As a matter of fact, the anticipation of pain due to the dread of it predisposes the part to be much more sensitive than it was before. We can all of us readily make experiments which show this very clearly. Ordinarily we have a stream of sensations flowing up from the surface of the body to the brain, consequent upon the fact that the skin surface is touched by garments over most of the body, and that our nerves of touch respond to their usually rather rough surface. We have learned to pay no attention to these because we have grown accustomed to them, though any one who thinks that they are negligible should witness the writhings of a poor Indian under the stress [{127}] of being civilized when he is required to wear a starched shirt for the first time. Ordinarily Indians have learned to suppress their feelings, but the shirt with its myriad points of contact, all of them starchily scraping, usually proves too much for his equanimity, and he wiggles and twists to such an extent as shows very clearly that he is extremely uncomfortable. Most people have something of the same feeling the first day that they change into woolen underclothes after they have been wearing cotton for months, and the sensation is by no means easy to bear with equanimity.
Ordinarily from custom and habit in the suppression of feelings we notice none of these contact sensations with their almost inevitable itchy and ticklish feelings, though they are constantly there, but we can reveal them to ourselves by thinking definitely about any part of the body. Such concentration of attention at once brings that part of the body above the threshold of consciousness, and we have distinct feelings there that we did not notice before. If for instance we think about the big toe on the left foot, immediately our attention is turned to it and we note sensations in it that were quite unnoticed before. We can feel the stocking touching any part of it [{128}] that we think of. Not only that, but if we concentrate attention on a part most uncomfortable sensations develop. If anything calls our attention even to the middle of our backs, we find at once that there is a distinct sensation there, and this may become so insistent as to demand relief.
It is well understood now what happens in these cases. As we have said, the attention given to a part leads to a widening of the minute blood vessels located there so that the nerve endings to the part are supplied with more blood and therefore become more sensitive. We know from experience in cold windy weather that when the cheek is hyperaemic the drawing of a leaf or even of a piece of paper across it may produce a very acute painful sensation. Hyperaemia always makes parts of the body much more sensitive than before. Attention has just this effect over all the surface of the body, as we can demonstrate to ourselves. We can actually, though only gradually, make our feet warm by thinking about them, because the active attention to them sends more blood to them. The dread of pain then, by concentrating attention on the part beforehand, actually increases the pain that has to be suffered and makes the subject [{129}] ever so much more sensitive. Sensitiveness is of course dependent on other factors, as for instance lack of outdoor air and of oxygenization, which actually seems to hypersensitize people so that even very slight pain becomes extremely difficult to bear, but the question of attention, which is after all almost entirely a voluntary matter, has more to do with making pain harder to bear than anything else.
In the preanaesthetic days, men have been known to sit and watch calmly an amputation of one of their limbs without wincing and apparently without undergoing very much pain. Many are the incidents in history of a favorite general who showed his men how to bear pain by calmly smoking a cigar while a surgeon amputated an arm or a leg or performed some other rather important surgery. Pain is after all like the sense of danger and may be suppressed practically to as great a degree. Once during the present war, when long columns of soldiers going to the front had to pass by the open market place of a town that was being shelled by the Germans, there was danger of the troops losing something of their morale at this point and of confusion ensuing. It would have been disturbing both to discipline and the [{130}] ordered movement of the troops to divert them by narrower streets, and the shells, though dangerous, were not falling frequently and not working serious havoc. Every one knew, however, that the German gunners had the range, and a shell might land square in the market place at any time; thus there was a feeling of uneasiness and a tendency to nervous lack of self-control, with the inevitable confusion of movement afterwards. One of the French generals ordered an armchair to be brought out of one of the houses near by, took a position in the center of the square, with a little wand in his hand, and calmly joked with the soldiers as they went by about the temperature of the day mentioning occasionally something about a shell that happened to strike not far away. According to the story he was an immense man weighing nearly three hundred pounds, and so provided a very good-sized target for shells, but he was never touched and, almost needless to say, the line of soldiers never wavered while their general sat there joking at the danger.
It is sometimes thought that men in the older, less refined times could stand pain and suffering generally much better than our generation which is supposed to have [{131}] degenerated in that respect. We have found, however, during the war that the soldiers who could stand supreme suffering the best were very often those who came from better-to-do families, who had been subjected to the most highly refining influences of civilization, but also to that discipline of the repression of the emotions which is recognized as an important phase of civilization. Strange as it may seem, the city boys stood the hardships and the trials of trench life better than the country boys and not only withstood the physical trials but were calmer under fire and ever so much less complaining under injury. After all it is what might be expected, once serious thought is given to the subject, and yet somehow it comes as a surprise, as if the country boy ought to be less sensitive,—as indeed he probably is; but he lacks that training in self-control which enables the city boy to stand suffering.
All our feeling that human nature has degenerated in physical constitution has been completely contradicted by the reaction of our young soldiers to camp and trench life. They have gone back to the lack of comforts and conveniences of the pioneer days and have had to submit to the outdoor life and the [{132}] hardships that their pioneer grandfathers went through and have not failed under them. The boys have come out of it all demonstrating not only that their courage was capable of supporting them, but with their physical being bettered by the conditions and their power to stand suffering revealed in a way that would scarcely have been believed possible beforehand.
CHAPTER IX
THE WILL AND AIR AND EXERCISE
| "And wishes fall out as they are willed." |
| Pericles |
Very probably the most important function of the will in its relation to health is that which concerns its power to control the habits of mankind as regards air and exercise. It is surprising to what an extent people neglect both of these essentials of healthy living in the midst of our modern sophisticated life, unless the will power is consciously used for the purpose of forming and then maintaining habits with regard to these requisites for health. It is a very fortunate thing that instinct urges the child, particularly the infant, to almost constant movement during its waking hours. Children that are healthy and that are growing rapidly, boys somewhat more than girls, are so constantly in movement that one would almost think that they must be on springs. Whenever they discover that they can make a [{134}] new movement, they proceed to make it over and over again until they can do it with facility. There is no lolling around for them; as soon as they wake, they want to be up and doing, no matter what the habits of the household may be. They are constantly on the move. We know that this is absolutely essential for growth as well as for the proper training of their muscles, but it is a very fortunate thing that children do it for themselves, for if their mothers were compelled to train them, the task would be indeed difficult. All mother has to do is to control them to some extent and keep them from venturing too far, lest they should hurt themselves.