in New Orleans, and the places above it were in a state of watchful
fear. A young Northern teacher, trying to return home, started from
Woodville, Mississippi, and arrived at Natchez about midnight in a high
fever. Dr. Cartwright was immediately called in. Early in the morning
he summoned the officers of the hotel and all the regular boarders into
the parlor and made them a little speech. "This young lady," he said,
"has yellow fever. It is not contagious. None of you will take it from
her; and if you will follow my advice you will save this town from
a panic, and a panic is the hotbed of an epidemic. Say nothing about
this case. Ignore it absolutely. Let the ladies of the house help nurse
her, and take flowers and delicacies to her, and act altogether as if
it were some every-day affair, unattended by danger. It will save her
life, and perhaps in the long run many others."
It was agreed to by all but one person--a woman, who proceeded to
quarantine herself in the most remote room of the establishment. The
young teacher got well, and no one was sick in the house but the
self-quarantined woman, who took yellow fever from fear, but happily
recovered.
By his great reputation and his strong magnetic power, Dr. Cartwright
dissipated the fears of those around him, and prevented an epidemic.
For this grand appreciation and successful application of a
principle--the power of mind and thought over physical conditions, a
power just dawning on the perception of the race--he deserves a nobler
monument than any we have accorded to heroes and statesmen.
The sanitarians of the present day would think on the contrary that
Dr. Cartwright was worthy of condemnation and imprisonment. Dr.
Cartwright, however, honestly believed that yellow fever was not a
contagious disease. At that time the non-contagionists were numerous,
learned, experienced, and respectable. The contagionists, however,
finally carried the day in the face of innumerable evidences of
non-contagion, which, strangely enough, have now about ceased to exist.
Whether they transformed a non-contagious into a contagious disease by
repeated and violent asseverations, which played upon and hypnotized
the professional and public mind, is a subtle point for psychological
investigation, not likely to be made by the present generation of
doctors.
Can a non-contagious disease become contagious by mental action?
The power of fear to modify the currents of the blood and all the
secretions, to whiten the hair, to paralyze the nervous system, and
even to produce death is well known. Its power to impress organic
changes upon the child in the womb through the mother's mind is well
established. When yellow fever is reported about and believed to be
imminent and contagious, fear, combined with a vivid imagination of
the horrors and woes of the pest, can precipitate sickness which will
take on the form and color present to the thought, and yellow fever may
spread rapidly from person to person, all through the medium of the
mind. "Everything," said a great philosopher, "was at first a thought."
We see a non-contagious disease in the very process of transformation
into a contagious one in the case of pulmonary consumption. It was
observed occasionally that one of the married partners who had nursed
the other through the disease fell a victim after a while to the same
malady. Doctors and people began to suggest contagion. The cases of
one attack following the other were noticed more and more, and were
reported in the medical journals. It was spoken of, thought of, brooded
over. The confirmatory cases were all carefully noted; the failures to
infect were all ignored, as they always are by people who are looking
for contagion. The germ theory has given a great impetus to the idea of
contagion. Dr. Loomis actually classifies tuberculosis among miasmatic
contagious diseases. Fear will do the rest. In another generation the
occasional fact will be a common fact, and in still another, a fixed
fact; and the contagiousness of consumption will be enrolled among the
concrete errors of the profession. Such has probably been the genesis
of all contagious diseases in the remote past.
Fear being recognized as a powerful cause of disease, and a direct
and great obstacle to recovery, a wise sanitation will exert itself
to prevent or antidote its influences. To eradicate fear is to avert
disease, to shorten its duration, diminish its virulence, and promote
recovery. How shall we accomplish it? By educating the people up to a
higher standard of life. By teaching them a sounder hygiene, a wiser
philosophy, a more cheerful theology. By erasing a thousand errors,
delusions, and superstitions from their minds, and giving instead the
light, the beauty, and the loveliness of truth. There is a mental and
moral sanitation ahead of us, which is far more valuable and desirable
than all our quarantines, inventions, experimentations, and microscopic
search for physical causes.
I will draw the picture of a sick room in charge of physicians and
nurse, by whom this enlighted sanitation has been ignored or unheeded.
It is a chamber of fear, soon, in all probability, to be the chamber
of death. The room is darkened, for they are afraid of the light, that
emblem of God's wisdom which should shine into all rooms, except when
it is disagreeable to the patient. The ventilation is insufficient, for
draughts, you must know, are very dangerous. The friends have doleful
faces, moist eyes, sad voices, which reveal danger and doubt, and they
converse in subdued whispers, which alarm and annoy the patient. The
nurse and the doctor sometimes talk of their cases before the sick
man, tell how very ill they were, how they suffered, how they got well
miraculously, or how they died. The sympathetic visitor regales his
hearers, the patient included, with his or her knowledge of similar
cases, and their results, the great amount of sickness prevailing, and
the success or ill success of this or that doctor.
They all agree that it is dangerous to change the patient's linen,
dangerous to sponge the body, dangerous to give him cold water; milk
is feverish, meat is too strong. A shadow of fear seems to hang over
everybody. The pulse is counted, the temperature is taken. Nurse or
nearest friend wants to know aloud the report of the watch and the
thermometer. The doctor answers aloud, and all look grave. And so
it goes on day after day, thoughts and images of pain and sickness
and danger and death being impressed and reflected upon the mind
of the patient, and the great, sound, glorious spirit within finds
it impossible to break through this dense atmosphere of material
superstitions, fear, ignorance, and folly, and restore its own body to
health and happiness.
The true sanitarian will remember in his treatment the tremendous
power of words and ideas upon the sick. He will never indicate by his
language, his looks, or his conduct that he thinks the patient is very
ill. He will cleanse his own mind of morbid fears and apprehensions,
and reflect the stimulating light of hope on all around him. The
suppression of anxiety, and even sometimes of sympathy, is necessary.
His sickness should not be discussed before the patient, or any other
case of sickness alluded to. The doctor's opinion of the case should
never be asked, and never given within the patient's hearing. Erase,
as far as possible, all thoughts of disease, danger, or death. The
sick-room should not be darkened and made silent. It should be made
cheerful and natural, as if no sickness existed. It should have fresh
air, and cool water, and the fragrance of flowers, instead of the odor
of drugs. Hope, and not fear, should be the presiding genius of the
place.
The mind-curers and the Christian Scientists say that almost all acute
diseases can be cured without medicine by the simple dissipation of
fear from the mind of the patient, of his friends, and of his doctor.
Whether this be true or not, it is very certain that when an epidemic
is threatened or prevailing, the people who are constantly talking
about and discussing the disease, the newspapers which daily report its
progress and fatality, and the doctors and nurses who ventilate their
experiences, who predict evil, speak ominously and enjoin all sorts of
precautions, are themselves fomenters and carriers of the disease,
infectious centers to the whole community.
Education can do much, but it is useless to expect the total
eradication of fear without the aid and guidance of the religious
principle. Fear is the cry of the wounded selfhood for something he
has suffered or lost, or is about to lose. "Perfect love casteth out
fear"--the perfect love of God and the neighbor. He who is in bondage
to the senses has everything to dread. He alone is free from all
apprehensions whose heart and mind are stayed upon the living God. He
truly "sits under his own vine and fig-tree, with none to make him
afraid."
APPENDIX B.
MR. KENNAN'S APPRENTICESHIP IN COURAGE.
Mr. George Kennan's great work in Russian exploration and in the
investigation of Russian institutions has been due to certain qualities
of character which impress every one who knows him well. Of these
qualities, bravery and strength of will are not the least conspicuous.
In his conversations with me, he has often spoken of certain things in
connection with his own development and training, which are of much
interest. Once when I spoke to him of his bravery and coolness under
danger, he said:--
"Many things which have been significant and controlling in what I may
call my psychological life are wholly unknown to my friends, and yet
they might be made public, if you wish. For instance, as I look back
to my boyhood, the cause of the only unhappiness that boyhood had for
me was a secret but a deeply rooted suspicion that I was physically
a coward. This gave me intense suffering. I do not know precisely at
what time I first became conscious of it, but when I peered, one day,
through the window of a surgeon's office to see an amputation I had
proof of my fear. One of my playmates had caught his hand between two
cog-wheels in a mill, and his arm had been badly crushed. When he
was taken to the surgeon's office, I followed to see what was going
to be done with him. While I was watching the amputation, with my
face pressed to the glass of the window, the surgeon accidentally let
slip from his forceps the end of one of the severed arteries, and
a jet of blood spurted against the inside of the window-pane. The
result upon me was a sensation that I had never had before in all my
life,--a sensation of nausea, faintness, and overwhelming fear. I was
twenty-four hours in recovering from the shock, and from that time I
began to think about the nature of my emotions and the unsuspected
weakness of my character.
"I had a nervous, imaginative temperament, and not long after this
incident I began to be tortured by a vague suspicion that I was
lacking in what we now call 'nerve,' that I was afraid of things that
involved suffering or peril. I brooded over this suggestion of physical
cowardice until I became almost convinced of its reality, and at last
I came to be afraid of things that I had never before thought about.
In less than a year I had lost much of my self-respect, and was as
miserable as a boy could be. It all seems now very absurd and childish,
but at that time, with my boyish visions of travel and exploration, it
was a spiritual tragedy. 'Of what use is it to think of exploration and
wild life in wild countries,' I used to ask myself, 'if the first time
my courage or fortitude is put to the test I become faint and sick?'
"I began at last to experiment upon myself,--to do things that were
dangerous merely to see whether I dared do them; but the result was
only partially reassuring. I could not get into much danger in a sleepy
little village like Norwalk, Ohio, and although I found I could force
myself to walk around the six-inch stone coping of a bell-tower five
stories from the ground (a most perilous and foolhardy exploit), and
go and sit alone in a graveyard in the middle of dark, still nights,
I failed to recover my own respect. My self-reproach continued for
a year or two, during which I was as wretched as a boy can be who
admires courage above all things and has a high ideal of intrepid
manhood, but who secretly fears that he himself is hopelessly weak and
nerveless. There was hardly a day that I did not say to myself, 'You'll
never be able to do the things that you dream about; you haven't any
self-reliance or nerve. Even as a little child you were afraid of the
dark; you shrink now from fights and rows, and you turn faint at the
mere sight of blood. You're nothing but a coward.'
"At last, when I was seventeen or eighteen years of age, I went
to Cincinnati as a telegraph operator. I had become so morbid and
miserable by that time that I said one day, 'I'm going to put an end
to this state of affairs here and now. If I'm afraid of anything, I'll
conquer my fear of it or die. If I'm a coward I might as well be dead,
because I can never feel any self-respect or have any happiness in
life; and I'd rather get killed trying to do something that I'm afraid
to do than to live in this way.' I was at that time working at night,
and had to go home from the office between midnight and four o'clock
A. M. It was during the Civil War, and Cincinnati was a more lawless
city than it has ever been since. Street robberies and murders were
of daily occurrence, and all of the 'night men' in our office carried
weapons as a matter of course. I bought a revolver, and commenced a
course of experiments upon myself. When I finished my night work at
the office, instead of going directly home through well-lighted and
police-patrolled streets, I directed my steps to the slums and explored
the worst haunts of vice and crime in the city. If there was a dark,
narrow, cut-throat alley down by the river that I felt afraid to go
through at that hour of the night, I clenched my teeth, cocked my
revolver, and went through it,--sometimes twice in succession. If I
read in the morning papers that a man had been robbed or murdered on a
certain street, I went to that street the next night. I explored the
dark river-banks, hung around low drinking-dives and the resorts of
thieves and other criminals, and made it an invariable rule to do at
all hazards the thing that I thought I might be afraid to do. Of course
I had all sorts of experiences and adventures. One night I saw a man
attacked by highwaymen and knocked down with a slung-shot, just across
the street. I ran to his assistance, frightened away the robbers, and
picked him up from the gutter in a state of unconsciousness. Another
night, after two o'clock, I saw a man's throat cut, down by the
river,--and a ghastly sight it was; but, although somewhat shaken, I
did not become faint or sick. Every time I went through a street that
I believed to be dangerous, or had any startling experience, I felt an
accession of self-respect.
"In less than three months I had satisfied myself that while I did feel
fear, I was not so much daunted by any undertaking but I could do it if
I willed to do it, and then I began to feel better.
"Not long after this I went on my first expedition to Siberia, and
there, in almost daily struggles with difficulties, dangers, and
sufferings of all sorts, I finally lost the fear of being afraid which
had poisoned the happiness of my boyhood. It has never troubled me, I
think, since the fall of 1867, when I was blown out to sea one cold
and pitch-dark night in a dismasted and sinking sailboat, in a heavy,
offshore gale, without a swallow of water or a mouthful of food. I
faced then for about four hours what seemed to be certain death, but I
was steady, calm, and under perfect self-control."
--_Kenyon West._
ADVERTISEMENT OF "MENTICULTURE."
"Menticulture" was first issued in a sufficiently modest way. It
described a personal experience which has been of inestimable value to
the author. The revelation to him of the possibility of the absolute
elimination of the seeds of unhappiness has changed life from a
period of constant struggle to a period of security and repose, and
has insured delightful realities instead of uncertain possibilities.
One hundred and fifty copies of the book were privately printed, and
entitled "The A B C of True Living." It also carried within its pages
the title of "Emancipation."
The suggestion met with such hearty appreciation on the part of
personal friends in many various walks of life, that a public edition
was proposed, and the name of "Menticulture," a name that had to be
coined for the purpose, was chosen for it.
The aptness of the suggestion has been evidenced by the approval of the
brotherhood at large by appreciative notices in many of the leading
periodicals of the country, by the receipt of more than a thousand
personal letters by the author, many of them attesting to greatest
benefits growing out of the new point of view of life suggested by the
book, and by very large sales.
One gentleman--altruist--whose name is W. J. Van Patten, found the
suggestion contained in "Menticulture" so helpful to himself and
friends that he purchased a special edition of two thousand copies of
the book for distribution in his home city of Burlington, Vermont,
one to each household, with the idea of accentuating the suggestion
by widespread inter-discussion. The special Burlington edition has
an inset page bearing Mr. Van Patten's _raison d'être_ for the
distribution, which reads as follows:
PERSONAL NOTE.
Some time in the early part of the year 1896 a friend sent me a copy of
"Menticulture." I read it with interest, and became convinced that I
could apply its truths to my own life with profit. Experience confirmed
my faith in the power of its principles to overcome many of the most
annoying and damaging ills that are common to humanity.
I procured a number of copies from time to time and gave to friends
who I felt would appreciate it. The universal testimony to the good
which the little book did, and the new strength of purpose and will it
gave to some who were sore beset with the cares and worries of life,
increased my interest and my confidence in the truths set forth.
I formed the idea of making an experiment by giving the book a general
distribution in our city, to see if it would not promote the general
good and happiness of people.
I wrote to the author, Mr. Fletcher, and he entered into the plan very
cordially, and had this special edition prepared for me. The object
which we hope to gain is to turn the thoughts and purposes of those
whom we reach to the old truths taught by Christ, and a determination
to live above those evils which do so much to make our lives unhappy
for ourselves and annoying to those about us.
I would ask, therefore, that you would kindly give the book careful and
thoughtful reading, and, when you have opportunity, recommend it to
your friends.
W. J. VAN PATTEN.
PERSONAL NOTE.
Mr. Van Patten is a prominent manufacturer of Vermont, and was recently
Mayor of Burlington for two years. He is also prominent in the
Christian Endeavorer movement, having been the first president of the
United Society, and being at present one of its trustees, as well as
the president of the Congregational Club of western Vermont.
"Menticulture" has found favor among physicians, and also with
life-insurance companies, obviously because of the live-saving quality
of the suggestions contained in it.
Explanation of The A. B. C. Life Series
THE ESSENTIALS AND SEQUENCE IN LIFE
It would seem a considerable departure from the study of menticulture
as advised in the author's book, "Menticulture," to jump at once to an
investigation of the physiology and psychology of nutrition of the body
and then over to the department of infant and child care and education
as pursued in the _crêche_ and in the kindergarten; but as a matter of
fact, if study of the causation of human disabilities and misfortunes
is attempted at all, the quest leads naturally into all the departments
of human interest, and first into these primary departments.
The object of this statement is to link up the different publications
of the writer into a chain of consistent suggestions intended to
make life a more simple and agreeable problem than many of us too
indifferent or otherwise inefficient and bad fellow-citizens make of it.
It is not an altogether unselfish effort on the part of the author of
the A. B. C. Life Series to publish his findings. In the consideration
of his own mental and physical happiness it is impossible to leave out
environment, and all the units of humanity who inhabit the world are
part of his and of each other's environment.
It would be rank presumption for any person, even though gifted with
the means to circulate his suggestions as widely as possible, and
armed with the power to compel the reading of his publications, to
think that any suggestions of his could influence any considerable
number of his fellow-citizens of the world, or even of his own
immediate neighbourhood, to accept or follow his advice relative to the
management of their lives and of their communal and national affairs;
but while the general and complete good of humanity should be aimed
at in all publications, one's immediate neighbours and friends come
first, and the wave of influence spreads according to the effectiveness
of the ideas suggested in doing good; that is, in altering the point
of view and conduct of people so as to make them a better sympathetic
environment.
For instance, the children of your neighbours are likely to be the
playmates of your own children, and the children of degenerate parents
in the slum district of your city will possibly be the fellow-citizen
partners of your own family. Again, when it is known that right or
wrong nutrition of the body is the most important agent in forming
character, in establishing predisposition to temperance or intemperance
of living, including the desire for intoxicating stimulants, it is
revealed to one that right nutrition of the community as a whole is an
important factor in his own environment, as is self-care in the case of
his own nourishment.
The moment a student of every-day philosophy starts the study of
problems from the A. B. C. beginning of things, and to shape his study
according to an A. B. C. sequence, each cause of inharmony is at once
traced back to its first expression in himself and then to causes
influenced by his environments.
If we find that the largest influences for good or bad originate with
the right or wrong instruction of children during the home training or
kindergarten period of their development, and that a dollar expended
for education at that time is worth more for good than whole bancs of
courts and whole armies of police to correct the effect of bad training
and bad character later in life, it is quite logical to help promote
the spread of the kindergarten or the kindergarten idea to include
all of the children born into the world, and to furnish mothers and
kindergarten teachers with knowledge relative to the right nutrition
of their wards which they can themselves understand and can teach
effectively to children.
If we also find that the influence of the kindergarten upon the parents
of the infants is more potent than any other which can be brought to
bear upon them, we see clearly that the way to secure the widest
reform in the most thorough manner is to concentrate attention upon the
kindergarten phase of education, advocate its extension to include even
the last one of the children, beginning with the most needy first, and
extending the care outward from the centre of worst neglect to finally
reach the whole.
Experience in child saving so-called, and in child education on the
kindergarten principle, has taught the cheapest and the most profitable
way to insure an environment of good neighbours and profit-earning
citizens; and investigation into the problem of human alimentation
shows that a knowledge of the elements of an economic nutrition is the
first essential of a family or school training; and also that this is
most impressive when taught during the first ten years of life.
One cannot completely succeed in the study of menticulture from its A.
B. C. beginning and in A. B. C. sequence without appreciation of the
interrelation of the physical and the mental, the personal and the
social, in attaining a complete mastery of the subject.