DREADS
The most fruitful source of neurotic affections and especially of what
have come to be termed in recent years the psychoneuroses, those
disturbances of nerve function due to an unfortunate state of mind,
are the dreads or, as they have been called, the fear thoughts of
mankind. Men as well as women develop, in the sense of fostering,
often almost unconsciously to themselves, a dread of the ulterior
significance of some symptom, or feeling, or disturbance of function,
which serves to make them extremely uncomfortable. The physical
sensation which they experience and which is the basis and the source
of the dread may be only a quite normal physiological feeling common
to all humanity, heightened by overattention to it, but the fearsome
state of mind will cause it to assume the significance of a definite
symptom of some serious disease or, what may be worse, an indefinite
symptom of some impending affection which, in the opinion of the
sufferer, may be as yet too inchoate for the physician to recognize
its real significance.
It is not a question of an imaginary ill, as a rule, and there is but
seldom a real hallucination or creation by the fantasy out of nothing,
of the ailment from which these people suffer, but there is an
exaggeration of some slight or at least comparatively insignificant
feeling to {235} an extent that makes it assume a serious aspect. This
inhibits normal function, lessens appetite and exercise, at times even
disturbs sleep, and so brings about some at least of the ailments that
are dreaded.
Not infrequently these dreads are very vague. People wake in the
morning with a sense of depression and the feeling that something is
hanging over them. As a result they feel out of sorts, their appetite
for breakfast is blunted and they begin the day very badly just
because of this incubus of vague disturbance of mind. Almost anything
that happens during the day will emphasize their depression; as a
consequence lunch may be skimped, they do not get out as they should,
and a vicious circle of influences is begun. Perhaps they eat rather
heartily for dinner and then fall asleep in their chair afterwards
over the evening paper, and then find that when they go to bed they do
not sleep promptly as they expected to. They worry over it, feeling
there must be something the matter with them, since they cannot sleep
lying down though they could sleep so well in the chair, and if there
should be a repetition of these feelings the next day, it is easy to
understand how a psychoneurosis would be started which might easily,
if eating and outing and exercise were to continue to be neglected,
develop into a serious condition. Many a case of nervous breakdown has
a beginning as simple as this, and people of nervous temperament must
be constantly on guard against it.
Such patients--and they are much more common than might be thought and
they have been with us for thousands of years, for Plato describes
some of them and the oldest prescription in the world is a fumigation
that was directed to curing just such a neurotic condition--need to
have faith in themselves and faith in their Maker and to stop {236}
hesitating and doubting and thinking and dreading. I have known men,
but particularly women, who had been suffering in this way, become
converted so that they took up the practice of religion which they had
neglected before and proceeded to get immensely better. Of course,
there are any number of hypochondriacs among people who profess
religion, but they are the exceptions which prove the rule that fewer
people who have a real sense of religion and who take it seriously as
a guide of life suffer from dreads and the symptoms which result from
them than are to be found among the people who have given up the
belief and practice of their religion. This is particularly true of
those who belong to the old orthodox forms of religion which require
self-denial and self-control as part of the practice of religious
duties. As we have shown in the chapter on Nervous Diseases the
Quakers, the strict Methodists, the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox
Jews, get their reward for their submission to their religion even in
this world by lessened solicitude about themselves. Indeed there is
nothing that is more likely to dispel dreads than an abiding sense of
religion. If a man or a woman is convinced that there is a Providence
that oversees human life as well as the universe, in Whom "we live and
move and have our being" and of Whose infinite knowledge and power we
can have no doubt, the unreasonableness of dreads comes home to him.
The man who prays every morning, "Thy will be done on earth as it is
in heaven", must have the feeling that His will _will_ be
accomplished, and that is all that any of us can ask for. Somehow that
is for the best, though we may not be able to see just how. "If not a
sparrow falls to the ground but your Heavenly Father knoweth", and if,
as the Master said, "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings and
{237} not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs
of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: you are of more
value than many sparrows", surely the believer will keep himself at
least from being overworried by dreads. His disposition may be such
that he cannot dispose of them entirely, but at least the best source
of consolation and strength is to be found in that strong faith for
which there are so many strengthening expressions against the fears
and dreads of life to be found in the sacred writings.
How many striking sentences there are in the Scriptures to help
against these solicitudes: "And which of you with taking thought can
add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing
which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?" How one is tempted
to quote others of the expressions in that same wonderful chapter of
Luke (XII). "The life is more than the meat and the body is more than
raiment. Consider the ravens; for they neither sow nor reap; which
neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them; how much more
are ye better than the fowls. But rather seek ye the kingdom of God;
and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock;
for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you a kingdom." All over
the Scriptures are passages that are meant to be fear-dispelling and
that have been for many men and women in many generations. For fear is
often the state of man unless he has something to cling to. "Fear not,
I am with thee."... "Fear ye not, nor be afraid, have I not told
thee."... "Fear not, I am the first and the last, for I the Lord thy
God will hold thy right hand, saying to thee fear not, I will help
thee."
Scientists have recognized that religion and science {238} were
coordinate factors for the neutralization of the dreads that disturb
humanity. Professor H. D. Seeley, who was for many years professor of
geography, geology and mineralogy at Kings College, London, and who
was a distinguished Fellow of most of the important English scientific
societies, the Royal, Linnean, Geological, Zoological and
Geographical, stated in his little work, "Factors in Life", his views
as regards the place of religion in dissipating the fear thoughts of
life, and places it side by side with science itself in this respect.
He said:
"To the religious neither life nor death has terrors, and in freeing
existence from its greater anxieties the influence of Religion works
on the same foundation of moral efforts as Science. The sciences are
the sisters of Religion in that they unfold something of the laws by
which the universe is governed, and by which man's life is directed.
They are thus far the stepping-stones of faith. And those who have
learned that health is the reward which man may gain by moral
discipline, that mental vigour may be augmented by the wise (or
moral) use of food, and that education is the systematic exercise of
moral responsibility in any or all the affairs of life, may find
that in the practice and pursuit of the truths of Science they are
conscious of a religious education which is a light to the feet.
Such matters are factors in life, which may educate us in a reverent
appreciation of religious truth and divine government of the world."
Many physicians of large experience have recognized the value of an
abiding religious faith as a remedy for many of these dreads and
doubts which so pester mankind and make so many people suffer even
from physical symptoms that seem surely to have only material causes
as their basis because they so hamper the will to live. {239} Sir Dyce
Duckworth, the distinguished English physician, once wrote to a
friend:
"What is always needed is a reverent study and a full acknowledgment
of God as a Father and as the great 'All in All.' In my experience
the only solution of all our difficulties is to maintain a humble,
child-like faith and a confident trust in the perfect love of God,
who 'knows whereof we are made, and remembers that we are but dust.'
"With that and perfect love, there need be no fear, and all will
come right in His own time. That is the faith to live by and to die
with, and the happiest people (and the happiest of the dying) are
those who hold firm by that faith.
"This is my experience after much thought, much knowledge of human
nature, and not a little study of all the difficulties you relate to
me."
But it must not be thought that these dreads cause only the trivial
instances of nervous breakdown in which people never very capable give
way before the strenuous call of commercial life in the large cities
of our time. Nor must it be thought that education is dispelling them.
Some idea of the important role that dreads may play in the production
of human ills that seem to be very serious and that often prove quite
incapacitating for mental and physical work, even in men of fine
abilities and proven powers, may be gathered from what happened during
the recent Great War. The Allied nations had to maintain some fifty
thousand beds behind the lines for the accommodation of patients
suffering from functional nervous affections really founded on dreads.
At the beginning these cases were misunderstood, and they were
unfortunately called "shell shock" because they seemed so serious that
it was thought that they were {240} due to some concussion of the
nervous system, that is, some shaking up of its elements that made it
impossible for it to function normally, even though there were no
external signs of injury. After a time, however, it came to be
appreciated that the great majority of these patients were suffering
from major hysteria due to loss of control over the nervous system as
a consequence of the almost inevitable dreads which developed in the
awful conditions of warfare in the trenches, with its terrifying
sights and sounds, and with the intense strain put upon the nervous
system because of the demands made upon physical energy almost to the
point of exhaustion.
After loss of sleep and irregular eating, wet feet for days at a time,
exposure to the inclemencies of the weather and then having to
withstand an enemy attack, often at dawn after a fearsome barrage had
been laid down on them for hours, it is no wonder that in many cases
men's nervous control did give way. They were not cowards, they were
not malingerers; on the contrary they were often brave men who had
volunteered for the service, giving up important positions at home to
take up the defense of their country; and yet after a time their
dreads dominated them and they suffered from all sorts of symptoms.
Some of them could not see, a number could not hear; some could not
use their legs, and some could not employ their arms properly; some
walked with a limp, some had tremor that made their usefulness as
soldiers absolutely at an end. Nearly all of them had a series of
complaints which they wanted to detail in all their minuteness to
every physician who came near. Their stories of what had happened were
mainly untrue or utter exaggerations of the actual events, and yet
these men were not liars and they were not the doddering idiots that
they sometimes {241} seemed to be; they were just fellow mortals who
meant to do their best, and who had been affected in this way because
they were asked to stand what was beyond their strength of soul to
withstand.
The educated suffered more than the uneducated. There were four times
as many "shell shock" cases among the officers of the British army in
proportion to their number as there were among the privates. Neither
ambition nor nobility nor any artificial distinction of any kind
seemed to make any difference, for all classes and conditions of men
came down with it. Its frequence can be very well judged from the fact
that one third of all the dismissions from the British army, not
counting the wounded, was for "shell shock", which of course should be
called by its proper name of major hysteria. One seventh of all the
dismissions, if the wounded were included, was for this reason. It had
been the custom to think before the war that only a comparatively few
men, mostly those of a certain feministic appearance and delicacy of
constitution, were likely to suffer from hysteria. It was found,
however, that college graduates who stood at the head of their
classes, athletes who held records, broad-shouldered, healthy men who
had been considered to be the very acme of common sense, men who were
supposed to be without a nerve in their make-up, all these proved to
have "nerves"; and when the war "got on their nerves", they suffered
from the complaints which we have mentioned and many others, including
pains and discomforts of all kinds, and inabilities and incapacities,
motor and sensory as well as of the memory, of the mind or the will.
This recent significant experience will give some idea of how potent
dreads may be in the production of {242} symptoms which seem surely to
be due to physical rather than merely mental conditions. Most people
would probably be inclined to think that in so far as dreads produced
diseases by the exaggeration of minor symptoms, at most scarcely more
than mental conditions of discomfort would result from them. What are
called the psychoneuroses, that is, the neurotic affections dependent
on the state of mind, may simulate almost any of the organic
conditions and may seem to be serious diseases. Through the creation
of unfortunate habits, they may give rise to a great many rather
severe physical symptoms. The war neuroses emphasized this for us.
Inability to use limbs, either legs or arms, is quite common in
connection with them; disturbances of sensation, such as defective
hearing and eyesight, or even what seems to be complete blindness and
deafness, may develop. Tremors are quite common, and pains and aches
in connection with the disabilities of the limbs are extremely
frequent.
A very usual experience is to find that a patient has as a preliminary
suffered some injury. This may not be very severe, but it is enough to
cause the sufferer to spare the limb that is affected; and
unfortunately physicians sometimes put a limb with a minor affection
in plaster of Paris or in a splint for a time. The patient's own
solicitude with regard to the hurt may cause almost as effective
splinting of it as a plaster cast or wooden slat and a bandage.
Whenever this happens, the unused muscles lose some of their
nutrition. This is due partly to the fact that the circulation is
interfered with because the active contraction of muscles, especially
of the legs, is depended on by nature to help the venous or return
circulation by bringing about compression of the veins. The valves in
the veins are so arranged that when the {243} veins are compressed and
the blood thus pressed out of them, it cannot move away from the heart
but is impelled onward toward the heart. Besides, the sending down of
nervous impulses for the active use of muscles increases the size of
the arteries to the part by direct action on their walls, and whenever
there is failure to send impulses down, the arteries do not carry as
much blood as usual, and the nutrition of the part suffers as a
result.
If this inactive state of the muscles continues for a few days, they
will become somewhat flaccid, and after a week or more will actually
begin to decrease in size. As a consequence of this, they cannot be
used to as good advantage as before, and use of them sets up an achy
condition as soon as the limb is set free for use, whether it has been
splinted by the physician or by the patient's mind. If the patient is
still solicitous, he notices this condition of pain and concludes that
it means that the muscles are not yet in the condition of health where
they should be used, and he puts on the splints, metaphorical or
literal, once more. The muscles grow more flaccid and eventually
atrophic as a consequence, until sometimes there will be a difference
of more than an inch in the girth of two limbs at the same point, and
this atrophy may proceed much farther. It seems almost impossible to
believe that men and women could thus make a limb useless, but this is
actually what happens rather frequently. The effects of the original
injury will pass off in a few days, but the effects of the disuse of
the limb may remain for months or even years because of the
disturbance of circulation and of nerve impulse. It is probable that
the nerves themselves have a trophic or nutritional--that is,
vitalizing--influence upon muscles. Some physiologists actually talk
of there being {244} trophic fibers in the nerves, though it would
seem more reasonable to think that the nerve trophic effect comes from
the modification of the circulation to the part.
Whenever muscles have to be increased in size or won back from an
atrophic condition, the individual to whom they belong must go through
a period of soreness and tenderness in those muscles which often is
very hard to bear. The young fellow who, after a rather relaxed
summer, begins training for the football team in the fall, knows how
sore and tender his muscles have become. After the first day or two of
training, each time he wakes up at night he turns over in bed with the
feeling that every bit of him is full of tenderness. Any number of
people under similar circumstances are inclined to think that they
must have caught cold. They usually reason thus: "I got into a
perspiration and sat down for a while and then took cold, and that is
the reason for all this painful condition that has developed."
That word "cold" is as unfortunate as "shell shock." There is no such
thing as taking cold. We catch infections, but much more frequently in
fall and spring than in winter. The young man who is in training
usually pays no attention to such unfavorable suggestions or dreads,
since he knows that he must take his medicine of further hard exercise
until he has hardened and developed his muscles and then, instead of
their causing discomfort, nothing in the world gives him so much
satisfaction as their active exercise.
Older people, however, and especially those who have what may be
called a "dready" disposition, do not call their muscle discomfort
soreness and tenderness; they speak of pains and aches. The very words
carry a suggestion of evil with them, and above all they carry with
{245} them an inhibitory suggestion which keeps muscles from being
used normally. If, then, certain older people get an injury, even
though it may not be very serious, so long as it causes them to give
up the use of a limb for a while, or sets them to using the muscles of
it a little differently from before, a psychoneurosis on the basis of
a dread, but with the physical basis of somewhat atrophied muscles to
keep it up, may develop and persist for weeks and months and even
years. As a consequence of this state--much more of the mind than the
body--men may walk lame or be very awkward in the use of one arm, or
they may have a little stoop, or they may dread very much the using of
some group of muscles. Such conditions occasionally occur in the neck
or in various parts of the back, and especially in the lumbar region,
with strikingly visible effects.
It might seem impossible that such conditions should develop and
persist for any length of time in sensible and above all intelligent
people, and yet I suppose that every physician's case book contains a
number of examples. After he has been in practice for ten years or
more this will surely be true, if he has had much to do with nervous
patients. One of the most distinguished scientists that we had in this
country, possessed of one of the finest intellects of our generation,
thoroughly sensible and noted for his executive ability, suffered from
a slight attack of sciatica, to which he had been predisposed by some
unusual work in connection with a heavy fall of snow when he had to go
out and do the shoveling himself, since labor was not available. He
never quite got over it. For some time he carried two crutches because
he had so little confidence in putting down the foot on that side,
after having spared it for a {246} while. Then for several years he
carried a single crutch. In the meantime he was examined by half a
dozen of the best physicians in the country, who could find nothing
the matter with him except that disuse had rendered the muscles of
that leg slightly atrophic, and he would have to push through a period
of soreness and tenderness while exercising them. He carried a cane
ever afterwards, walked a little lame and favored that leg.
Persistent sciaticas of this kind and lumbagoes are much more common
than they are thought. It was a case of this kind, undoubtedly, that
brought about Bernheim's interest in hypnotism at Nancy and initiated
that wave of attention to hypnotism at the end of the nineteenth
century which did so much harm. A patient who had suffered from
sciatica for some years and walked a little lame as a consequence came
under Bernheim's care, and he tried without success every therapeutic
resource at his command to make him better. Finally his patient gave
up calling on him, completely discouraged. He had gone to a great many
physicians before Bernheim, and all of them had failed to do him any
effectual good. They could relieve his discomfort for a while, but
when he stopped taking drugs, that returned and his limb could be used
no better than before.
Some months after Bernheim missed the patient from his clinic he met
him on the street one day, walking perfectly straight without his cane
and evidently entirely well. He was so much interested that he stopped
to ask what had cured him. The patient told him he had gone around to
Liebault, who, almost alone in Europe, was still practicing hypnotism,
for the practice had been greatly discredited by certain exposures in
England shortly after the middle of the century. Bernheim, who had
ignored {247} Liebault's work before, now took an interest in it and
found of course that hypnotism--or indeed, though Bernheim did not
know that, anything else that would give these patients the confidence
to push through a period of tenderness and soreness in regaining the
use of their muscles--would cure them. The incident began that period
of reawakened interest in hypnotism which now constitutes such a
ludicrous series of events in the medicine of the end of the
nineteenth century.
Such cases are by no means so uncommon as they might be thought. I
have known the teacher of a high school to slip while coming out of
school, fall on his knee, bruise it rather badly, and then have this
bruised condition heal very well, only to develop in the course of a
few weeks a distinct inability to use the muscles of that leg
properly, until he had to walk with a marked limp. The circumference
of the limb above the knee reduced distinctly in size, it suffered
more from cold than did the other one; it perspired more freely; it
was distinctly more sensitive to the touch, and it would seem as
though there must be some serious underlying nervous condition. He
passed through the hands of several specialists, including one who
wanted to remove a cartilage in the knee joint which he said had been
dislocated, and another who insisted that he was suffering from a
neuritis of a branch of the sciatic nerve, and who wanted to inject
water within the sheath of it or at least lay it bare and stretch it.
Fortunately we persuaded him to join an athletic club and take more
exercise than usual and above all exercise that limb. He had had
massage and passive movements for it, but these are of very little
service in these cases, because the nervous impulses must come down
from above. It would almost seem as though the {248} will sent down
some of its own creative energy through the nerves which lead to the
part. He is now entirely well, though he suffered for several years,
and absolutely nothing was done for him except to make him eat better
and make him push through a period of soreness and tenderness--he used
to call them pains and aches before we explained the condition to
him--until he had properly recovered the use of his limb.
On the other hand, I have known a good clergyman with a rather similar
condition to this, who had bumped his shin bone not far below the knee
and after recovery from that had developed a marked psychoneurosis in
the muscles above the knee, refuse to be cured by any such simple
procedure as merely exercising himself back to health. He could not
bring himself to think that it was only his own lack of will power
that had caused the condition to develop. Above all he needed
something external to cure him. He finally went to a bone-setter, one
of these old fellows who claim to be the seventh son of a seventh son,
or something of that kind, possessed of marvelous hereditary power and
instinctive intuition in the matter of setting bones right, and who
cure nearly everything under the sun and a few other things besides by
their supposed bone-setting processes. My clerical friend was sure
that he had been cured by the bone-setter, but any physician would
have told him that what had happened was that his faith in his healer
had released his inhibition of his muscles and given him the
confidence to go on and use them as they should be used,--that is, of
course, as far as he possibly could at first. Then they were gradually
restored to their former condition of health and strength. That is
what happened, and he has had no recurrence. He is quite {249} sure,
however, that the trouble was a subluxation of his hip joint, which
the bone-setter set right, thus allowing nervous impulses and the
blood to flow properly through the part once more. His own will was
the only obstacle and it was that alone that had to be overcome and
used as a therapeutic agent.
These patients are the stock in trade of all sorts of irregular
practitioners. Whenever they think anything is the matter with them
they must be "cured"; they never get better of themselves. They need
something or somebody to which to pin their faith. It is the hardest
thing in the world to find out what is the matter with a man who has
nothing the matter with him except a state of mind and its
consequences in his physical condition. He must have his state of mind
changed first of all, and usually he requires some rather strong
suggestion for that purpose. What is likely to affect him most
favorably is some novel or unusual method of treatment, or some new
discovery in science recently applied to medicine, or some new method
of healing, or some supposedly new invention or discovery in
therapeutics. These patients are a veritable nuisance in medicine. It
is the cures of them, made by all sorts of new-fangled remedies, which
make it so difficult for physicians to judge whether a new remedy has
a positive favorable physical effect or only a mental influence.
Very probably the best appreciation of the place of dreads in life and
how much of good is accomplished by their neutralization can be
obtained from the number of sufferers of all kinds who are cured by
all sorts of new remedies which prove after a time to have no physical
effect at all. We have discussed this subject of the {250} remedies
that have come and gone in medicine in the volume "Psychotherapy." It
has been very well said that the most important chapter in the history
of medicine is that of the cures that have failed. It illustrates very
thoroughly how much influence the mind has over the body, and
particularly how much dreads have meant for the production of symptoms
which have been relieved whenever the patient had his dreads lifted,
no matter what might be the agent to accomplish this purpose. Instead
of decreasing, dreads have increased just in proportion as popular
education has spread and more people have been able to read and
receive unfavorable suggestions of all kinds. This has been
particularly true with the diminution of the influence of religion
over people's minds.
All sorts of religious substitutes which would give people enough
confidence in themselves to enable them to throw off their dreads have
gained vogue and have come to be very popular institutions in recent
years. Dowie, who claimed he was Elijah returned to earth, and
Schlatter, who said that he was divinely inspired to cure people, were
as successful in the twentieth century as Greatrakes "the stroker,"
who said that the Holy Ghost appeared to him in a dream and told him
to heal people, in the seventeenth. Metaphysical healing of all kinds
has been successful, and spiritualistic healing and new thought and
magnetic healing, with as little magnetism about it as Mesmer's famous
battery which had no electricity,--all these have cured people. All
sorts of healers are successful just because they lift the dreads and
make people forget the inhibitions that they have been exercising over
their functions. Indeed this state of fear thought is one of the most
prolific sources of {251} symptoms, or rather let us say of
complaints, that medicine has to do with at all times, hence the
importance of the chapter of the cures that have failed. Almost any
religious feeling will be helpful in the matter, but an abiding sense
of rational religion will save many people from being imposed on by
all sorts of upstart theories and religious systems which base their
claim to recognition on these cures of human beings.
These patients furnish a great many of the cures made at shrines. That
is why at every shrine there are so many crutches and canes and braces
and belts and splints and supports of various kinds to be seen. They
have been left there by grateful patients who were able to drop them
as the result of the change of mind that came over them during their
devotions. Many cures besides these occur at shrines, and I have taken
a good deal of pains to assure myself that most of the affections that
are healed at them are quite different from these psychoneuroses. Over
sixty per cent of the cures made at Lourdes, for instance, are of
tuberculosis processes. Many of these are of external visible lesions.
Some of them, after years of progress in spite of all sorts of
treatment, heal over in the course of twenty-four hours. I have seen
this happen to a lupus, at Lourdes, during my stay there, and I do not
know how to explain that incident by any natural process. To me it
seemed surely supernatural. I know that there are some physicians who
suggest that we do not know all the possibilities of the therapeutic
effect of the mind on the body, and somehow there may be included in
the psychotherapeutic armamentarium the power to heal tissues rapidly,
even when they have been the subject of a chronic granulomatous
process for years, but I cannot but think that is {252} merely an
effort to retain what seems to me plainly miraculous within the domain
of the natural.
I know too that Doctor Boissarie's experience, so carefully noted and
written out in his clinic at Lourdes, shows that there are cases of
real joint trouble which have been cured with similar rapidity, but
these are very rare. Most of the halt and crippled who are cured at
shrines have simply been the victims of an attitude of mind which has
affected their muscles and their use of certain joints unfavorably, so
that they had to carry crutches or canes or wear braces. The deep
influence of religion will cure them very often, but it is not a
miracle in any supernatural sense of the word, though it is a
wonderful event, and that is all that miracle means by etymology.
Indeed, professors of neurology have occasionally foretold that
certain of these patients would perhaps be cured at shrines, and their
prophecies in specific instances have been fulfilled. The cures are
examples of what faith can do in lifting a dread, but that faith may
be exercised with regard to much less worthy objects than are
presented at shrines and yet work successfully. When George Cohan, in
the "Miracle Man", had the cure that attracted attention to the "new
prophet" occur with regard to a lame boy, he was eminently wise in the
selection of just the type of case that could very readily be cured
that way, and yet the fact that the boy had been lame for years and
now walked perfectly made the healer seem a veritable wonder worker.
Dreads have always been with mankind, and their effects upon human
bodies have been the stock in trade of the medicine man in primitive
tribes and among savages and of his successors in suggestive medicine
among educated and even cultivated people down to our own {253} time.
They can be conjured away by almost any impression that is deep enough
to produce a favorable suggestion. Religion of all kinds has been
appealed to successfully to neutralize them. The one rational cure for
them is a deep sense of confidence in the Almighty and in an
overruling Providence which serves to dissipate the phobic state of
mind with its inevitable inhibitions on bodily functions. It may be
necessary for its successful working that the correction of many minor
physical ills should be secured, but the all-important basis of
successful treatment for the psychoneurosis and the many ailments of
mankind which are complicated by psychic states is a thoroughgoing
belief that God is in His heaven and all is well with the world, even
though there may be difficulties to be overcome, hardships to be
borne, and many things that are far from easy to understand.
{254}