The intense persistency with which some women study and dwell upon their symptoms is often the great difficulty. Even a slight physical annoyance becomes for one of these unhappily-constituted natures a grave and almost ineradicable trouble, owing to the habit of self-study.
Miss P., æt. 29, weight one hundred and eleven pounds, height five feet four inches, dark-skinned, sallow, and covered with the acne of bromidism, had had one attack which was considered to have been epileptic, and which was probably hysterical, but on this matter she dwelt with incessant terror, which was fostered by the tender care of a near relative, who left her neither by night nor by day. Vague neuralgic aches in the limbs, with constant weariness, asthenopia, anæmia, loss of appetite, and loss of flesh, followed. Then came spinal pain and irregular menstruation, a long course of local cauterizations of the womb, spinal braces, and endless tonics and narcotics.
I broke up the association which had nearly been fatal to both women, and, confidently promising a cure, carried out my treatment in full In three months she went home well and happy, greatly improved in looks, her skin clear, her functions regular, and weighing one hundred and thirty-six pounds.
It is vain to repeat the relation of such cases, and impossible to put on paper the means for deciding—what is so large a part of success in treatment—the moral methods of obtaining confidence and insuring a childlike acquiescence in every needed measure.
Another class of cases will, however, bear some further illustration. We meet with women who are healthy in mind, but who have some chronic pain or some definite malady which does not get well, either because the usual tonics fail, or because their occupations in life keep them always in a state of exhaustion. If by rest we slow the machinery, and by massage and electricity deprive rest of its evils, we can often obtain cures which are to be had in no other way. This is true of many uterine and of some other disorders.
Miss B., æt. 37, height five feet five inches, weight one hundred and fifteen pounds, a schoolteacher, without any notable organic disease, had a severe fall, owing to an accident while driving. A slight swelling in the hurt lumbar region was followed by pain, which became intense when she walked any distance. Loss of color, flesh, and appetite ensued, and, after much treatment, she consulted me. I could find nothing beyond soreness on deep pressure, and she was anything but hysterical or emotional.
Two months' rest with the usual treatment brought her weight up to one hundred and thirty-eight pounds, and she has been able ever since to do her usual work, and to walk when and where and as far as she wished.
Several years ago I treated with some reluctance a lady who had extensive bronchitis and a slight albuminuria. This woman was a mere skeleton, with every function out of order. I undertook her case with the utmost distrust, but I had the pleasure to find her fattening and reddening like others. Her cough left her, the albumen disappeared, and she became well enough to walk and drive; when a sudden congestion of the kidneys destroyed her in forty-eight hours.
The following case of extreme anæmia, with striking resemblance to the pernicious type in some of its features, is especially interesting for the ease and rapidity of improvement under rest and massage without electricity or excessive amounts of food.
Mrs. T., æt. 40, the mother of several children, had been unwell for years, and almost totally incapacitated for exertion for two years before admission, in January, 1894. She complained of extreme feebleness, distaste for and inability to digest food, a great and constant difficulty in swallowing, shortness of breath, dropsy of the ankles if she walked or stood, hemorrhoids from which some bleeding often occurred, extreme constipation, constant chilliness, and frequent violent headaches. Her appearance was that of a person with pernicious anæmia, a very yellow muddy skin, dry and harsh to the touch, and the hands and feet cold, almost to the point of pain.