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

  • Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir), 1829-1914.
Date:
1907, ©1905
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Licence: In copyright

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

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    sufficiently well known and unpleasant spectacle. The overgrowth of inert people who do not ex- ercise enough to use up a healthy amount of overfed tissues is common enough as an indi- vidual peculiarity, but there are also two other 3ondition8 in which fat is apt to be accumulated to an uncomfortable extent. Thus, in some cases of hysteria where the patient lies abed owing to her belief that she is unable to move about, she is apt in time to become enormously stout. This seems to me also to be favored by the large use of morphia to which such women are prone, so that I should say that long rest, the hysterical consti- tution, and the accompanying resort to morphia make up a group of conditions highly favorable to increase of fat. Lastly, there is the class of fat anaemic people, usually women. This double peculiarity is rather uncommon, but, as the mass of thin-blooded per- sons are as a rule thin or losing flesh, there must be something unusual in that anaemia which goes with gain in flesh. Bauer ^ thinks that lessened number of blood- corpuscles gives rise to storing of fat, owing to 1 Zeitschrift fur Biol., 1872. Phila. Med. Times, vol. iii., page 115.