Dr Charcot giving a lecture on hysteria at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. Wellcome Collection CC-BY The "rest cure" was a post American civil war treatment developed by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell prescribed to people suffering with what he and other doctors at the time called hysteria and neurasthenia. Mitchell developed different cures for men and women. Men were given the "West Cure," which required them to go out west and wrangle cattle, camp outdoors, bond with other men