DIETS IN HYSTERIA AND NEKVOUS EXHAUSTION. 



nourishing. If dropsy supervene, it will be necessary to aid the 

 functions of the kidneys and skin by imbibing a considerable 

 quantity of water ; but as soon as the dropsical tendency is arrested 

 tne dry diet should be resumed. ' 



DIET IN HYSTERIA. 



In this disorder the diet should be a generous, varied and highly 

 nitrogenous one. Fish or bacon may be taken for breakfast, which 

 will be generally more acceptable and better relished if a cold bath 

 or spinal douche has been taken on rising. For the other meals the 

 diet should be as nutritive as the digestive organs will permit with- 

 out causing disturbance. But the chief point to be noted here is the 

 disuse of wine, beer and spirits. The daily consumption of alco- 

 holic beverages for the debility from which patients imagine they 

 suffer, should be strenuously opposed, for this, instead of conferring 

 benefit, only tends to confirm the worst symptom of the complaint. 

 There is, further, danger to be apprehended lest the patient should 

 in time learn to enjoy the pleasurable sensations yielded by alco- 

 hol so highly that in the end she becomes an inebriate. A feeling 

 of exhaustion or faintness from defective or perverted nervous sup- 

 plies may indeed be removed by stimulants, but the exhaustion 

 quickly returns, and with it the temptation again to seek relief by 

 the same means. It is most difficult to persuade the patient that 

 the sensations of faintness or exhaustion are really aggravated by 

 stimulants, and that if she will abstain from the delusive draught 

 and adopt rational methods of cure, nerve-power will return and with 

 it appetite and other normal functions. 



" The best way of breaking off the habit of yielding to the per- 

 verted sensation which so insidiously cries for alcohol, writes Dr. 

 Chambers, "is immediately and altogether to relinquish it. Terrible 

 sometimes is the struggle, yet it is a Gracing and ennobling conflict ; 

 whereas the long-continued daily annoyance of giving it up little by 

 little is on the whole quite as painful, and is often enfeebling to the 

 mind. Moreover, courage is likelier to give way in a month than in 

 a day." 



DIET FOR NERVOUS EXHAUSTION. 



There is a large class of people who are ailing and whom 

 neither the vegetarian diet, nor the milk diet, nor the beef diet can 

 benefit. Neither are they made happy by the well man's diet, 

 "good living," "the best of everything." These are the brain- 

 workers, the nervous, the neurasthenics, all, in fact, who are suffer- 

 ing from exhausted nerve. For a number of years past the question 

 has arisen as to what is the best brain and nerve food. The answer 



