"
One night she dreamed that she awoke and found the dead body of the
preacher T. by her side; that at the same time her father, and two
physicians were considering what should be done for her in a severe
sickness. She called out that "the dead friend would help her; she
needed no physician." Her husband, hearing her cry out in sleep, woke
her.
This dream was presage of a fever, which seized her next morning. It
lasted fourteen days with great violence, and was succeeded by attacks
of convulsion and spasm. This was the beginning of that state of bodily
suffering and mental exaltation in which she passed the remaining seven
years of her life.
She seems to have been very injudiciously treated in the first stages of
her illness. Bleeding was resorted to, as usual in cases of extreme
suffering where the nurses know not what else to do, and, as usual, the
momentary relief was paid for by an increased nervousness, and capacity
for suffering.
Magnetic influences from other persons were of frequent use to her, but
they were applied without care as to what characters and constitutions
were brought into connexion with hers, and were probably in the end just
as injurious to her as the loss of blood. At last she became so weak, so
devoid of all power in herself, that her life seemed entirely dependent
on artificial means and the influence of other men.
There is a singular story of a woman in the neighborhood, who visited
her once or twice, apparently from an instinct that she should injure
her, and afterwards, interfered in the same way, and with the same
results, in the treatment of her child.
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