The evolution of the rest treatment / by S. Weir Mitchell.

  • Silas Weir Mitchell
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The evolution of the rest treatment / by S. Weir Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    electricity, I could overfeed the patient until I had brought her into a state of entire health. I learned later the care which had to be exercised in getting these patients out of bed. But this does not concern us now. In two months she gained forty pounds and was a cheerful, blooming woman, fit to do as she pleased. She has remained, save for time’s ravage, what I made her. It may strike you as interesting that for a while I was not fully aware of the enormous value of a therapeutic discovery which employed no new agents, but owed its usefulness to a combination of means more or less well known. Simple rest as a treatment had been suggested, but not in this class of cases. Massage has a long history. Used, I think, as a luxury by the Orientals for ages, it was employed by Ling in 1813. It never attained perfection in the hands of the Swedes, nor do they to-day understand the proper use of this agent. It was over and over recognized in Germany, but never generally accepted. In France, at a later period, Drey¬ fus, in 1841, wrote upon it and advised its use, as did Recamier and Laine in 1868. Two at least of these authors thought it useful as a general agent, but no one seems to have accepted their views, nor was its value as a tonic spoken of in the books on therapeutics or recommended in any text-book as a power¬ ful toning agent. It was used here in the Rest Treatment, and this, I think, gave it vogue and caused the familiar use of this invaluable therapeutic measure. A word before I close. My first case left me in May, 1874, and shortly afterwards I began to employ the same method in other cases, being careful to choose only those which seemed best suited to it. My first mention in print of the treatment was in 1875, in the Sequin Lectures, Vol. I., No. 4, “Rest in the Treatment of Disease.” In that paper I first described Mrs. G.’s case. My second paper was in 1877, an address be¬ fore the Medico-Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, and the same year I printed my book on “Rest Treatment.” The one mistake in the book was the title. I was, however, so im¬ pressed at the time by the extraordinary gain in flesh and blood under this treatment that I made it too prominent in the title 3f the book. Let me say that for a long time the new treat-
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