ave the optical
apparatus of the eye looked at with care, because pure asthenopia, apart
from all optical defects, is a somewhat rare symptom.

Neither am I always satisfied with the ophthalmologist's dictum that
there is a defect so slight as to need no correction, being well aware,
as I have elsewhere pointed out, that even minute ocular defects are
competent mischief-makers when the brain becomes what I may permit
myself, using the photographer's language, to call sensitized by
disease.

The following illustrations of success in this mode of treatment are
taken from Dr. Playfair's book:[29]

"Early in October of last year I was asked to see a lady thirty-two
years of age, with the following history. She had been married at the
age of twenty-two, and since the birth of her last child had suffered
much from various uterine troubles, described to me by her medical
attendant as 'ulceration, perimetritis, and endometritis.' Shortly after
the death of her husband, in 1876, these culminated in a pelvic abscess,
which opened first through the bladder and afterwards through the
vagina. Paralysis of the bladder immediately followed the appearance of
pus in the urine, and from that time the urine was never spontaneously
voided, and the catheter was always used. Soon after this she began to
lose power in the right leg, and then in the left, until they both
became completely paralyzed, so that she could not even move her toes,
and lay on her back with her legs slightly drawn up, the muscles being
much wasted. Towards the end of 1877, after some pain in the back of
her neck and twitching of the muscles, she began to lose power in her
left arm and in her neck, so that she lay absolutely immobile in bed,
the only part of her body she was able to move at all being her right
arm. Up to this time the pelvic abscess had continued to discharge
through the vagina, and occasionally through the bladder, but it now
ceased to do so, and there were no further symptoms referable to the
uterine organs. Her general condition, however, remained unaltered, in
spite of the most judicious medical treatment. She was seen, from time
to time, by several of our most eminent consultants, all of whom
recognized the probable hysterical character of her illness, but none of
the remedies employed had any beneficial effect. There was almost total
anorexia, the amount of food consumed was absurdly small, and the
necessary consequence of this inability to tak