But though physicians entertain the belief alluded to, and though it were founded in truth, it does not thence follow that mankind are to remain in ignorance of the whole subject of life and health, nor is it the intention of enlightened medical men that they shall. The latter are much more ready, as a general rule, to encourage among mankind the study of the most appropriate means of preventing disease, than they are willing to take the needful pains. In short, though physicians by their slowness to act, in this particular, are greatly faulty, the world as a mass are still more so.
I was speaking, at first, of tic douloureux. This is a painful affection of a nerve or a cluster of nerves. When it first began to be spoken of, it was confined chiefly to an expansion of nerve at the side of the face, called in anatomical works pes anserina. But, of late years, it has been found to attack various nerves and clusters of nerves in different parts of the body. In truth, under the general name of neuralgia, which means about the same thing, we now have tic douloureux of almost every part of the human system, and it has become so common that instead of one in a million, we have probably one or two if not more in every hundred, who have suffered from it in their own persons.
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.