What was the rest cure meant to treat?
Noticing that many nervous women looked thin and anemic, Mitchell assumed that their physical and mental health would improve once they gained weight and red blood cells. The function of the rest cure was to help patients gain fat and blood as rapidly as possible, through a rich diet and minimal exertion.
What is Weir Mitchell’s rest cure?
Weir Mitchell, a wealthy and influential Philadelphia neurologist, created the rest cure, a regimen of forced bed rest, restricted diet, and a combination of massage and electrical muscle stimulation in place of exercise.
How did Gilman respond to the rest cure?
Gilman was fed, bathed, and massaged; she responded well to treatment and after a month was sent home with the prescription to live as domestically as possible, keep her child with her at all times, lie down for one hour after each meal, and to never touch a pen, brush, or pencil for the rest of her life.
What sort of conditions or diseases did patients have when prescribed the rest cure?
The diseases for which the rest cure was typically prescribed, neurasthenia and hysteria, also fell out of favor during these decades, to be replaced by more specific diagnoses such as depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, etc.
How did she overcome her cure the yellow wallpaper?
Her husband, John, is also her doctor, and the move is meant in part to help the narrator overcome her “illness,” which she explains as nervous depression, or nervousness, following the birth of their baby.
What was the rest cure in the 1800s?
The rest cure was a strictly enforced regime of six to eight weeks of bed rest and isolation, without any creative or intellectual activity or stimulation. It was often accompanied by massage and electrotherapy, as well as a fatty diet, rich in milk and meat.
Who developed the rest cure?
This essay discusses the rest cure, a popular treatment for nervous illness pioneered by Philadelphia neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell in the 1860s and ’70s.
Who created depression?
It was 19th Century German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin who began referring to various forms of melancholia as “depressive states,” due to the low mood that defines it.
How did depression begin?
It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and employment as failing companies laid off workers.
Why was the rest cure given?
Weir saw the rest cure as particularly suited to treating women, partly because he thought women tolerated a lack of stimulation and inactivity better than men. He also saw it as a corrective for women who were overly active, socially and physically.
What does the creeping figure in the wallpaper represent?
Eventually this figure takes on the form of a woman, and she seems to be trapped within the wallpaper. The woman behind the wallpaper seems to represent the narrator’s own sense of confinement and being oppressed, and she eventually identifies herself entirely with this mysterious figure.