Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/84

 comfortable, into one beset with all the infirmities of humanity.

So far is this uncontrollable propensity carried, that I believe we are more afflicted by imaginary and preconceived evils, than by those that actually befall us. In so far as we are personally concerned, there are two fixed points between which our anxiety is constantly vibrating, viz., our worldly prosperity and our bodily welfare. When we are in perfect health, how often do we apprehend misfortunes that never happen, reverses of fortunes that never have occurrence, and fret ourselves into an actual fever in consequence. When our worldly affairs are most prosperous, then we grow diffident of our health, and imagine the seeds of the most formidable diseases of the country, sown in our constitution, and these embryo ideal creations we watch with utmost circumspection, till some other, more palpable symptom of some other disease engrosses our attention, to be in its turn displaced by some equally visionary and deceptive.

This is an endemic under which a large proportion of medical students labour, and from long experience, I believe it to be more common amongst new-comers, than at any future period of their career. While a proper degree of precaution is absolutely necessary, too much nursing and anticipation of nature's mysterious laws is often