ployed, and shall not hesitate to give such minute details as shall
enable others to profit by my failures and successes. In describing the
remedies used, and the mode of using them in combination, I shall relate
a sufficient number of cases to illustrate both the happier results and
the causes of occasional failure.

The treatment I am about to describe consists in seclusion, certain
forms of diet, rest in bed, massage (or manipulation), and electricity;
and I desire to insist anew on the fact that in most cases it is the
combined use of these means that is wanted. How far they may be modified
or used separately in some instances, I shall have occasion to point out
as I discuss the various agencies alluded to.

CHAPTER IV.

SECLUSION.

It is rare to find any of the class of patients I have described so free
from the influence of their habitual surroundings as to make it easy to
treat them in their own homes. It is needful to disentangle them from
the meshes of old habits and to remove them from contact with those who
have been the willing slaves of their caprices. I have often made the
effort to treat them where they have lived and to isolate them there,
but I have rarely done so without promising myself that I would not
again complicate my treatment by any such embarrassments. Once separate
the patient from the moral and physical surroundings which have become
part of her life of sickness, and you will have made a change which will
be in itself beneficial and will enormously aid in the treatment which
is to follow. Of course this step is not essential in such cases as are
merely anaemic, feeble, and thin, owing to distinct causes, like the
exhaustion of overwork, blood-losses, dyspepsia, low fevers, or nursing.
There are but too many women who have broken down under such causes and
failed to climb again to the level of health, despite all that could be
done for them; and when such persons are free from emotional excitement
or hysterical complications there is no reason why the seclusion needful
to secure them repose of mind should not be pleasantly modified in
accordance with the dictates of common sense. Very often a little
experimentation as to what they will profitably bear in the way of
visits and the like will inform us, as their treatment progresses, how
far such indulgence is of use or free from hurtful influences. Cases of
extreme neurasthenia in men accompanied with nutritive failures require
as t