298 On Chronic Debility 



ance be speedily lost. He who has been once high!/ 

 dyspeptic for a considerable length of time, however 

 good his health may be at present, is, in most instances 

 much more exposed to a return of the disease if he omit 

 exercise, and the other precautions, than he whose health 

 has never been impaired. This direction will I fear 

 prove a stumbling block to some. Any measures how- 

 ever disagreeable which demand attention, self denial, 

 and even confinement for a few days, many dyspeptic 

 persons are willing to comply with ;. but to persevere in 

 this course many months, and years, is an undertaking 

 too arduous to be generally looked for. No small pro- 

 portion of them are fickle, as to the measures they adopt 

 for recovery. Some of them go from physician to physi- 

 cian, till perhaps they apply to all in their neighborhood ; 

 when they sit down with this melancholy conclusion, that 

 no one understands their complaint, or that it is incura- 

 ble. This arises in part from the ridicule and contempt 

 so often manifested by physicians, about complaints of 

 this nature, from a persuasion that they are in a great 

 measure imaginary, and from the general conclusion that 

 nervous disorder^ are incurable ; and in part from the pa- 

 tient's expectation that the cure will be as speed}^, as 

 that of any acute disease. Some years ago ayoung man, 

 son of a respectable farmer, having been between one 

 and two years the subject of great debility of the stom- 

 ach, applied to me for advice. He appeared wild, was 

 easily alarmed, almost ready to despair of recovery, and 

 was in great danger of a confirmed delirium. During 

 his indisposition he had already applied to six or eight 

 physicians, all of whom had treated him much in the 

 same way. They seemed to consider his complaints as 

 imaginary or mental merely, told him he was nervous, 

 and that the cure must be looked for from time, and the 

 efforts of nature. They advised him to cease from 

 work, to ride about home and amuse himself. The 

 medicines in each case were very inefficacious, and de- 

 signed to amuse, rather than to cure. Finding the meas- 

 ures of the first producing little or no beneficial effect, 

 he went to the second, ar:d then to the third, and through 



