In I874 Mrs. G., of  B----, Maine, came to, see me in the month of January.  I have described her case elsewhere, so that it is needless to go into detail here, except to say that she was a lady of ample means, with no special troubles or annoyances, but completely exhausted by having had children in rapid  succession and  from having undertaken  to do charitable and other work to an extent far beyond her strength. When first I saw this tall woman, large, gaunt, weighing under a hundred pounds, her complexion pale and acneous, and heard her story, I was for a time in a state of such therapeutic despair as usually fell upon physicians of that day when called upon to treat such cases.   She had been to Spas, to physicians of the utmost eminence, passed through the hands of gynecologists, worn spinal supporters, and taken every tonic known to the books.  When I saw her she was unable to walk up stairs.  Her exercise was limited to moving feebly up and down her room, a dozen times a day.  She slept little and, being very intelligent, felt deeply her inability to read or write.  Any such use of the eyes caused headache and nausea.  Conversation tired her, and she had by degrees accepted a life of isolation. She was able partially to digest and retain her meals if she lay down in a noiseless and darkened room.  Any disturbance or the least excitement, in short, any effort, caused nausea and immediate rejection of her meal. With  care she could retain enough  food to preserve her life and hardly to do more.  Anemia, which we had then no accurate means of measuring, had been met by half a dozen forms of iron, all of which were said to produce headache, and generally to disagree with her.  Naturally enough, her case
had been pronounced to be hysteria, but calling names may relieve  a  doctor and comfort  him  in  failure,  but  does  not always assist the patient, and to my mind there was more of a general condition of nervous excitability due to the extreme of weakness than I should have been satisfied to label with the apologetic label hysteria.

             I sat beside this woman day after day, hearing her pitiful story, and distressed that a woman, young, once handsome, and with every means of enjoyment in life should be condemned to what she had been told was a state of hopeless invalidism.   After my third or fourth visit, with a deep sense that everything had been done for her that able men could with reason suggest, and  and many things which reason never could have suggested, she said to me that I appeared to have nothing to offer which had not been tried over and over again. I asked her for another day before she gave up the hope which had brought to me. The night brought counsel. The following morning I said to her, if you are at rest you appear to digest  your  meals  better.
"Yes,"  she said. "I have been told that on that account I ought to lie in bed.  It has been tried, but when  I remain in bed for a few days, I lose all appetite, have intense constipation, and get up feeling weaker than when I went to bed.  Please do not ask me to go to bed."
Nevertheless, I  did, and a week in bed justified her statements.  She threw up her meals undigested, and was manifestly worse for my experiment. Sometimes the emesis was mere regurgitation, sometimes there was nausea and violent straining, with consequent extreme exhaustion.    She  declared that unless she had the small exercise of walking up and down her room, she was infallibly worse.  That she needed rest I saw, that she required some form of exercise I also saw. How could I unite the two?

            As I sat beside her, with a keen sense of defeat, it suddenly occurred  to  me  that  some  time  before,  I  had  seen  a man, known as a layer on of hands, use very rough rubbing for a gentleman who was in a state of general paresis. Mr. S. had asked me if I objected to this man rubbing him. I said no, and that I should like to see him do so, as he had  relieved, to my knowledge, cases of rheumatic stiffness.   I  was present at two sittings and saw this this man rub patient.  He kept him sitting in a chair at the time and was very rough and violent like the quacks now known as osteopaths:  I told him he had injured my patient by his extreme roughness, and that if he rubbed him at all he must be more gentle.  He took the hint and as a result there was every time a notable but temporary gain.  Struck with this, I tried to have rubbing used on spinal cases, but those who tried to do the work were  inefficient, and I made no constant use of it.  It remained, however, on my mind, and recurred to me as I sat beside this wreck of a useful and once vigorous woman.  The thought was fertile.   I asked myself why rubbing might not prove competent to do for the muscles and tardy circulation what voluntary exercise does.  I said to myself, this may be exercise without exertion, and wondered why I had not long before had this pregnant view of the matter.

            Suffice it to say that I brought a young woman to Mrs. G's bedside and told her how I thought she ought to be rubbed. The girl was clever, and developed talent in that direction, and afterwards became the first of that great number of people who have since made a livelihood by massage. I watched the rubbing two or three times, giving- instructions, in fact developing out of the clumsy massage. I had seen, the manual of a therapeutic means, at that time entirely new to me.  A few days later I fell upon the idea of giving electric passive exercise and cautiously added this second agency. Meanwhile, as she had always done best when secluded, I insisted on entire rest and shut out friends, relatives, books and letters.  I had some faith that I should succeed.   In ten days I was sure. The woman had found a new tonic, hope, and blossomed like a rose.  Her symptoms passed away one by one.  I was soon able to add to her diet, to feed her between meals; to give her malt daily, and, after a time, to conceal in it full doses of pyro-phosphates of iron.  First, then, I had found two means which enabled me to use rest in bed without causing the injurious effects of unassisted rest; secondly, I had discovered that massage was a tonic of extraordinary value; thirdly, I had learned that with this combination of seclusion, massage and electricty, I could overfeed the patient until I had brought her into a state of entire health. I learned later the care which had to be exercised in getting these patients out of bed. But this does not concern us now. In two months she gained forty pounds and was a cheerful, blooming woman, fit to do as she pleased. She has remained, save for times's ravage what I made her.