From the patient's point of view / by George M. Gould.

  • Gould, George Milbrey, 1848-1922.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: From the patient's point of view / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    1/6
    [Reprint from Buffalo Medical Journal for April, 1909.] /£> ■ FROM THE PATIENTS POINT OF VIEW By GEORGE M. GOULD, M. D., Ithaca, N. Y. THIS patient’s history from the physician’s standpoint was so instructive that I asked her to write it exactly as it appeared to her. When it was sent to me I found that my own records could add or change nothing, and as she is a woman of intellect and acumen, I have thought it best to let her account stand without change. Ithaca, N. Y.,, February 7, 1909. “Netherby,” Cornell Heights. My dear Dr. Gould: The accompanying is a full statement of the condition of my health from childhood to the time when I went to you last year at the age of 39 years. I had been a child of good strong constitution, with a sound body, but of high strung nervous temperament, irjegular in mood, full of wild spirits one day, depressed and melancholy without any cause, the next. My appetite was as capricious as my tem- per; sleep-walking and sleep-talking were of habitual nightly occurrence. The years between the ages of twelve and fifteen were spent in a boarding school. Continual headaches and severe pain in the face interrupted my classes, until finally all regular work was abandoned and it was an accepted fact that I should work one week and, alone in a dark room, rest completely the next. This meant giving up the use of my eyes, either for read- ing or writing, and even sewing. Married at nineteen, the birth of my only child at twenty marked the breakdown of my physical strength, and during the next twenty years there was a gradual but constant deteriora- tion of nerves and health, although no organic trouble ever de- veloped and no disease was ever discovered to account for all the suffering. The nine months of pregnancy were marked by continual vomiting of unusual violence and the loss in weight of forty pounds. Nevertheless, I was able to nurse my child for eight months and she was fully and completely nourished. The ten years following were made miserable by neuralgic pains in the facei, under the right eye.—“tic douloureux” the doctors called it, and the habit of vomiting begun during preg-