Hysteria : the history of a disease / by Ilza Veith.

  • Ilza Veith
Date:
1970, ©1965
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hysteria : the history of a disease / by Ilza Veith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    result of indigestion, nor cancer j and if not, what remains behind to elucidate the case ? It could be nothing but Hysteria, and Hysteria alone could solve the mystery. But she had been treated for gastrodynia and treated for cancer, but she had not been under treatment for Hysteria, simply because these varieties of local Hysteria have never yet fixed themselves on the attention of the profession. To tell a practitioner of the old school that a young lady was the subject of Hysteria of the stomach would be to raise a smile at your expense. It would be an unprofitable employment of our time were I to enlarge on the subject of the previous treatment. The remedies included, in different proportions and in varying doses, ammomia and other alkalies, under the mistaken sup- position of acid secretions; opium in various forms, creasote, bismuth In small and large quantities, mineral acids, etc. How difficult it is to ascertain beyond all question the real value of many drugs in daily use among us! Although, in common with others, I have frequently employed the trisnitrate of bismuth, I have to this hour no conviction of its utility. This case did not terminate so satisfactorily as I hoped. That it was a case of Hysteria admits of no doubt, but I had difficulties to contend with in the domestic management of the young lady. Although her symptoms remitted greatly under the use of remedies, she did not entirely re- cover in the brief period of three or four weeks during which she remained under my care. I gave her small doses of ferrocitrate of quinine, two or three times a day a wine-glass of port wine boiled with spice, and I ordered a