Page:Medicine and the church; being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick (IA medicinechurchbe00rhodiala).pdf/189

 suggest disease anywhere. A rather careful diet would do him no harm. If it did not do any good, it would be easy enough to prescribe a tonic, but I did not think it necessary. I never expected to see him again. Five months later, however, he called and explained with much gravity that he had come to thank me for 'curing his heart.' I then remembered the case, and was fairly staggered. 'But bless my soul,' I said rather brusquely, 'there never was anything the matter with your heart.' 'No,' he replied, this time with a quiet smile, 'I know there wasn't. All I can say is that from the time you told me it was all right, the pain disappeared, and I have never had any return of it. But, look here, when it was there, the pain was real.'

I have no doubt it was. To label all such cases as 'hysterical,' 'neurotic,' and so on (in the ordinary connotation of these terms) is utterly unscientific. This young fellow was a sensible, cheerful, rather unimaginative youth without a trace of neurasthenia about him. Yet, by coming to believe that his heart was diseased, he had quite unconsciously so excited the higher centres that the vagus nerve returned exactly the impressions to the brain which would be conveyed by various morbid organic conditions.