Physical Manifestations
It can not be too much emphasized that mental perturbation affects the body in many ways. Shame fills our cheeks with blood. Fear drives the blood away. Excitement quickens the heart-beat. Grief brings tears, the reaction of glands about the eyes, and sighs, the disturbances of regular breathing. A great shock to the mind may cause fainting, the rush of blood from the head into the abdomen. Worry will interfere with digestion and sleep. The X-ray has detected the arrest of the peristaltic movement of the stomach and intestines because of a strong emotion. Some peculiarly constituted people, who take their work and obligations with a kind of seriousness that amounts almost to fear, can not eat anything of consequence until their day’s work is ended. The digestive processes seem to be at a standstill until then. A curious fact is that strong emotion may lead to a great increase in the sugar in the blood, sometimes enough to cause its appearance in the urine as though the person had diabetes. One man expresses this by saying, “bitterness of soul banishes sweetness even from the body.”
The Demands on the Mind
It is doubtless on account of such influences of the mind on the body that some persons who have attempted to improve their health by what they call “thoroughly masticating” their food—but who have interpreted this phrase as having a purely mechanical meaning—have wondered why they were not benefited when they forcibly held their food in their mouths until they performed a certain number of chews, while in fact they were making a bore of eating and were forgetting to taste and enjoy. The mind and the emotions refuse to be ignored in this way, and exact due penalty from the body when they are not satisfied. To attain the desired results from any hygienic measure, it is apparently necessary, in some degree at least, to satisfy the mind along with the body.
Hypochondriacs
There is in fact a danger to which some people are especially subject—the danger of becoming hypochondriacs from paying too much attention to physical hygiene. Such a person becomes fearful lest he is not doing exactly the right thing. He looks suspiciously at every article of food and fears that it will disagree. He fears that he has strained his heart; he worries over the loss of an hour’s sleep; he chafes because his employer has not given him a vacation at the right time or of the right length. The hypochondriac thus neutralizes practically all the benefit of other hygienic measures by disregarding this special measure of keeping serene. It might, in many cases, be better to disregard some rules of hygiene than to worry over them.
“Mind-cure”
On this theory the devotees of mind-cure cults have derided every hygienic measure but one—their “mind-cure.” They sometimes succeed in the “real cure of imaginary ailments,” and the “imaginary cure of real ailments.” In the latter case, the mental contentment lasts only until the real ailment becomes too aggressive to be ignored. But it is a great mistake to stake everything on the simple resource of mental equanimity. In some cases it is criminal, as for instance to refuse surgery for cancer, or outdoor living for tuberculosis.
In its proper place, “mind-cure” is an essential part of individual hygiene. In order to get the benefit of the other rules, there must be no worrying or watching of symptoms. After the regimen of exercise, baths, diet, etc., has been selected, it must be followed as a matter of course, with confidence that it will help, and with patience as to the rate of improvement which will follow.
Worry