FAT AND BLOOD:

AN ESSAY ON THE TREATMENT OF CERTAIN FORMS OF

NEURASTHENIA AND HYSTERIA.

S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D., LL.D. HARV.,

MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.

EIGHTH EDITION.

EDITED, WITH ADDITIONS, BY

JOHN K. MITCHELL, M.D.

PHILADELPHIA:

J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.

LONDON: 5 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN

1911.

ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA,U.S.A.

PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION.

The continued favor which this book has enjoyed in Europe as well as inthis country has rendered me doubly desirous to make it a thorough andclear statement of the treatment of the kind of cases which it discussesas carried out in my practice to-day.

In the endeavor to do this, the present edition, like the last two, hasbeen carefully revised by my son, Dr. John K. Mitchell, and there is nochapter, and scarcely a page, where some alteration or addition has notbeen made, besides those of the sixth and seventh editions, as theresult of added years of experience. Especially in the chapters on themeans of treatment some details have been thought worth adding to helpthe statement so often repeated in the book that success will depend onthe care with which details are carried out. The chapter on massage,rewritten for the last edition, has been once more revised and somewhatextended, in order to make it an accurate as well as a scientific, ifbrief, statement of the best method which use and observation havetaught us. A chapter on the handling of several diseases not describedin former editions has been added by the editor.

S. WEIR MITCHELL.

SEPTEMBER, 1899.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION.
CHAPTER I.   INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER II.   GAIN OR LOSS OF WEIGHT CLINICALLY CONSIDERED
CHAPTER III.   ON THE SELECTION OF CASES FOR TREATMENT
CHAPTER IV.   SECLUSION
CHAPTER V.   REST
CHAPTER VI.   MASSAGE
CHAPTER VII.   ELECTRICITY
CHAPTER VIII.   DIETETICS AND THERAPEUTICS
CHAPTER IX.   DIETETICS AND THERAPEUTICS—(Continued)
CHAPTER X.   THE TREATMENT OF LOCOMOTOR ATAXIA, ATAXICPARAPLEGIA, SPASTIC PARALYSIS, AND PARALYSISAGITANS
INDEX.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

For some years I have been using with success, in private and inhospital practice, certain methods of renewing the vitality of feeb

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