_In which the ban is lifted_
DIETARY TABOOS
MISUNDERSTOOD STOMACHS
=Modern Improvements.= Most people have heard the story of the little
girl who wanted to know what made her hair snap. After she had been
informed that there was probably electricity in her hair, she sat
quiet for a few minutes and then exclaimed: "Our family has all the
modern improvements! I have electricity in my hair and Grandma has gas
on her stomach!" Judged by this standard many American families are
well abreast of the times; and if we include among the modern
improvements not only gas on the stomach but also nervous dyspepsia,
acid stomach, indigestion, sick-headache, and biliousness, we must
conclude that a good proportion of the population is both modern and
improved.
Despite all this the stomach is one of the best-equipped mechanisms in
the world. It, at least, is not modern. After their age-long
development the organs of the body are remarkably standardized and
adapted to the work required of them. It is safe to say that ninety
per cent. of all so-called "stomach trouble" is due not to any
inherent weakness of the organ itself but to a misunderstanding
between the stomach and its owner.
=Organic Trouble.= Unfortunately, there are a few real organic causes
for trouble. There are a few cancers of the stomach and a certain
number of ulcers. But if the patients whom I have seen are in any way
typical, the ulcers that really are cannot compare in number with the
ulcers that are supposed to be. Patients go to physicians with so many
tales of digestive distress that even the best doctors are fooled
unless they are especially alert to the ways of "nerves." They must
find some explanation for all the various functional disturbances
which the patients report, and as they are in the habit of taking only
the body into account, they find the diagnosis of stomach ulcer as
satisfactory as any.
There is, of course, such a thing as an enlarged or sagging stomach.
But it is only in the rarest of cases that such a condition leads to
any functional disturbances unless complicated by suggestion. In most
cases a person can go about his business as happily as ever unless he
gets the idea that ptosis must inevitably lead to pain and discomfort.
Confusion sometimes arises when the stomach is blamed for
disturbances which originate elsewhere. One day a very sick-looking
girl came to me with eager expectation written all over her face. Her
stomach was misbehaving and she had heard that I could cure nervous
indigestion. It needed little more than a glance to know that she was
suffering from organic heart trouble. A boy of sixteen had been taking
a stomach-tonic for three months, but the thin, wiry pulse pointed to
a different ailment. His digestive disturbances were merely the echo
of an organic disease of the kidneys. When the body is burdened by
disease, it may have little energy left for digesting food, but in
that case the trouble must be sought in other quarters than the
stomach.
Aside from a few organic difficulties, there is almost no real disease
of the stomach. Its misdoings are not matters of food and chemistry,
muscle-power and nerve supply, but are the end results of slips in the
mental and emotional life of its owner.
=Fads Dynamogenic.= What is it that gives the impetus to fads about
eating, or about religious belief? Are they advocated by the
individual whose libido is finding abundant expression in the natural
channels of business and family life, or by his less fortunate brother
who can gain a sense of power only by means of some unaccustomed idea?
William James says:
This leads me to say a word about ideas considered as dynamogenic
agents or stimuli for unlocking what would otherwise be unused
reservoirs of individual power.... In general, whether a given
idea shall be a live idea depends more on the person into whose
mind it is injected than on the idea itself. Which is the
suggestive idea for this person and which for that one? Mr.
Fletcher's disciples regenerate themselves by the idea (and the
fact) that they are chewing and re-chewing and super-chewing
their food. Dr. Dewey's pupils regenerate themselves by going
without their breakfast--a fact, but also an ascetic idea. Not
every one can use these ideas with the same success.
Because it is so adaptable and sturdy, the stomach lends itself
readily to these devices for gaining self-expression; but the danger
lies in bringing the process of digestion into conscious attention
which interferes with automatic functioning. Still further, the
disregard of physiological chemistry is likely to deprive the body of
food-stuffs which it requires.
The average person is too sensible to be carried off his feet by the
enthusiasm of the health-crank, but as most of us are likely to pick
up a few false notions, it may be well to be armed with the simple
principles of food chemistry in order to combat the fads which so
easily beset us and to know why we are right when we insist on eating
three regular meals of the mixed and varied diet which has proved
best for the race through so many years of trial and experience.
WHAT WE NEED TO EAT
=The Essence of Dietetics.= To the layman the average discussion of
food principles is, to say the least, confusing. Dealing largely, as
it does, with unfamiliar terms like carbohydrate and hydrocarbon and
calories, it is hard to translate into the terms of the potatoes left
over from dinner and the vegetables we can afford to buy. But the
practical deductions are not at all difficult to understand. Boiled
down to their simplest terms, the essential principles may be stated
in a few sentences. The body must secure from the food that we eat,
tissue for its cells, energy for immediate use or to be stored for
emergency, mineral salts, vitamins, water and a certain bulk from
fruits and vegetables,--this latter to aid in the elimination of waste
matter.
Food for repairing bodily tissue is called protein and is secured from
meat, eggs, milk, and certain vegetables, notably peas. Fuel for heat
and energy is in two forms--carbohydrate (starch and sugar) and fat.
We get sugar from sugar-cane and beets, and from syrups, fruit, and
honey. Starch is furnished from flour products--mainly bread--from
rice, potatoes, macaroni, tapioca, and many vegetables. Fats come from
milk and butter, from nuts, from meat-fat--bacon, lard and suet--and
from vegetable oils. The mineral salts are obtained mainly from fruit
and vegetables, which also provide certain mysterious vitamins
necessary for health, but as yet not well understood.
=What the Market Affords.= The moral from all this is plain. The human
body needs all the foods which are ordinarily served on the table.
Whenever, through fad or through fear, we leave out of our diet any
standard food, we are running a risk of cutting the body down on some
element which it needs. They say that variety is the spice of life. In
the matter of food it is more than that, it is the essence of life.
Eat everything that the market affords and you will be sure to be well
nourished. If you leave out meat you will make your body work overtime
to secure enough tissue material from other foods. If you leave out
white bread, you will lose one of the greatest sources of energy. If
you leave out tomatoes and cucumbers and strawberries, you deprive
your body of the salts and vitamins which are essential.
=A Simple Rule.= There is one point that is good to remember. The
average person needs twice as much starch as he needs of protein and
fat together. That is, if he needs four parts of protein and three of
fat, he ought to eat about fourteen parts of starch. This does not
mean that we need to bother ourselves with troublesome tables of what
to eat, but only to keep in mind in a general way that we need more
bread and potatoes than we do meat and eggs. The body does not have
to rebuild itself every day. It is probable that a good many people
eat too much protein food. If a man is doing hearty work he must have
a good supply of meat, but the average person needs only a moderate
amount. Here again, the habits of the more intelligent families are
likely to come pretty near the dictates of science.
=For the Children.= The mother of a family ought to know that the
children need plenty of bread, butter, and milk. Despite all the
notions to the contrary, good well-baked white bread is neither
indigestible nor constipating. It is indeed the staff of life. Two
large slices should form the background of every meal, unless there is
an extraordinary amount of other starchy food or unless the person is
too fat. Milk-fat (from whole milk, cream, and butter) is by far the
best fat for children. Besides fat, it furnishes a certain
growth-principle necessary for development. As the dairyman cannot
raise good calves on skimmed milk, so we cannot raise robust children
without plenty of butter and milk. The pity of it is that poor people
are forced to try! Milk is also the best protein for children, whose
kidneys may be overstrained by trying to care for the waste matter
from an excessive quantity of eggs and meat. Bread and butter, milk,
fruit, vegetables, and sugar in ample quantities and meat and eggs in
moderate quantities are pretty sure to make the kind of children we
want. Above all things, let us train them not to be afraid of normal
amounts of any regular food or of any combination of foods.
=The Fear of Mixtures.= There are many people who can without
flinching face almost any single food, but who quail before mixtures.
Perhaps there is no notion which is more firmly entrenched in the
popular mind than this fear of certain food-combinations, acquired
largely from the advertisements of certain so-called "food
specialists."
The most persistent idea is the fear of acid and milk. It is
interesting to watch the new people when they first come to my table.
Confronted with grape-fruit and cream at the same meal, or oranges and
milk, or cucumbers and milk, they eat under protest, in consternation
over the disastrous results that are sure to follow. Out of all these
scores of people, many of whom are supposed to have weak stomachs, I
have never had one case of indigestion from such a combination. When a
person knows that the stomach juices themselves include hydrochloric
acid which is far more acid than any orange or grapefruit, that the
milk curdles as soon as it reaches the stomach, and that it must
curdle if it is to be digested, he has to be very "set" indeed if he
is to cling to any remnant of fear.
Of course to say that the stomach is well prepared chemically,
muscularly, and by its nerve supply to handle any combination of
ordinary food in ordinary amounts is not the same thing as saying that
we may devour with impunity any amount of anything. It is a good thing
for every one to know when he has reached his limit, and a person with
organic heart disease should avoid eating large quantities at one
time, or when he is extraordinarily fatigued or emotionally disturbed,
lest at such a time he may put a fatal strain on the pneumogastric
nerve that controls both stomach and heart.
THE FEAR OF CERTAIN FOODS
=Physical Idiosyncrasies.= Most of our false fears on food subjects
come from some tradition--either a social tradition or a little
private, pet tradition of one's own. Some one once was ill after
eating strawberries and cream. What more natural than to look back to
those little curdles in the dish and to start the tradition that such
mixtures are dangerous? The worst of it is that the taboo habit is
very likely to grow. One after another, innocent foods are thrown out
until one wonders what is left. A patient of mine, Mr. G., told me
that he had a short time before gone to a physician with a tale of woe
about his sour stomach. "What are you eating?" asked the doctor. "Bran
crackers and prunes." "Then," said the learned doctor, "you will have
to cut out the prunes!" Needless to say, this man ate everything at my
table, and flourished accordingly.
There may be such a thing as physical idiosyncrasies for certain
foods. I have often heard of them, but I have never seen one. I have
often challenged my patients to show me some of the "spells" which
they say invariably follow the eating of certain foods, but I have
almost never been given an exhibition. The man who couldn't eat eggs
did throw up once, but he couldn't do it a second time. Many people
have threatened to break out with hives after strawberries. One woman
triumphantly brought me what looked like a nice eruption, but which
proved to be the after-results of a hungry flea! After that she ate
strawberries,--without the flea and without the hives.
=Not Miracles but Ideas.= Conversions on food subjects are so common
at my table that I should have difficulty in remembering the
individual stories. Scores of them run together in my mind and make a
sort of composite narrative something like this: "Oh, no, thank you, I
don't eat this. You really must excuse me. I have tried many times and
it is invariably disastrous." Then a reluctant yielding and a day or
two later some talk about miracles. "It really is wonderful. I don't
understand," etc. Experiences like these only go to show the power of
the subconscious mind, both in building up wrong habit-reactions and
in quickly substituting healthy ones, once the false idea is removed.
Among my stomach-patients there were two men, brothers-in-law,
immigrants from the Austrian Tyrol, and now resident in one of the
cow-boy states. Leonardo spoke little English, and though Giovanni
understood a very little, he spoke only Italian.
Several years before I knew them, Giovanni had developed a severe case
of stomach trouble and had finally gone to a medical center for
operation. The disturbance, however, was not relieved by the operation
and before long his brother-in-law fell into the same kind of trouble.
For several years the two had spent much of their time dieting,
vomiting, and worrying over their sour stomachs. Giovanni finally
became so ill that his sick-benefit society had actually assessed its
members to pay for his funeral expenses. About this time a business
man of their town, impressed by the cure of a former patient who had
made a quick recovery after seven years of invalidism, persuaded the
two men to take their little savings and come to California to be
under my care. The evening meal and breakfast went smoothly enough,
although the menu included articles which they had been taught to
avoid. However, as I left the house on a necessary absence soon after
breakfast, I saw Leonardo weeping in the garden and Giovanni spitting
up his breakfast, out at the entrance gate. On my return, I found one
of "the family" literally sitting on the coat-tails of Leonardo, while
Giovanni hovered at a distance, safe from capture. Leonardo upbraided
me bitterly for having undone all the gain they had made in the long
months of rigid dieting, for now the vomiting had returned, because
they had eaten sugar on their oatmeal at breakfast! I made Leonardo
drink an egg-nog, took him into the consultation-room and held my hand
on his knee to keep him in his chair, while explaining to him as best
I could the physiologic action of the hydrochloric acid on the
digestive juice, which he feared as a sour stomach, the sign of
indigestion.
During the conversation I said, "I suppose Giovanni imitated you in
this mistaken fear about your health." The reply was, "No, I got it
off him!" Nearly two hours later he exclaimed in astonishment: "Why,
that milk hasn't come up! Maybe I am cured!" "Of course you are
cured," I answered; "there never was anything really the matter with
your stomach, so you are cured as soon as you think you are."
Later Giovanni was inveigled into the house by the promise that he
would have to eat nothing more than milk soup. All was smooth sailing
after this. For my own part I feared for the permanency of the cure,
for they were returning to the old environment. But more than three
years have passed, and grateful letters still come telling of their
continued health.
Another patient, a teacher of domestic science in a big Eastern
university, had lived on skimmed milk and lime-water from Easter to
Thanksgiving. Several attempts to enlarge the dietary by adding cream
or white of egg had only served to increase the sense of discomfort.
Finding nothing in the history of the case to warrant a diagnosis of
organic disease of the stomach, I served her plate with the regular
dinner, bidding her have no hesitancy even over the pork chops and
potato chips. She gained nine pounds in weight the first week, and in
two and a half months was forty pounds to the good.
=When Re-education Failed.= But there is one patient who has had to
have his lesson repeated at intervals. This man laughingly calls
himself a disgrace to his doctor because he is a "repeater." His story
illustrates the power of an autosuggestion and the disastrous effect
of attention to a physiological function. When Mr. T. came first to me
he weighed only 120 pounds, although he is over six feet tall and of
large frame. From the age of sixteen he had followed fads in eating
and thought he had a weak stomach. I treated his "weak stomach" to
everything there was in the market, including mince-pies, cabbage,
cheese, and all the other so-called indigestibles. He gained 16-1/2
pounds the first week and 31 pounds in five weeks. One would think
that the idea about the weak stomach would have died a natural death,
but it did not. Again and again he came back to me like a living
skeleton, the last time weighing only 105 pounds, and again and again
he has gone back to his home in the Middle West plump and well. Twice
while he was at home he underwent unnecessary operations, once for an
ulcer that was not there and once for supposed chronic spasm of the
pylorus. Needless to say, the operations did not help. You cannot cut
out an idea with a knife. Neither can you wash it out with a
stomach-pump; else would Mr. T. long ago have been cured! This
particular idea of his seems to be proof against all my best efforts
at re-education. Psycho-analysis is impracticable, partly because of
the duration of the habit of repression, but the history, and certain
symbolic symptoms, indicate the Freudian mechanisms at work. All I can
do is to feed him up, bully him along, and keep him from starving to
death. Just now he is doing very well at home, although he has moved
to California so as not to be too far away from "the miracle-worker."
If Mr. T.'s case had been typical, I should long ago have lost my
faith in psychotherapy. Keeping people from starving is worth while,
but is less satisfactory than curing them of what ails them. The
nervous patient who has a relapse is no credit to his doctor. It is
only when the origin of his trouble is not removed that the bond of
transference tends to become permanent. The neurotic who is well only
while under the influence of his physician is still a neurotic.
However, as most people's complexes are neither so deeply buried nor
so obstinate as this, a simple explanation or a single demonstration
is usually enough to loose the fettering hold of old misconceptions.
COMMON AILMENTS
="Gas on the Stomach."= We all know people who suffer from "gas."
Indeed, very few of us escape an occasional desire to belch after a
hearty meal. But the person with nervous indigestion rolls out the
"gas" with such force that the noise can sometimes be heard all over
the house. He may keep this up for hours at a time, under the
conviction that he is freeing himself from the products of fermenting
food. He may exhibit a well-bloated stomach as proof of the disastrous
effect of certain articles of diet. The gas and the bloating are
supposed to be the sign and the seal of indigestion, a positive
evidence that undigested food is fermenting in the stomach.
But what is fermentation? It is, necessarily, a question of the growth
of bacteria and is a process which we may easily watch in our own
kitchens. Bread rises when the yeast-cells have multiplied and acted
on the starch of the flour, producing enough gas to raise the whole
mass. Potatoes ferment because bacteria have multiplied within them.
Canned fruit blows up because enough bacteria have developed inside to
produce sufficient gas to blow open the can. Every housewife knows
that it takes time for each of these processes. Bread has to stand
several hours before it will rise; potatoes do not ferment under
twelve hours, and canned fruit is not considered safe from the
fermenting process under three days. Evidently there is some mistake
when a person begins to belch forth "gas" within an hour or two after
a meal. As a matter of fact, it is not gas at all but merely air that
is swallowed with the food or that was present in the empty stomach.
When the food enters the stomach it necessarily displaces air, which
normally comes out automatically and noiselessly. But if, through fear
or attention, a certain set of muscles contract, the pent-up air may
come forth awkwardly and noisily or it may stay imprisoned until we
take measures to let it out. A hearty laugh is as good as anything,
but if that cannot be managed, we may have to resort to a cup of hot
water which gives the stomach a slap and makes it let go. Two belches
are enough to relieve the pressure. After that we merely go on
swallowing air and letting it out again, a habit both awkward and
useless.
If the emotion which ties the muscle-knot is very intense, and the
stomach refuses to let go under ordinary measures, the pain may be
severe. But a quantity of hot water or a dose of ipecac is sure to
relieve the situation. If the person is able to give himself a good
moral slap and relax his unruly muscles, he reaches the same end by a
much pleasanter road.
Some people are fond of the popular remedy of hot water and soda.
Their faith in its efficacy is likely to be increased by the good
display of gas which is sure to follow. As any cook knows, soda and
acid always fizz. The soda is broken up by the hydrochloric acid of
the stomach and forms salt and carbon dioxid, a gas. However, as the
avowed aim of the remedy is the relief of gas rather than its
manufacture, and as the soda uses up the hydrochloric acid needed in
digestion, the practice cannot be recommended as reasonable.
=Gastritis.= I once knew a woman who went to a big city to consult a
fashionable doctor. When she returned she told with great satisfaction
that the doctor had pronounced her case gastritis. "It must be true,"
she added, "because I have so much gas on my stomach!" The diagnosis
of gastritis used to be very common. The ending _itis_ means
inflammation,--gastritis, enteritis, colitis, each meaning
inflammation of the corresponding organ. An inflammation implies an
irritant. There can be no kind of _itis_ without the presence of
something which irritates the membrane of the affected part. If we
get unusual and irritating bacteria in some spoiled food, we are
likely to have an acute inflammation until the offending bacteria are
expelled. But an inflammation of this kind never lasts. People who
have had ptomaine poisoning sometimes assert that they are afterwards
susceptible to poisoning by the kind of food which first made them
ill. Such a susceptibility is not so much a hold-over effect from the
poison as a hold-over fear which tends to repeat the physical reaction
whenever that food is eaten. I, myself, have had ptomaine poisoning
from canned salmon, but I have never since had any trouble about
eating salmon.
=Sour Stomach.= Sometimes when a person lies down an hour or so after
a meal, some of the contents of his stomach comes up in his throat.
Then if he be ignorant of physiology, he may be very much alarmed
because his stomach is "sour." Not knowing that he would have far
greater cause for alarm if his stomach were _not_ sour, he may, if the
idea is interesting to him, begin to restrict his diet, to take
digestive tablets, and to develop a regular case of nervous dyspepsia.
Sometimes when the specialists measure the amount of hydrochloric acid
in the stomach, they do find too much or too little acid; but this
merely means that an emotion has made the glands work overtime or has
stopped their action for a little while. The functions of the body
are so very, very old that there is little likelihood of permanent
disturbance.
=Biliousness.= The stomach is not the only part of the body concerning
which we lack proper confidence. Next to it the liver is the most
maligned organ in the whole body. Although the liver is about as
likely to be upset in its process of secreting bile as the ocean is
likely to be lacking in salt, many an intelligent person labels every
little disturbance "biliousness" and lays it at the door of his
faithful, dependable liver.
As a matter of fact, the liver is liable to injury from virtually but
three sources--alcohol, bacterial infection, and cancer--and even a
liver hardened by alcohol goes on secreting bile as usual. The patient
dies of dropsy but not of "liver complaint."
Some people act as if they thought bile were a poison. On the
contrary, it is a very useful digestant; it aids in keeping down the
number of harmful bacteria and helps to carry the food from intestines
to blood. Every day the liver manufactures at least a pint of this
important fluid. The body uses what it needs and stores the surplus
for reserve in the gall-bladder. The flow is continuous and, despite
all appearances to the contrary, there is no such thing as a torpid or
an over-active liver.
It is true that after a "bilious" person has vomited for a few minutes
he is likely to throw up a certain amount of bile, which is supposed
to have been lying in his stomach and causing the nausea. In fact,
however, this bile is merely a part of the usual supply stored away in
the gall-bladder. By the very act of retching, the bile is forced out
of the bile channels into the stomach and thence up into the mouth.
Anybody can throw up bile at any time if he only tries hard enough.
One of the favorite habits of certain people is the taking of calomel
and salts. After such a dose they view with satisfaction the green
character of the stools and conclude that they have rid themselves of
a great amount of harmful matter. As a matter of fact, the greater
part of the coloring in the stools is from the calomel itself, changed
in the intestines from one salt of mercury to another. Any excess bile
is the result of the irritating action of the calomel on the
intestinal wall, an irritation which makes the bowel hurry to cast out
this foreign substance without waiting for the bile to be absorbed as
usual.
A patient once told me that he had bought medicine from a street fakir
and by his direction had followed it with a dose of salts. He saved
the bowel movement, washed it in a sieve, and discovered a great
number of "gall-stones," which the medicine had so effectively washed
from his system. He was much astonished when I told him that his
gall-stones were merely pieces of soap. He did not know that
everybody manufactures soap in his body every day, and that by taking
an extra quantity of oil in the shape of the fakir's medicine and an
extra quantity of potash in the salts, he had merely augmented a
normal physiological process. The supposed action of calomel belongs
to the same class of phenomena, and has no slightest effect on the
liver or on real gall-stones, which are the precipitate of bile-salts
in the gall-bladder, and which cannot be reached by any medicine.
If the popular notions about biliousness are ill founded, what then
causes the disturbances which undoubtedly do occur and which show
themselves in attacks of nausea or sick headache? The answer can be
given in a word of four letters; a coated tongue, a bilious attack and
a sick headache are all the outcome of a mood. Stocks have gone down
or the wife is cranky or the neighbors are hateful. Adrenalin and
thyroid secretions are poured out as the result of emotion; digestion
is stopped, circulation disturbed, and the whole apparatus thrown out
of gear.
=Sick-Headache.= Sick-headache is primarily a circulatory disturbance;
and although the disturbance may have been inaugurated by some
chemical unbalance, the sum total of the force that makes a
sick-headache is emotional. The emotion, of course, need not be
conscious in order to be effective. If we picture the arteries all
over the body as being supplied with, among other things, a wall of
circular muscles, and then imagine messages of emotion being flashed
to the nerves controlling this muscle wall, we may get an idea of what
happens just before a sick-headache. Some parts of the arteries
contract too much and other parts relax. The arteries to the head
tighten up at the extremities and become loose lower down. The force
of the blood-stream against the constricted portion can hardly fail to
cause pain. The sick part of the headache is merely a sympathetic
strike of the nerves which control circulation and stomach.
The moral of all this is plain. If a sick-headache is the result of an
emotional spasm of the blood-vessels, the obvious cure is a change of
the emotion. Some people manage it by going to a party or a picnic,
others by ignoring the symptoms and keeping on with their work. A
woman physician whom I know was in the midst of a violent headache
when called out on an obstetrical case. She felt sorry for herself,
but went on the case. In the strenuous work which followed, she quite
forgot the headache, which disappeared as if by magic.
Sometimes it happens that a headache recurs periodically or at regular
intervals. It is easy to see that in such cases the exciting cause is
fear and expectation. At some time in the past, headaches have
occurred at an interval of, say, fourteen days; as the next
fourteenth day approaches the sufferer says to himself: "It is about
time for another headache. I am afraid it will come to-morrow," and of
course it comes. One man told me that if he ate Sunday-night supper he
inevitably had a headache on Monday morning. We were about to sit down
to a simple Sunday supper and he refused very positively to join us. I
told him he could stay all night and that I would take care of him if
the Monday sickness appeared. He accepted my challenge but was unable
to produce a headache. In fact, he felt so unusually flourishing the
next morning that he insisted on frying the bacon for my entire
family. That was the end of the Monday headaches.
=A Few Examples.= As sick-headache has always been considered a rather
stubborn difficulty, not amenable to most forms of treatment, it may
be well to cite a few cases which were helped by educational methods.
A patient came home from a walk one day and announced that he was
going to bed. When questioned, be said: "I am tired and I have a
sick-headache. Isn't it logical to go to bed?" To which I answered
that it would be far more logical to put some food into his stomach
and change the circulation than to lie in bed and think about his
pain. This man was completely cured. I have had patients throw up one
meal, and very rarely two, but I have never had to supply more than
three meals at a time. The waste of food I consider amply justified by
the benefit to the patient.
There once came to me an elderly woman, the wife of a poor minister.
She was suffering from attacks of nausea, which recurred every five to
ten days with intense pain through the eyes, and with photo-phobia or
fear of light. I found that she had by dint of heroic efforts raised a
large and promising family on the salary of an itinerant
minister--from four hundred to six hundred a year! All the time she
had been feeling sorry for herself because her husband did not
appreciate her. One day, after reading one of his letters which seemed
to show an utter lack of appreciation of all that she was doing, she
fell down in the field beside her plow, paralyzed. From that time on
she had been more or less of an invalid, continually nursing her
grudge and complaining that she ought not to have been made to bear so
many children.
After I had heard this plaint over and over for about a week, I said:
"Perhaps you ought not to have had that little daughter, the little
ewe-lamb. Maybe she was one too many." "Oh, no," came the quick
response. "I couldn't have spared _her_." Then I went down the line of
the fine stalwart sons. Perhaps she could have spared John or Tom or
Fred? Finally she saw the whole matter in a different light,--saw
herself as a queen among women, the mother of such a family.
As to the husband, I tried to show her that she was not very clever
to live with a man all those years without discovering that he was not
likely to change. "You can't change him but you can change your
reaction to him. If something keeps hurting your hand, you don't keep
on being sore. You grow callous. Isn't it about time you grew a moral
callous, too?"
I put her on the roof to sleep, on account of her fear of light. Only
once did she start a headache, which I quickly nipped in the bud by
making her get up and dress. She had come to stay "three months or
four,--if I get along well." At the end of four weeks she left, an
apparently well woman. The last I heard of her she was stumping the
state for temperance, the oldest of an automobile party of speakers,
and the sturdiest physically. With the emotional grievance,
disappeared also the physical effects in stomach and head.
Miss S., a very brilliant woman, ambitious to make the most of her
life, had been shelved for twenty-five years because of violent
sick-headaches which made it impossible for her to undertake any kind
of work. She had not been able to read a half-hour a day without
bringing on a terrible headache. I insisted on her reading, and very
soon she was so deep in psychological literature that I had difficulty
in making her go to bed at all. After learning the cause of her
headaches and gaining greater emotional control, she succeeded so
well in freeing herself from the old habit, that she now leads the
busiest kind of useful life with only an occasional headache, perhaps
once in six months.
A certain minister suffered constantly from a dull pain in his head,
besides having violent headaches every few days. He started in to have
a bad spell the day after his arrival at my house. As I was going out
of the door, he caught my sleeve. "Doctor," he said, "would it be bad
manners to run away?" "Manners?" I answered. "They don't count, but
morals, yes." He stayed--and that was his last bad headache. Both
chronic and periodic pains disappeared for good.
One woman who had suffered from bad headaches for eighteen years lost
them completely under a process of re-education. On the other hand, I
have had patients who were not helped at all. The principles held good
in their cases, but they were simply not able to lose the old habit of
tightening up the body under emotion.
=Hysterical Nausea.= Sometimes nausea is merely the physical symbol of
a subconscious moral disgust. We have already told the stories of "the
woman with the nausea" (Chapter V) and of Mrs. Y. (Chapter VII). These
cases are typical of many others. Their bodies were perfectly normal,
and when, through psycho-analysis and re-education, they were helped
to make over their childish attitudes toward the sex-life, the nausea
disappeared.
=Loss of Appetite.= A nervous patient with a good appetite is "the
exception that proves the rule." The neurotic is usually under weight
and often complains that he feels satiated almost as soon as he begins
to eat. Loss of appetite may, of course, mean that the body is busy
combating toxins in the blood, but in a nervous person it usually
means a symbolic loss of appetite for something in life, a struggle of
the personality against something for which he has "no stomach."
Psycho-analysis often reveals the source of the trouble, and a little
bullying helps along the good work. By simply taking away a harmful
means of expression, we may often force the subconscious mind to find
a better language.
SUMMARY
Since the stomach seems to be an organ which is much better fitted to
care for food than to care for a depressing emotion or a false idea,
it seems far more sensible to change our minds than to keep enlarging
our list of eatables which are taboo.
And since most indigestion is in very truth nothing more nor less than
an emotional disturbance, worked up by fear, anger, discontent, worry,
ignorance, suggestion, attention to bodily functions which are meant
to be ignored, love of notice and the conversion of moral distress
into physical distress, the best diet list which can be furnished to
Mr. Everyman in search of health must read something like this:
MENU
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
Sunday
A Calm Spirit Plenty of Good Cheer
A Varied Diet Commonsense
Good Cooking
Judicious Neglect of Symptoms
Forgetfulness of the Digestive Process
A Little Accurate Knowledge
A Determination to
BE LIKE FOLKS