Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/354

338 the principal difficulty to overcome. At the worst, however, I passed no night without some sleep. Hypnotics were used at first, but were very soon altogether discontinued; for the sooner the system should discover, so to speak, that no outside aid was to be expected, the better.

The term of my stay under treatment was just four weeks, and the latter half of this may be considered the period of convalescence. There was soon an incoming tide of vitality that transformed the world. This came while my physical strength was still slight, and the amount of sleep to be obtained scanty. But the morning star had arisen above the horizon, and brought an indescribable feeling of renewed hope and courage. Perhaps no after-experience of life will bring again that exquisite sensitiveness to every emotional touch which lasted for two or three days at this early stage of recovery, when the soul was bathed in an atmosphere of joy, and the most commonplace incident would excite a thrill of bliss—when a chance strain of music would bring tears of rapture. This, of course, was not a normal condition, but was the effect of reaction in the newly awakened powers of the system. One main symptom thereafter was a peculiar lassitude—inertia. The will-power seemed to be under some strange thralldom, and one found himself under the greatest difficulty in bringing himself to perform some of the simplest actions. Another symptom—which persisted in some cases much longer than it did in others—was what may be called a dislocation of ideas, or at least a lack of relation between thought and its embodiment in language. The patient would have great difficulty in finding the right expression; he would use words with a most ridiculous misapplication, to his intense mortification. He could not, for the life of him, "call a spade a spade," but would call it almost any other implement or thing imaginable. In my own case, however, this trouble was slight.

At the end of my four weeks' stay I had nearly recovered my regular hours of sleep, and had gained very materially in general tone and strength. With the exception noted above, I had been receiving only tonic treatment; and after leaving my physician's care the only medicines taken were quinine, in tonic doses, and cod-liver oil. It is unnecessary to recount here all the stages of convalescence. Very soon after leaving I had a period of two or three weeks of wonderful elasticity—in fact, of the most perfect health. But this was soon succeeded by a return of the former lassitude and disturbance. There were many such oscillations in the succeeding months; there were periods when the past seemed blotted out in a sense of renewed vigor and strength, followed by weeks when, without any immediate ostensible cause, the tide was at ebb. These were not times of mental despondency, but rather of physical depression and neuralgic disturbance. But there was all the while a steady improvement in general health, with an increasing infrequence of reminders of the "old