As a treatment, bed rest is mentioned in the earliest medical writings. The rest cure, or bed rest cure, was a 19th-century treatment for many
mental disorders, particularly
hysteria. "Taking to bed" and becoming an "invalid" for an indefinite period was a culturally accepted response to some of the adversities of life.
Melville Arnott noted the increased use of bed rest in late-19th and early-20th century medical practice: It has, of course always been recognised that rest is essential for the acutely ill person [...]. But there is little mention of bed rest in the 18th and early 19th century by such authors as
Withering,
Heberden, and Stokes. [...] The mid-19th century saw the impact of
Hilton's
Rest and Pain [...]. In one case after another Hilton scored success, after all sorts of fantastic treatments had failed, because he recognised the value of rest in inflammation - particularly in osteomylitis and bone and joint tuberculosis which was then so prevalent. As so often happens, opinion swung to the opposite extreme, and rest came to be regarded as the universal healer. [...] Another reason for undue emphasis on bed rest may be the tendency, since the 19th century, to treat illness in hospital, rather than at home. In most hospitals, even today, the patient is expected to be in bed: the whole organisation is geared to such a state, and there is little provision for the up patient. [...] Furthermore, the routine of the bed bath and the bedpan is firmly established in nursing care. Indeed, many of our older hospitals - especially those for the chronic sick, with large inadequately heated wards and too few nurses - enforce bed rest as the only modus operandi. In addition to bed rest, patients were secluded from all family contact to reduce dependence on others. The only person whom bed-rest patients were allowed to see was the nurse who massaged, bathed, and clothed them. Not only were patients isolated in bed for an extended time, they were advised to avoid other activities that might mentally exhaust them - such as writing or drawing. In some extreme cases
electrotherapy was prescribed. The food the patient was served usually consisted of fatty dairy products to revitalize the body. This "rest cure" as well as its name were created by Doctor
Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914), and it was almost always prescribed to women, many of whom were suffering from depression, especially
postpartum depression. Gilman abided by Mitchell's instructions for several months before practically losing control of her sanity. Eventually, Gilman divorced her husband and pursued a life as a writer and women's rights activist. She later explained in her 1935 autobiography
The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman that she could not be restrained to the domestic lifestyle without losing her sanity, and that "it was not a choice between going and staying, but between going, sane, and staying, insane." The story became a symbol of feminism in the 1970s at the time of its rediscovery. The author
Virginia Woolf was prescribed the rest cure, which she parodied in her novel
Mrs Dalloway (1925) with the description "you invoke proportion; order rest in bed; rest in solitude; silence and rest; rest without friends, without books, without messages; six months rest; until a man who went in weighing seven stone six comes out weighing twelve". Some negative effects of bed rest were historically attributed to drugs taken in bed rest. ==See also==