Her parents did everything possible to restore her, but in vain.

Once they took her to Bath, now Berkeley Springs, for several weeks and the expenses of that journey we find all duly set down by Colonel Washington in the proper place.

As Paul Leicester Ford remarks, some of the remedies tried savored of quackery.

In the diary, for February 16, 1770, we learn that "Joshua Evans who came here last Night put an iron Ring upon Patey and went away after Breakfast." Perhaps Evans failed to make the ring after the old medieval rule from three nails or screws that had been taken from a disinterred coffin.

At any rate the ring did poor Patty little good and a year later "Mr.Jno.
Johnson who has a nostrum for Fits came here in the afternoon." In the spring of 1773 the dark lady died.
Her death added considerably to Washington's possessions, but there is every evidence that he gave no thought to that aspect of the matter.
"Her delicate health, or perhaps her fond affection for the only father she had ever known, so endeared her to the 'general', that he knelt at her dying bed, and with a passionate burst of tears prayed aloud that her life might be spared, unconscious that even then her spirit had departed." The next day he wrote to his brother-in-law: "It is an easier matter to conceive than describe the distress of this Family: especially that of the unhappy Parent of our Dear Patey Custis, when I inform you that yesterday removed the Sweet Innocent Girl [who] Entered into a more happy & peaceful abode than any she has met with in the afflicted Path she hitherto has trod." Before this John Parke Custis, or "Jacky," had given his stepfather considerable anxiety.