However, it is important to first fully understand the act of prescribing rest treatment and its intentions and manners. The story goes that the husband is a doctor and doesn't believe his wife is really ill, just suffering from a "temporary nervous breakdown", and therefore must rest most of the day (Gilman 237). This was a common diagnosis at the time, first made by a doctor called Dr. Silas Mitchell (Feluga). The administration of this treatment began when Dr. Mitchell was a contract surgeon during the Civil War, where he gave wounded men suffering from signs of hysteria a strict regimen of rest and nutrition, including "rest, a diet of 'fattening, massages, and electricity' (Feluga). This led him to offer this treatment to his patients, who were generally… “nervous women, who as a rule [were] thin and lacking in blood” (Mitchell 9). The treatment his patients received was forceful, sometimes involving force-feeding through other orifices if they refused to comply with the heavy diet (Poirier). Judging by the nature of the treatment and the number of first-hand accounts of the horrors of the treatments, it can be inferred that the rest cure was not only a falsely believed treatment, but also a method of controlling those diagnosed “hysterical”. , or a number of nervous diseases. Having to lie down