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Since April my Mother has confined herself
to a very abstemious diet, her Breakfast consisting
of tea, & dry bread. Boiled rice, bread pudding & a litle
Grass to dinner, with once in three or four days, a mor¬
cel of light animal food, tea in the afternoon, boiled
Barley at Supper; Drinks nothing stronger than
barley water. Her greatest complaint which is
of more than six months standing is a fixised pain
extending from the articulation of the Thigh th
bone to the spine of the Ilium & Sacrum. her back
is very weak & subject to very painfull spasms
or any sudden motion. The sweats which debilitate↑d↑
he so much have entirely left her, & excepting her
back & hip joint she is tollerably easy. her spirits
are sometimes very low in the morning, but

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in general are recruited by her ordinary breakfast.
She lays upon a couch from seven, to ten hours a day,
sometimes sitting up for a few minutes. Pulse in the
soft about sixty ↑in the morning↑ in the afternoon seventy. follows your
directions scrupulously, takes the medicine every
night; Chamber well ventilated &c. Four nights
ago her stomach began to be a little disordered, with
restlessness, & depression of spirits in the morning,
she passed three two subsequent nights in much
the same manner, never entirely free of a slight
degree of fever, the fourth night, her legs & feet became
very painfull, with a sensation of burning heat
in them, about two in the morning, her feet
began to swell with which the pain gradually
abated. she passed last night comfortably though
without any diminution of the pain in her
haunches. She waits for your farther directions, &
regrets having ↑been↑ so late in making application.

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Dr Cullen
Edinburgh

3 July post gone

✍
Mr. Wm. Maxwell
Concerning Mrs. Maxwell
July 1785
V. XVII p.168