CHAPTER IV.
SECLUSION.
It is rare to find any of the class of patients I have described so free from the influence of their habitual surroundings as to make it easy to treat them in their own homes.

It is needful to disentangle them from the meshes of old habits and to remove them from contact with those who have been the willing slaves of their caprices.

I have often made the effort to treat them where they have lived and to isolate them there, but I have rarely done so without promising myself that I would not again complicate my treatment by any such embarrassments.

Once separate the patient from the moral and physical surroundings which have become part of her life of sickness, and you will have made a change which will be in itself beneficial and will enormously aid in the treatment which is to follow.

Of course this step is not essential in such cases as are merely anaemic, feeble, and thin, owing to distinct causes, like the exhaustion of overwork, blood-losses, dyspepsia, low fevers, or nursing.
There are but too many women who have broken down under such causes and failed to climb again to the level of health, despite all that could be done for them; and when such persons are free from emotional excitement or hysterical complications there is no reason why the seclusion needful to secure them repose of mind should not be pleasantly modified in accordance with the dictates of common sense.