t 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 "Seguin'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 minutiae 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 o