338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the principal difficulty to overcome. At tbe worst, however, I passed 

 no night without some sleep. Hypnotics were used at first, but were 

 very soon altogether discontinued ; for the sooner the system should 

 discover, so to speak, that no outside aid was to be expected, the 

 better. 



The term of my stay under treatment was just four weeks, and the 

 latter half of this may be considered the period of convalescence. 

 There was soon an incoming tide of vitality that transformed the 

 world. This came while my physical strength was still slight, and 

 the amount of sleep to be obtained scanty. But the morning star had 

 arisen above the horizon, and brought an indescribable feeling of re- 

 newed hope and courage. Perhaps no after-experience of life will 

 bring again that exquisite sensitiveness to every emotional touch which 

 lasted for two or three days at this early stage of recovery, when the 

 soul was bathed in an atmosphere of joy, and the most commonplace 

 incident would excite a thrill of bliss when a chance strain of music 

 would bring tears of rapture. This, of course, was not a normal con- 

 dition, but was the effect of reaction in the newly awakened powers of 

 the system. One main symptom thereafter was a peculiar lassitude 

 inertia. The will-power seemed to be under some strange thralldom, 

 and one found himself under the greatest difficulty in bringing himself 

 to perform some of the simplest actions. Another symptom which 

 persisted in some cases much longer than it did in others was what 

 may be called a dislocation of ideas, or at least a lack of relation be- 

 tween thought and its embodiment in language. The patient would 

 have great difficulty in finding the right expression ; he would use 

 words with a most ridiculous misapplication, to his intense mortifica- 

 tion. He could not, for the life of him, " call a spade a spade," but 

 would call it almost any other implement or thing imaginable. In my 

 own case, however, this trouble was slight. 



At the end of my four weeks' stay I had nearly recovered my 

 regular hours of sleep, and had gained very materially in general tone 

 and strength. With the exception noted above, I had been receiving 

 only tonic treatment ; and after leaving my physician's care the only 

 medicines taken were quinine, in tonic doses, and cod-liver oil. It is 

 unnecessary to recount here all the stages of convalescence. Very 

 soon after leaving I had a period of two or three weeks of wonderful 

 elasticity in fact, of the most perfect health. But this was soon suc- 

 ceeded by a return of the former lassitude and disturbance. There 

 were many such oscillations in the succeeding months ; there were 

 periods when the past seemed blotted out in a sense of renewed vigor 

 and strength, followed by weeks when, without any immediate osten- 

 sible cause, the tide was at ebb. These were not times of mental 

 despondency, but rather of physical depression and neuralgic disturb- 

 ance. But there was all the while a steady improvement in general 

 health, with an increasing infrequence of reminders of the "old 



