The narrator peels off the title substance to free a shadowy woman after being driven mad by this treatment in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper".  
One champion of this treatment also wrote a monograph on rattlesnake poison and a novel titled Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker.  That same advocate for this treatment is the subject of Augustus Saint-Gaudens' sculpture, The Angel of Purity.  One form of this treatment began with a week-long diet of two quarts of milk per day, to which raw meat dissolved with hydrochloric acid was eventually added.  A prominent booster of this treatment claimed that it could treat (*) neurasthenia and was named Silas Weir Mitchell.  This treatment was once prescribed for almost all types of pregnancy.  The narrator peels off the title substance to free a shadowy woman after being driven mad by this treatment in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper".  For 10 points, name this treatment, the most extreme of which involves lying down for months.
One champion of this treatment also wrote a monograph on rattlesnake poison and a novel titled Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker.  
bed rest cure [or taking to bed; or isolation cure; or lying-in; or "Go rest, young man"] 