Fat and blood : an essay on the treatment of certain forms of neurasthenia and hysteria / [S. Weir Mitchell].

  • Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir), 1829-1914.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Fat and blood : an essay on the treatment of certain forms of neurasthenia and hysteria / [S. Weir Mitchell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    we fail miserably in all our means of giving capacity to assimilate food. As I have said be- fore, and wish to repeat, to gain in fat is, in the feeble, nearly always to gain in blood; and I hope to point out in these pages some of the means by which these ends can be attained. Note.—The statements made on page 21 and the following paragraphs about obesity in England and with us are no longer exact, but have been allowed to stand in the text as recording facts true at the time of writing them, in 1877. At the present a medical observer familiar with both countries must note several decided changes: more fat people, more people even enormously stout, are seen with us than formerly, and fewer of the “inordinately fat middle-aged people” in England than used to be encountered. With us the over-fat are chiefly to be found among the women of the well-to-do classes of the cities, and from thirty years old onward. They persecute the medical men to reduce their weight, and the vast number of advertisements of quack and proprietary remedies against obesity indicate how wide-spread the tendency must be. Among women somewhat younger, as indeed among men, the American observer whose recollection takes him back twenty-five years must note a more hopeful change, a very decided average increase of stature, not merely in height but in general development. This change is to he seen through- out the whole country, and must he taken first as a sign of improved conditions of food and manner of life, and next, if not more largely, of the new interest and partnership of girls in the wholesome activities of field and wood.