Part 9

That fear does produce all kinds of disease, has been frequently observed and fully substantiated by the medical profession. Dr. Tuke, in his admirable book, "Influence of the Mind upon the Body," cites well authenticated instances of the following diseases as having been produced by fear or fright: Insanity, idiocy, paralysis of various muscles and organs, profuse perspirations, cholerina, jaundice, turning of the hair gray in a short time, baldness, sudden decay of the teeth, nervous shock followed by fatal anæmia, uterine troubles, malformation of embryo through the mother, and even skin disease--erysipelas, eczema, and impetigo.

We observe in this list that fear not only affects the mind and the nervous and muscular tissues, but the molecular chemical transformations of the organic network, even to the skin, the hair, and the teeth. This might be expected of a passion which disturbs the whole mind, which is represented or externalized in the whole body.

Dr. Tuke reiterates the fact which has been so frequently observed, that epidemics owe a great deal of their rapid extension and violence to the panic of fear which exists among the people. When yellow fever, cholera, smallpox, diphtheria, and other malignant diseases obtain a footing in a community, hundreds and thousands of people fall victims to their own mental conditions, which invite the attack and insure its fatality. When the disease was new and strange, as the yellow fever was to the interior in its visitation in 1878, when the doctors were not familiar with it, the nurses not trained to it, the people, having no confidence in its management, lost hope, their fears became excessive, and consequent mortality was frightful.

How does fear operate upon the body to produce sickness? By paralyzing the nerve centres, especially those of the vasomotor nerves, thus producing not only muscular relaxation, but capillary congestions of all kinds. This condition of the system invites attack, and there is no resilience, or power of resistance. The gates of the citadel have been opened from within, and the enemy may enter at any point.

What determines the specific nature of the disease which attacks a person thus prostrated by fear? Men are frequently prostrated by fear in storms or fire or earthquakes or accidents, and no disease results. It is because they have been not thinking and brooding over any special morbid conditions. But in an epidemic, say of yellow fever, the subjects connected with the disease are strongly pictured on the mind. They are talked of, read about, discussed and written about, until the mind is full of images of fever, delirium, black vomit, jaundice, death, funerals, etc. When such is the case, no microbes or bacteria are needed to produce an outburst of yellow fever. The whole mass of horrors already stamped upon the mind is simply reflected and repeated in the body.

"As a man thinketh, so is he," said Solomon. Thoughts become things, apprehensions take form and substance, and lo! the disease. In the height of his happiness and prosperity, Job permitted himself to brood in silent fear over the possibility of losses and misfortunes, and he had at last to exclaim, "The thing which I greatly feared has come upon me."

Sudden and great fears are not frequent. The fears of every day, the constant apprehensions and anxieties of life, which are really fears of impending evil, prey upon our vitality and lessen our power of resisting, so that any passing disease may be photographed on our minds and seen upon our bodies.

Fear is itself a contagious disease, and is sometimes reflected from one to another mind with great rapidity. It needs no speech or sign to propagate it, for by psychological laws we are just beginning to comprehend, it passes from one to another, from the healthy to the sick, from the doctor or the nurse to the patient, from the mother to the child. Thus malignant influences may be cast around us by even our best friends and would-be helpers, under whose baleful shadow, without our even knowing of its existence, we and our children may sicken and die.

The summer of 1888 was signalized by a moderately severe epidemic of yellow fever at Jacksonville, Florida, and a very extensive epidemic of fear throughout the Southern states. The latter disease was much more contagious than the former, and much less amenable to treatment. This mental malady visited every little town, village, and railway station, and kept the people in a chill of trepidation for many weeks. This causeless and senseless terror originated many precipitate and unjust measures of self-defense. Under its influence public and private rights were disrespected, and the panic greatly intensified. In a few cases the refugee was driven from the door, the hungry left unfed, the sick unattended. There was exhibited on a small scale, here and there, that same principle of terror which is manifested in a burning theatre, on a sinking ship, or in a stampeded army, when brave men suddenly become cowards, and wise men fools, and merciful men brutes.

Truly, something ought to be done for the moral treatment of yellow fever.

I will relate an anecdote of Dr. Samuel Cartwright, of Natchez, Mississippi, which furnishes an ideal type for the mental treatment of yellow fever.

It was away back in the thirties, and yellow fever was prevailing 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.