HEALTH AND RELIGION [Footnote 18]
[Footnote 18: The suggestion for this chapter came from Reverend
William J. Lockington's little book on "Bodily Health and Spiritual
Vigour", Longmans, Green and Co., London, New York, Bombay and
Calcutta, 1914.]
Religion, as we have seen in the course of this book, does very much
for health, but according to the great principle of nature, reaction
is equal to action in compensation and health undoubtedly also
accomplishes very much for religion. Indeed there are a great many
troubles commonly presumed to be of the spirit and a great many
supposed disturbances of the spiritual life that are really only
manifestations of ill health of one kind or another, or at least of
some hampering of bodily function reflected in the mind. This has
always been recognized by all the great authorities in the spiritual
life, and none have insisted more than the writers even of the highest
mystical theology on the necessity for taking proper care of the body
if the spirit is to be free for religious life.
Desolation, that is that feeling of utter dissatisfaction with
religious exercises and difficulty in continuing them of which so much
is said in spiritual literature, is very often nothing more than
dyspepsia. What is familiarly called the "blues" or the "blue devils",
that is the state of depression in which nothing seems hopeful and the
future seems very blank indeed, is a common experience among mankind
generally and is very often dependent on {320} some disturbance of the
digestive tract. There is a well-known expression in English according
to which the answer to the question "Is life worth living?" is "That
depends on the liver", meaning not only the person that does the
living, but also that large organ in the right upper abdominal
quadrant, the largest, heaviest organ in the body, disturbances of
which it is no wonder cause serious interference with a number of the
functions of both mind and body. Many a long-faced person indeed who
thinks himself pious is only bilious, and many a sad-eyed visionary
who is quite ready to proclaim himself religious is only what the
ancients called atrabilious and needs some liver regulator as badly as
ever Horace thought he needed hellebore in the spring.
There are a good many traits of disposition or habits of life often
supposed to be dependent on the state of the spirit that are really
only symptoms of bodily indisposition. Many a fit of temper is
consequent upon the condition of the digestive organs rather than the
state of the soul. Suspicion and jealousy are not infrequently not so
much vices as unfortunate feelings exaggerated out of all reason by
some disturbance of health. There are certain times in women's lives
particularly when almost any feeling that comes to them is magnified
and takes on a significance quite beyond the reality. Physicians
constantly have to remind their women patients to wait a few days and
not let their inhibited feelings run away with them as they are so
prone to do at certain periods.
Not a little of the irritability of life and especially the
exaggerated response to minor irritations is due to insufficient
oxygenation of tissues because the individual concerned is not getting
out into the air sufficiently. At the end of a number of hours of
mental work indoors, {321} especially in a stuffy atmosphere, most
people are inclined to be irritable. If instead of going out into the
fresh air and staying out for some time when they get the chance, they
think that they feel too tired for the effort which that involves, and
prefer to rest in a comfortable chair or perhaps lying down, their
irritability will often not be lessened but sometimes will even be
heightened. On the other hand, if they get out into the brisk, bracing
cold air of the winter time particularly, they come back with their
irritability thoroughly dissipated as a rule and ready to go on with
other work almost without a sense of weariness. Probably nothing makes
a man say his night prayers more unsatisfactorily and with less
devotion than to sit down in a nice comfortable chair after a rather
heavy evening meal and smoke and read the paper or perhaps a magazine
until he goes to sleep. He wakes up feeling all out of sorts, while if
he played a game of cards with friends he would feel fine at the end
of the evening and be ready to thank the Lord for another day and for
the prospect of a good night's rest for the work ahead.
Above all, people who are living healthy, outdoor lives are much more
prone to take a happy view of life, to see the bright side of things
and to radiate good will and sunshine than those who are overmuch in
the house. The cheerful givers whom the Lord loves come especially
from among these. A great many of the people who want to pour out
their ills perennially, because they like to indulge their self-pity
by rolling the delectable morsels of their sufferings under their
tongues, and who go around seeking consolation and sympathy whenever
they are in even slight trouble are indoor people. They occur
especially among those who spend a good deal of {322} time sitting
down and not exercising their bodies enough. The good old rule _ora et
labora_ is an extremely valuable precept, not only for the next world
but also for this. Pray and labor, but be sure that labor gets a fair
share of the time and be sure that the body has enough exercise to
keep it going and to keep its functions in good condition, otherwise
the prayer will be disturbed and life will be far from happy.
Happiness comes to those who are healthily tired every day. Long ago
Dooley said in one of those wise sayings of his which made even the
_London Times_ declare that the wisest man that was writing English in
our day wrote under the name of Dooley in Chicago, that the one thing
above all that made life worth living was to be tired enough at the
end of every day so that one would sleep well every night. Without
that life is indeed a burden.
The practice of hard work, some of it physical, is a very good rule
for the physical as well as the spiritual life. A hard-working man has
little time to be grouchy and to throw wet blankets over the good that
others are trying to do. He is likely to be a lifter and not a leaner,
a doer and not a talker. Nothing keeps people from finding fault so
well as having so much to do that they can scarcely find the time in
which to do it all. Especially is this important for those who have to
spend a good deal of time in each other's company, and who must learn
to bear with each other's faults and go on with their own work to the
best of their ability. It must not be forgotten that a great many of
the faults of others are to be attributed rather to the state of their
health than to their disposition, and once this is rightly understood
charity will readily help us to gloss them over or forgive them. Any
one who makes his own faults the subject of excuse {323} on the score
of health, when his health is something that by a little care he could
improve, is of course imposing on himself if he does it at all
deliberately, and he is trying to impose on good nature if he thinks
that other people do not appreciate that his ill health is really an
excuse and not a reason for his faults.
In the chapter on Abstinence it is suggested that one of the best
things that men and particularly women could practice to advantage
from the standpoint of religious abstinence would be abstinence from
excessive rest. Rest is one of the most dangerous remedies that we
have, nearly as dangerous as opium and with a definite tendency for a
habit to be acquired by the system for it whenever it is indulged in
to excess, exactly as is true of the opiates. If mortification of the
spirit were to be practiced by abstinence from overrest and by a
definite amount of exercise every day it would be an excellent thing
for the religious as well as the physical life. This is one of the
most frequent advices of those interested in the spiritual life as
well as the bodily health for many generations. What people need is to
keep busy. This is good for both their minds and their bodies. It
requires a great deal of mortification of the inclinations to keep at
work and above all to take exercise voluntarily when one might sit
around and enjoy the delightfully lazy feeling of doing nothing, but
that way lies serious disturbance of health. The men who have been
very hard workers, especially from a sense of duty and not for mere
selfish reasons, taking a great deal of exercise and going to bed so
thoroughly tired every night that they went to sleep as soon as their
head touched the pillow, have been long-lived as a rule, unless they
met with some accident or infection.
{324}
Above all, it is important for any one who wishes to retain his
self-respect and keep from that sluggishness which is so fatal to the
power to pray and to meditate not to permit his abdominal and flank
muscles to become overstretched and to allow fat to accumulate within
the abdomen until it is actually a burden. There is almost no excuse
for any one permitting his waist line to become larger in girth than
his chest, unless of course he happens to have some deformity that
makes exercise very difficult or practically impossible. To keep these
muscles in good condition prevents slouchiness and makes the
individual ever so much more ready for activity of any kind. The only
way that these muscles can be kept in tone to hold in the abdomen
properly and keep the circulation within it in such vigor as will
support the digestive tract so as to permit and encourage its proper
activities is by exercising them. This requires the performance of
certain exercises every day. Stooping, bending, stretching, all these
must be practiced if the muscles are not to be allowed to degenerate.
There is no harder task than to keep up the custom of performing these
exercises regularly a couple of times a day, for though only from five
to ten minutes is needed night and morning to maintain the muscles in
condition or even to restore them when they have once begun to sag,
all sorts of excuses come in to prevent the regular practice of the
exercises, and it is the regularity above all that counts.
A man who keeps these muscles in good shape will be much readier for
every sort of activity than if he allowed them to yield, and one of
the secrets of the army officers' power as the years go on so that,
quite contrary to the usual rule in life it is men well beyond sixty
who make some of the greatest successes as leaders, is because their
{325} regular training and discipline keep them from letting their
muscles lose tone and their powers deteriorate. The setting-up
exercises of the army or navy indulged in for fifteen minutes a
day--and this could be divided into two periods--would keep men in
condition and prove at the same time a very salutary mortification and
above all an exercise in self-control and persistent application to a
good purpose that would constitute a magnificent factor for that
training of the will that is so important for religion.
Nerve irritation is oftener a function of insufficient exercise and
air with overfeeding than of any other factor. This same thing is true
for suspicion and jealousy and envy and other of the supposed inner
emotions of the soul. They will disappear very often before the fresh
air, while they will be fostered by life indoors and by the coddling
of ills by rest and high living generally. The passions, by which a
great many people mean mainly the sexual feelings, though of course
they also include the tendency to overeat and especially to stimulate
one's self to eating in various ways, are all fostered by being much
indoors and not getting enough fresh, outdoor air and particularly
cold air.
There are a great many people who seem to forget that air is
absolutely the most important requisite for life, and that when it is
cold it takes heat away from the animal body and sets all the cell
functions working at their best. Human beings are practically heat
engines, and we keep on manufacturing heat all the time. As our
temperature never rises except when we suffer from fever, some outlet
must be found for this heat, and unless there is exposure to the air
and especially air in motion that will carry heat away from us, the
heat is consumed in {326} various large organs and almost invariably
succeeds in making us quite miserable. It is under these circumstances
of sluggish indoor living particularly that irritability of all kinds
is heightened and that the tendency to lack of self-control is most
manifest. It is a form of intoxication actually that comes over people
and would remind us not a little of the intoxication that follows from
smaller amounts of alcohol with the resultant lack of inhibition.
When people are much out in the air it is surprising what they can
stand in the shape of injury without great suffering. Our young
soldiers learned during the war that their outdoor life in camps and
at the front made the slighter wounds appear almost as nothing to them
and even the severer wounds caused them nothing like the pain which
they had anticipated or which they actually would have caused if the
soldiers continued to be in the same state of mind and body as regards
the reaction to pain which had been true during their civilian days.
It requires much less courage to be heroic when one has been living
the outdoor life and has been hardening muscles by exercise and plain
food and not too much sleep than when one is living the indoor,
relaxed over-rested life. That does not lessen the merit of what they
did, but helps to account for its development in just ordinary mortals
and above all helps to explain why now they modestly prefer not to
talk about it, for to them it seems to have been just all in the day's
work.
Not infrequently oversensitiveness of disposition which resents even
the slightest imputation and which is often prone to translate what
was a mere conventional remark into a fancied insult is due to lack of
sufficient outdoor air to keep the individual in good health. On the
other {327} hand men and women who spend a good deal of time outside
are capable of standing even severe insults without wincing under them
and sometimes this rebounds greatly to the benefit of the cause for
which they are working. Father Lockington has dwelt on this in one of
his chapters rather interestingly.
"Good health helps us to be patient and silent under insult and
wrong, when this makes for duty better done. The souls for whom we
labour are often unreasonable, often ungrateful, often crooked, but
the trained worker never hesitates. Strong and self-contained he
moves serenely on; no display of temper mars his work, no hasty word
is uttered, however great the provocation. Like the missionary
calmly wiping his face, when spat upon in the Japanese street, or
that Little Sister of the Poor, who, struck across the face when
begging food for her old people, calmly answered, 'That is for
myself, and I deserve it; please now give me something for Christ's
poor,' such a worker sees only souls here below, and Christ above,
waiting for them. A healthy body will keep the mind broad and even;
it has no place for brooding suspicion to lurk; it will help the
soul to take a wide view of life and prevent that narrowness of
thought, so fatal to work, to which our life of continual
introspection tends."
A great many of the vicious impulses in connection with suspicion and
jealousy and envy may be traced to a lack of diversion in life. There
are some people who take no pains to organize existence in such a way
that they have definite diversion at certain times. Every human being
ought at some time on every Sunday to decide that on certain days of
the following week, and above all on certain evenings, he will do
things in which he is {328} particularly interested and which he can
look forward to with pleasant anticipation. Those who can should
arrange either to go to the theater, or to a lecture in which they are
interested, or to visit friends whom they care to see, or to go to a
library and look up something that they have been wanting to find out
about; or, if it is pleasant weather, to go for a short excursion or a
boat ride or something of that kind and they should make two or three
appointments with themselves for definite occasions of recreation for
the ensuing week. As a rule all that is necessary for this is to make
up one's mind to do it, though there is a tendency on the part of a
great many people just to let each evening be like every other evening
and because of lack of sufficient interest they lose that variety
which is the spice of life. As a result existence becomes dreadfully
monotonous, and those who live such narrow lives become the subjects
of all sorts of unfortunate suggestions with regard to those around
them.
Over and over again I have found that when women patients particularly
were the subjects of various of these nervous irritabilities so that
they were permitting themselves actually to be led into being deluded
into various suspicions, there was a prompt disappearance or
significant minimization of these thoughts when diversions were
properly introduced into their lives. The founders of religious orders
were very wise in this matter. In all the religious orders the members
are required by rule to spend a certain time in recreation, that is in
conversation and lighter occupation, usually several times every day.
This must be spent in company with the others and the members of the
house are not allowed to absent themselves without good reason. Young
religious sometimes feel like resenting the rule requiring {329} them
to be present day after day at recreation as if it represented a waste
of time, but they learn later on in life how wise it is. The various
feast days of the Church are celebrated in such a way that there is a
definite diversion from the usual routine of life and then there are
special indulgences at table and in the matter of spending time in the
open and receiving visitors and other things of that kind which mean a
very great deal in breaking the monotony of the religious life.
Very often scruples are, as we have pointed out in the chapter on
Nervous Diseases, only a manifestation of a nervous disposition
sometimes on a hereditary, but sometimes on an acquired basis. The
acquired basis is very often a lack of nutrition due to insufficient
food, for people who are underweight are much more subject to dreads
and obsessions of all kinds than are those who are up to weight.
Living on the will, as it is called, when one is underweight and does
not eat very much, certainly not sufficient to supply the energy for
what has to be accomplished, is a fruitful source of irritability of
any and every kind. It keeps people on edge, that is in a condition of
unstable equilibrium, and almost anything that touches them has a
tendency to put them into a state of disequilibrium. Bringing people
up to normal health and especially up to normal weight is often the
best possible means to lessen their tendencies to scruples and to
various other manifestations supposed to be spiritual yet which
represent only conditions and symptoms that are frequently seen in
those who have no religion and no conscientious obligations with
regard to anything.
It is surprising how often a sluggish state of the bowels proves to be
seriously disturbing to the spiritual life. {330} People find it hard
to pray without distraction or to meditate without getting sleepy, and
they are liable to think of themselves as perhaps being the object of
very special attention on the part of certain evil spirits who make it
their business to distract and obtund those who are trying to put
themselves in communication with the Most High, when all that is
really the matter is that they are absorbing certain materials which
ought to be excreted promptly but which are being delayed in their
intestinal tract longer than is good for the individual.
I am not one of those who believe that intestinal auto-toxemia is a
very serious condition which produces dire results, but I know very
well that absorption in any quantity of residual materials from the
intestinal tract that were meant to be excreted will produce langour
and sluggishness. The present fad among certain physicians for
attributing a great many serious symptoms to intestinal
auto-intoxication has no basis in physiological chemistry and
represents only one of those exaggerations of a minor truth for which
medicine is so famous. The idea of self-poisoning, which is all that
auto-intoxication means, is a very old one in medicine and the use of
drastic purgatives such as calomel in large doses and the antimonial
purges and then of blood letting represent the responses to this idea
which doctors made in an older time. We know that they did harm and
those who would exaggerate the meaning of auto-intoxication in our
time are likely to do just as much harm, but there is no doubt at all
that obstipation will make the majority of human beings uncomfortable
and take away their initiative and keep them from being up to their
best in mental and spiritual matters. To use some of the greatly
advertised remedies or modes of treatment which are suggested for
{331} it, however, would probably do more harm than good. There are a
number of simple sensible methods of treatment by which the affection
may be overcome. Above all the formation of good habits, of taking an
abundance of water, of eating coarse food, the peelings of baked
potatoes and the parings of baked apples and an occasional orange with
its peel, and using marmalade rather freely as well as eating whole
wheat bread will gradually overcome the condition. The important thing
is not to mistake the merely physical affection for a spiritual
disturbance.
It requires persistence to form good habits and it is ever so much
easier just to take something that will supposedly do the same good
work "while you sleep" and are not bothered by the exertion of the
will power necessary to form the habits that are required. Many a
disturbance of health is due to sloth and laziness rather than to
ignorance of what ought to be done or to any inherent tendency to ill
in the body. Any number of people blame Providence for ills which they
have brought on themselves by neglect of their own health and the
habits necessary to maintain it.
Nothing so conduces to good health as the regularity of life without
haste and without worry which the rational practice of religion brings
in its train. The attitude of mind that a trusting faith in the
Almighty fosters is particularly likely to prevent the neurotic
symptoms and exaggerations of feelings which are responsible for so
much of the modern suffering of mankind. It makes the real pains and
aches ever so much more bearable and eliminates those which to a great
extent are imaginary. The success of all sorts of curious therapeutic
systems which prove after a time to be utterly without beneficial
{332} effect on the human body shows how much faith in anything may
mean for health and restoration to health, even in the midst of what
is supposed to be rather serious illness, and as men are bound to have
faith in something and a living faith in a Providence that somehow,
even though we may not be able to understand it, cares for men,
drawing good even out of evil, can accomplish an immense amount in
making men less amenable to suffering even in this world. It would be
too bad to reduce religion merely to this status, but this should be
one of its benefits. As the Scriptures said, "For it is not a vain
thing for you because it is your life, and through this thing you
shall prolong your days in the land."
{333}
INDEX
{334}
{335}
INDEX
Abernethy, 169
Abortion, 316
Abstinence from exercise, 114
Accommodation of the eye, 204
Advent, 111
AEschylus, 255
Agnosticism, 30
Aid, mutual, 106
Alcohol, 207
Altruism, 82
Ampere, 15, 18, 38
Aneurysm, 173
Anthony, St., 298
Antonius, St., 130
Apoplexy, 110
Aristotle, 147
Arkwright, 122
Armageddon, 187
Arnold, Matthew, 3, 4, 165
Arteriosclerosis, 112
Asceticism, 151, 155, 198
"Assent, Grammar of", 3
Atrabilious, 320
Atterbury, Bishop, 199
Augustine, St., 2, 11
Austerity, 165
Auto-intoxication, 330
Auto-toxemia, 330
Avalanche, Law of, 87, 273
B
Bacchus, 138, 173
Bacon, Francis, 11, 28, 163
Barrett, 214, 224
Bartholomew, 215
Belief in immortality, 291
Bell, Alexander Graham, 78
Benedict, St., 35, 36
Benedictines, longevity, 300
Bernard, Claude, 25
Bernheim, 246
Biliousness, 320
Blind children, 188
"Blue devils", 47, 93, 319
"Blues", 319
Boissarie, Doctor, 252
Bone setter, 248
Botticelli, 19
Boulger, Professor George, 27
Brethren of the Common Life, 276
Breuil, Abbe, 39
Brewster, 15
Bright's disease, 110, 115
Browne, Sir Thomas, 84
Buchner, 28
Burdett, 89, 90
Burke, Thomas, 6
Byron, Lord, 199
C
Calderon, 255
Camoens, 259
Campbell, Lord, 152
Cancer, 260
Card playing, 101
Carnival, 128
Carroll, 172, 264
Castelnau, General de, 41
Catherine, St., of Siena, 96, 227
Cave man, 39, 69
{336}
Cervantes, 269
Charity, law of, 106
Chest, girth, 324
Chevreul, 280
Chicago, 49
Christ, Imitation of, 276
Christianity, pillars of, 7
Chrystal, Professor George, 20
Cicero, 2, 261
Cid, 126
Cimabue, 136
Circe, 170
"Civilization and Health", 301
Clarke, 197
Coddling, 325
Code, Hebrew Health, 309
Cohan, George M., 252
Cold, 244
Colton, 263
Columbus hospitals, 49
Comfort, increase of, 265
Conklin, Professor, 164
Contagion, 313
Corrigan, 25
Coulomb, 16
Culture Sciences, Glenmore School of the, 262
D
Damien, Father, 71
Dancing, 138
Dante, 100, 126, 269, 276, 292
Davidson, Thomas, 262
Davy, Sir Humphry, 12, 16
Dearness of fellow mortals, 95
Decadence, 200
Degenerate, 199
Degeneration, 145
Delusions, 206;
of grandeur, 211;
of persecution, 213
Denver, 49
Descartes, 19
Dexter, Professor Edmund T., 282
Diabetes, 115, 312
Dionysus, 138
Discomfort, neurotic, 273
Disease, conveyance of, 314
Disease,
mental, 142;
statistics, 187;
venereal, 184
Dissipation, barbaric, 136
Diversion of mind, 140
Dowie, 250
Dramatics, 139
Dreads, 57;
in life, 249;
of punishment, 289
Drug addictions, 178
E
Edmund of Canterbury, 154
Electricity, delusions, 206
Elijah, 250
Elizabeth, St., of Hungary, 97
Elsmere, Robert, 6
Ember days, 115
"Energies of Men", 175
Environment, 164
Epileptics, 188
Erethism, sexual, 99, 203
Esculapius, 309
Euripides, 148
Exercise, 114
Exercises, setting up, 325
Existence, strenuous, 279;
struggle for, 105
Exorcism, 214
Expectancy of life, 295
F
Faraday, 15
Fashion, 143, 201
Fasting and sex impulses, 118
Faust, 65, 255
Fayolle, General, 43
Fear thoughts, 234, 250
Ferdinand, St., 96
First Cause, Divine, 29
Fittest, survival of the, 108
Foch, Marshal, 53
Foerster, 155, 190, 197, 231
_Folie du doute_, 220
Forbes, 16
Francis, St., of Assisi, 161
Frankfort on Main, 317
{337}
Freud, 231
Freudianism, 232
Frightfulness, 207
Furth, 318
G
Galvani, 15, 38
Ghetto, 315, 317
Gladstone, 121, 141, 163, 258
Goethe, 151
Goldsmith, 199
Goodell, President, 36
Gouraud, General, 42
Graham, 15
Graves, Robert, 25
Greatrakes, 250
Grenfell, Doctor Wilfred, 73
Grouch, 182
Guilds, 137
H
Habit, 179
Haelo, 3
Haelu, 3
Haig, 54
Haleness, 3
Hamilton, 15
Hamlet, 255, 289
Hands in contagion, 313
Happiness, formula of, 63
Harrison, Frederic, 29, 32
Hazard, moral, 295
Healing, metaphysical, 250
Heart disease, 110;
impulses, 98
Hebrew Sanitary Code, 307
Henry VIII, 153
Heredity, 164;
and longevity, 295
Herodotus, 126
Herschel, 15
Hobby, 101, 140
Holidays,
bank, 124;
in the year, 122
_et seq._
Holiness, 3
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 24, 294
Homer, 170, 275
Homicide, increase in, 290
Horace, 52, 64
Hospitality, 94
Hospitals, 49
Hughes, Justice, 160
Human engines, 325
Humility, 212
Hungry, feed the, 86
Hutchinson, Woods, 301, 302
Huxley, 49, 82, 166
"Hygiene, Divine", 307
Hygiene and Sanitation, 270
Hypnotism, 246
Hyslop, Doctor Thomas, 209
Hysteria, 225;
major, 241
I
Ignatius Loyola, 36
Imbeciles, 188
Imitation of Christ, 275
Immortality, 279;
belief in, 291
_Imponderabilia_, 233
Impurity, 184
Infinite, 44
Influenza, 157, 313
Ingersoll lecture, 70
Insane, increase in, 209
Insanity,
alcoholic, 211;
delusions, 206;
limitations of, 213;
religious, 208
Instinct, religious, 8
Instincts of helpfulness, 105
Irritability
of life, 320;
of temper, 117;
of tissues, 117
J
Jacopone da Todi, 165
James, Professor William, 34, 67, 151, 162, 176, 262, 269
Jesuits, General of the, 267
Jewish
Ghetto, 317;
longevity, 318;
resistance to disease, 315
Job, 255
Joshua, 311
Joy, 139
K
Keats, 199
Kelvin, Lord, 11, 12, 15, 16, 20
{338}
Kempis, Thomas a, 1, 276
Kennan, George, 285
Kentucky, mountains of, 94
Kepler, 13
_Kosher_, 312
L
Lactantius, 2
Laennec, 25, 38
Laplace, 19
Laughter and sanity, 230
"Layman, The Creed of a", 29
Lecky, 85
Legoit, 318
Leisure, 133
Lent, 111
Leo XIII, 280
Leverrier, 37
Leviticus, 306
Liberty, 132
License, 132
Liebault, 246
Liebig, 12
Life,
factors in, 238;
prolongation of, 298;
The Mystery of, 99
Linnaeus, 12
Lister, Lord, 25
Living on the will, 329
Lockington, Rev. William J., 319, 327
London, 316
Longevity, 295;
and monasticism, 299;
Jewish, 318;
of Benedictines, 300;
of professions, 297;
of Trappists, 299;
religious, 297;
trades, 297
Louis, St., 96
Lourdes, 251
Lowell, James Russell, 5, 281
Loyola, Ignatius, 36
Lubricity, goddess of, 170
Lumbago, 246
Luther, 88
Luxury, 197
M
Mabie, Hamilton, 276
Macaulay, 121
Macaulay, Jerry, 179
Magician, The Wonder Working, 255
Magna Charta, 126
Maistre, Joseph de, 157
Malingerers, 240
Manchester slums, 314
Mania doubting, 223
Manning, Cardinal, 303
Margaret, St., of Scotland, 97
Marne, first battle of the, 54
Marriage, 196
Martineau, Jacques, 2
Matthew, Father, 175
Maud, Queen, 97
Maxwell, Clerk, 12, 15
Meat eating, 112
Meditation, 43
Mephistopheles, 65
Mercier, Cardinal, 52
Mercy,
corporal works of, 88;
works of, 87
Mesmer, 250
Michelangelo, 38, 157
Microbes, ultramicroscopic, 157
Milton, 84, 259
Mind,
diseases of the, 142;
diversion of the, 140;
"Unsoundness", 208
"Miracle Man", 252
Misophobia, 221
Mitchell, Dr. John K., 218
Mitchell, S. Weir, 203
Moderation, 296
Molokai, 71
Moly, 170
More, Sir Thomas, 147, 152, 225
Morgagni, 38
Morley, John, 163, 258
Mortification, 325
Mosaic Code, 307
Moses, 310
Mother,
foreign born, 315;
native born, 315
Mueller, Johannes, 25
Mulry, Thomas, 103
Muensterberg, Professor Hugo, 209
Mutiny, Indian, 266
{339}
N
Napoleon, 28
Nature, human, 296
Neptune, 37
Nerve irritation, 325
Nerves, 241
Nervous, breakdown, 235;
diseases of Jews, 218
Nervousness, 229
"Nervousness, Mastery of", 172, 264
Netherlands, 276
Neurotic tendencies, 217
Newman, Cardinal, 3, 4, 28, 303
Newspapers, 136
Newton, Sir Isaac, 13, 28
New York, 49
Nibelungen, 126
Nietzsche, 56, 150
O
Obermaier, Father, 39
Obesity, 312
Obsessions, 222
Oersted, 15, 16, 18
O'Grady, Standish, 125
Ohm, 15, 20
Olympian religion, 161
_Ora et labora_, 35, 322
O'Reilly, John Boyle, 43, 202
Osler, Professor, 70
Overeating, 110
Overindulgence, 117
Oversensitiveness, 326
Overwork, 172
Owen, Sir Richard, 23
Oxygenation of tissues, 320
Ozanam, 18, 19, 38, 100
P
Paget, Sir James, 24
Paralysis,
general, of the insane, 210;
infantile, 157
Park, public, 129
Pascal, 19
Pasteur. 12, 26, 37
Patience, 270
Pan, General, 41
Paul of Aegina, 215
Pearson, Doctor Karl, 77
Pellico, Silvio, 23
Periclean period, 125
Petain, Marshal, 42, 54
Pity, 279
Plato, 148, 236
Poggendorf, 39
Poor in spirit, 161
Poor, Little Sisters of the, 327
Pope, 199
Porritt, Dr., 316
Poverty, voluntary, 159
Practitioners, irregular, 249
Predispositions toward irrationality, 213
Prison existence, 92
Prometheus, 255
Prudery, 185
Prussia, 318
Psychology of humanity, 149
Psychoneuroses, 68, 225, 242, 248
Psychotherapy, 219
Ptah Hotep, 168
Pythagoras, 148
Q
Quintilian, 196
R
Ramon y Cajal, 273
Ranke, 280
Rattray, Doctor Alexander, 307
Ray, John, 28
Rayleigh, Lord, 16
Reading, 136, 202
Reasonableness, 149
Recreation, 328
_Relegere_, 2
_Religare_, 2
_Religio_, 2
_Religio Medici_, 84
Religion
and health, 316;
and science, 9;
and suicide, 286;
foundations of, 7;
requiem of, 6
{340}
Repression, sexual, 203
Rest,
dangerous, 323;
sons of, 182
Reticence, 195;
religious, 196
Rich, Mabel, 154
Richardson, Sir Benjamin Ward, 314, 317
Roberts, Lord, 70, 171
Romance of the Rose, 257
Romanes, Professor George, 27
Rowan, 15
Ruskin, 86, 99
S
Sabbath, 128
Saint Anthony, 298
Saint Antoninus, 130
Saint Augustine, 2, 11
Saint Benedict, 35, 36
Saint Bon, 42
Saint Catherine of Siena, 96, 227
Saint Edmund of Canterbury, 154
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, 97
Saint Francis of Assisi, 161
Saint Ignatius Loyola, 36
Saint Louis, 96
Saint Margaret of Scotland, 97
Saint Theresa, 40, 53, 189, 227, 228
Saint Vincent de Paul, 18, 81, 100
Sanity and laughter, 230
Schlatter, 250
Schurman, President, 6, 31, 82
Sciatica, 245
Science and religion, 9
"Scientists, Religious Beliefs of'", 15
Scruples, 220
Secchi, 39
Seeing life, 189
Seeley, Professor A. D., 238
Self-consciousness, 274
Self-mastery, 232
Self-pity, 56
Self-poisoning, 330
Seneca, 148
Senility, 173
Sensuality, 199
Service, social, 84
Settlement work, 18, 97
Sex
education, 192;
hygiene, 190;
irregularities, 189;
problem, 198
Sexuality, 98
Sexual repression, 203
Shakespeare, 199, 255, 275, 289
Shame, 190
Shows, 134
Silence, 43;
conspiracy of, 185;
policy of, 190
"Silly seventies", 107
Sins, seven deadly, 181
Sistine Chapel, 158
Slave labor, 124
Sleep, 113
Smith, Doctor Goldwin, 259, 264
Socrates, 148
Standard Oil Company, 107
Stokes, 15
Stores,
drug, 130;
tobacco, 130
Suffering
and Providence, 254;
mystery of, 255
Sugar, consumption of, 180
Suggestion, 191
Suicide
and religion, 286;
and sunlight, 282;
and war, 285;
in December, 281;
frequency, 278;
in Ireland, 287;
in June, 280;
in Switzerland, 288;
"The Problem of", 286
Superman, 108, 150
_Superstes_, 5
Swinburne, 227
Sybarite, 267
Sympathy, 56
T
Tabrum, 16
_Taedium, vitae_, 66
Tait, Professor P. G., 14
Talbot, 15
Talmudic writings, 314
Tangi, 222
Taylor, Professor John W., 26
Temptation, 189
Temptations, sexual, 193
Theresa, St., 40, 53, 189, 227, 228
{341}
Thistleton-Dyer, Sir W., 82
Thoreau, 127
Thucydides, 163, 258
Tracadie, 71
Trappist longevity, 299
Tuberculosis, 312
U
Ulysses, 170
Undereating, 110
Underwork, 172
V
Vacation, yearly, 120
Vaughan, Cardinal, 40
Venus, 173
Verdun, 42
Vesalius, 37
Vincent de Paul, St., 18, 81, 100
Vinci, Leonardo da, 39
Virtue, 178
Virtues, cardinal, 177
Volta, 15, 21, 38
Von Moltke, 171
Vulcan, 173
W
Waist line, 324
Wallace, Alfred Russel, 214, 224
War and suicide, 285
"War, Moral Equivalent of", 68
War neuroses, 242
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 6
Watts, 122
Weight, normal, 329
Wells, H. G., 69, 266
White, Andrew D., 290
Whittaker, Professor, 62
Whittington, Dick, 97
Wilde, Oscar, 64
Wilks, Sir Samuel, 24
Will, training of the, 325
Windle, Sir Bertram, 67
Wood, Sir Evelyn, 70, 171
Woodhead, Professor Sims, 25
Work for idle hands, 143
Workers, hard, 323
World, flesh and devil, 201
World invisible, 233
Worry not work, 296
Z
Zone, temperate, and suicide, 283
------------------------------
By the Author of "RELIGION and HEALTH"
HEALTH THROUGH WILL POWER
By JAMES J. WALSH, M. D.
_Medical Director of Fordham University School of Sociology_
12mo. Cloth. 288 pages.
-----
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