food eaten at meal-time. Small at first, it was increased rapidly owing to the patient's growing appetite, and became in a few days three large meals.
It is necessary to see the result in one of these successful cases in order to credit it. Mrs. C. began to show gain in flesh about the face in the second week of treatment, and during her two months in bed rose in weight from ninety-six pounds to one hundred and thirty-six; nor was the gain in color less marked.
At the sixth week of treatment the soup was dropped, wine abandoned, the iron lessened one-half, the massage and electricity used on alternate days, and the limbs exercised as I have described. The usual precautions as to rising and exercise were carefully attended to, and at the ninth week of treatment my patient took a drive. At this time all mechanical treatment ceased, the milk was reduced to a quart, the iron to five grains thrice a day, and the malt continued. At the sixth week I began to employ strychnia in doses of one-thirtieth of a grain thrice a day at meals, and this was kept up for several months, together with the iron and malt. The cure was complete and permanent; and its character may be tested by the fact that at the thirtieth day of rest in bed, and after five years of failure to menstruate, to her surprise she had a normal monthly flow. This continued with regularity until eighteen months later, when she became pregnant. The only drawback to her perfect use of all her functions lay in asthenopia, which lasted nearly a year after she left my care. Fatigue of vision for near work is a common condition of the cases I am now describing, and is apt to persist long after all other troubles have vanished. When there is no asthenopia I usually think well of the general chance of recovery; but in no case of feeble vision do I omit at some period of the treatment to have the optical apparatus of the eye looked at with care, because pure asthenopia, apart from all optical defects, is a somewhat rare symptom.
Neither am I always satisfied with the ophthalmologist's dictum that there is a defect so slight as to need no correction, being well aware, as I have elsewhere pointed out, that even minute ocular defects are competent mischief-makers when the brain becomes what I may permit myself, using the photographer's language, to call sensitized by disease.
The following illustrations of success in this mode of treatment are taken from Dr. Playfair's book:[29]