“Although the attempt to cure so aggravated a case as this was certainly a sufficiently severe test of the treatment, I determined to make the trial, and had the patient removed from her own home and isolated in lodgings.  I found her in bed, supported everywhere by many small pillows, and wasted more than, I think, I had ever seen any human being.  She really hardly had any covering to her bones, and looked somewhat like the picture of the living skeleton we are familiar with.  It may give some idea of her emaciation if I state that, though naturally not a small woman, her height being five feet five and a half inches, she weighed only 4 st. 7 lbs., and I could easily make my thumb and forefinger meet round the thickest part of the calf of her leg.  The curvature of the spine said to exist was a deceptive appearance, produced by her excessive leanness, and the consequent unnatural prominence of the spinous processes of the vertebrae.  I could detect no organic disease of any kind.  The appetite was entirely wanting, and she consumed hardly any food beyond a little milk, a few mouthfuls of bread, and the like.  From the first the patient’s improvement was steady and uniform.  The way she put on flesh was marvellous, and one could almost see her fatten from day to day.  Within ten days all her pains, neuralgia, and backache had gone, and have never been heard of since, and by that time we had also got rid of all her little pillows and other invalid appliances.

“It may be of interest, as showing what this system is capable of, if I copy her food diary on the tenth day after the treatment was begun; and all this, this bedridden patient, who had lived on starvation diet for twenty years, not only consumed with relish, but perfectly assimilated.

“Six A.M.:  ten ounces of raw meat soup. 7 A.M.:  cup of black coffee. 8 A.M.:  a plate of oatmeal porridge, with a gill of cream, a boiled egg, three slices of bread-and-butter, and cocoa. 11 A.M.:  ten ounces of milk. 2 P.M.:  half a pound of rump-steak, potatoes, cauliflower, a savory omelette, and ten ounces of milk. 4 P.M.:  ten ounces of milk and three slices of bread-and-butter. 6 P.M.:  a cup of gravy soup. 8 P.M.:  a fried sole, roast mutton (three large slices), French beans, potatoes, stewed fruit and cream, and ten ounces of milk. 11 P.M.:  ten ounces of raw meat soup.

“The same scale of diet was continued during the whole treatment, and, from first to last, never produced the slightest dyspeptic symptoms, and was consumed with relish and appetite.  At the end of six weeks from the day I first saw her she weighed 7 st. 8 lb.,—­that is, a gain of 3 st. 1 lb.  It will suffice to indicate her improvement if I say that in eight weeks from the commencement of treatment she was dressed, sitting up to meals, able to walk up and down stairs with an arm and a stick, and had also walked in the same way in the park.  Considering how completely atrophied her muscles were from twenty years’ entire disuse, this was much more than I had ventured to hope.  She has now left with her nurse for Natal, and I have no doubt that she will return from her travels with her cure perfected.”