et, lacking both in variety and appetizingness, had
had its usual result of upsetting digestion and destroying desire for
food. Even with the small amounts which she ate she considered it
necessary to chew so carefully and to feed herself so slowly that from
one hour to an hour and a half was used for each meal. The heart,
under-nourished, beat feebly, there was constant slight albuminuria with
evidences of congested kidneys, and she could only rest in a semi-erect
position.

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.

The surgeons, who once thought a floating kidney could be permanently
fixed in its place by stitching, have now concluded that this is very
doubtful, and the treatment of this displacement is never very
satisfactory by any method. Still, some success has followed long rest
in the supine position, which encourages the kidney to return to its
normal place, until careful full feeding has renewed or increased the
fatty cushions which hold it up. It is best during the first weeks of
treatment not to allow the patient to sit or stand, or if she should be
unable to avoid the occasional need for these positions, an abdominal
binder must be