“When consulted about this lady, I gave it as my opinion that any attempt at cure was hopeless as long as she remained in the country house in which she lived.  I was informed that it was absolutely impossible to get her away, as she could not bear the motion of any carriage, still less of a railway, without the most acute suffering.  Eventually the difficulty was got over by anaesthetizing her, when she was carried on a stretcher to the nearest railway station, and then brought over two hundred miles to London, being all the time more or less completely under the influence of the anaesthetic, administered by her medical attendant, who accompanied her.  I found this lady’s state fully justified the account given of her.  She was intensely sensitive to all sounds and to touch.  Merely laying the hand on the bed caused her to shrink, and she could not bear the lightest touch of the fingers on her spine or any part near it.  She lay in a darkened room at the back of the house, to be away from the noise of the streets, which distressed her much.  She was a naturally fine and highly-cultivated woman, greatly emaciated, with a dusky, sallow complexion, and dark rims round her eyes.  I could find no evidence of organic disease of any kind.  Whatever lesion of the uterine organs had previously existed had disappeared, and I therefore paid no attention to them.  Within a week I had the patient lying in a bright sunlit room in the front of the house, with the windows open, and she complained no longer of the noise.  Within ten days the whole spine could be rubbed freely from top to bottom, and from the first I directed the masseuse to be relentless in her manipulation of this part of the body.  In a few weeks she had gained flesh largely, the dusky hue of her complexion had vanished, and she looked a different being.  The only trouble complained of was sleeplessness, but it did not interfere with the satisfactory progress of the case, and no hypnotic was given.  After the first few days we had no return of the nerve-crises which in the country had formed so characteristic a part of her illness.  Her hands and feet also, at first of a remarkable deadly coldness, soon became warm, and remained so.  In five weeks she was able to sit up, and before the fifth week of treatment was completed I took her out for a drive through the streets in an open carriage for two hours, which she bore without the slightest inconvenience, and the result of which she thus described in a letter the same evening:  ’I never enjoyed anything more in my life.  I cannot describe my delight and my astonishment at being once more able to drive with comfort.  My back has given me no trouble, and I was not really tired.’  This lady has since remained perfectly well, and I need give no better proof of this than stating that she has started with her husband on a tour round the world, via India, Japan, and San Francisco, and that I have heard from her that she is thoroughly enjoying her travels.”