Here is a type we run across every day in business. We see the
apparently well man taking out a pill box or a bottle of medicine as he
sits down to lunch. We ask him what is the matter, and he proceeds to
tell us about his bodily ills and infirmities.
Many men seem to take a keen delight in having something the matter
with them. They go to a physician, though often the disease is
practically mental.
You can't get health out of a glass bottle. The man who is taking
medicine all the time is going at things wrong end to. If his stomach
is out of whack he should change his method of living rather than to
try to cure his dyspepsia with stuff that comes in a bottle.
The man who needs a tonic before he can eat a lunch had better take
plenty of air and exercise than to take poisonous drugs into his
system.
If you are a smoker and find you have no appetite for lunch, give up
cigars in the forenoon, and you will notice an immediate difference
when you sit down to the noonday meal.
The hypochondriac imagines he has things the matter with him, and he
becomes confirmed in his belief, he finds that so long as he lives he
has something the matter with him. He no sooner gets cured of one than
something else attacks him. There is no medicine like air and exercise
and occupation. The man who gives in to trifling ailments is in a sad
plight. He is never happy unless he is sick. He is unreasonable, and he
is the last one to appreciate what can be done by a man who cures
himself through the mental processes.
We all know that we can take a perfectly well man and pre-arrange to
have a dozen of his friends on a given day greet him with some remark
about his ill appearance. That man will be sick before the tenth man
accosts him.