The heart condition, with its renal results, proved the most rebellious
part of the trouble. A firm and intelligent nurse soon overcame the
difficulties and delays about food, and my final refusal to discuss them
disposed for the time of some of the fanciful theories about digestion
and so on. Her meals were ordered in every detail, and she was told that
they were prescribed and to be taken like medicine, and, fed by the
nurse, she began to take more nourishment. Massage relieved some of the
labor of the heart, and gradually the semi-erect posture was exchanged
inch by inch for a semi-recumbent one. Not to prolong the relation of
details, it was found needful to keep this lady in bed for five months
before the heart seemed to recover sufficiently to allow her to get up.
Even then, although improved in color, flesh, and blood condition, she
had to attain an erect station almost as slowly as she had had to reach
recumbency. Slow, active Swedish movements, to which gentle resistance
movements were very gradually added, helped the heart. Her cure was
completed by five or six months' camp-life in the woods, and she is now
the mother of a healthy child and herself perfectly well, the valvular
disease only to be detected by the most careful examination, and never,
even during pregnancy and parturition, causing any annoyance.
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