delicate sense of feeling might, I should think, very well fit them for
this task. It is, however, in these countries less used in disease than
as the luxury of the rich; nor can I find in the few books on the
subject that it has been resorted to habitually as a tonic in Europe, or
otherwise than as a means of treating local disorders.

It is many years since I first saw in this city general massage used by
a charlatan in a case of progressive paralysis. The temporary results he
obtained were so remarkable that I began soon after to employ it in
locomotor ataxia, in which it sometimes proved of signal value, and in
other forms of spinal and local disease. At first I had to train nurses
to use it, but I soon found that, although it was of some service to
their patients, no one could use massage well who was not continually
engaged in doing it. Some men do it better than any woman; but I prefer,
nevertheless, for obvious reasons, to reserve men for male patients,
except that in cases where _strength_ is of moment, as in the forced
movements and the very hard rubbing needed for old articular adhesions,
in which force must be exercised without violence, it is usually
impossible to secure the necessary power in a feminine manipulator.

A few years later I resorted to it in the first cases which I treated by
rest, and I very soon found that I had in it an agent little understood
and of singular utility.

It will be necessary, in pursuance of my plan, to describe as minutely
as the limits of a chapter will allow how and why this means is
employed. The process and order of what is known to the manipulator as
"general massage" follows.

After three or four days in bed have somewhat accustomed the patient to