Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/70

64 must still depend on its own resources in a successful fight against the marauders.

Most of the infectious diseases are of short duration, the body triumphing or failing in its fight in from one to five or six weeks; yet some such fights are long drawn out, and, as in tuberculosis, may cover many years, the disease—the fight—varying in success with the resources of the body and with the amount of drain of bodily energy in other directions. Whether brief or long drawn out, whether acute or chronic, the bodily antagonists often leave scars in the shape of damaged organs—lasting ills which serve to render the body less perfect in its working than before, and also leave their impress on the higher consciousness in feelings of weakness and discomfort.

Besides the bacteria and their poisonous products, other things produce disease more or less insidiously. While the body naturally rids itself through certain organs of the waste matter—the ashes and smoke of its daily activities, continued excesses in eating or drinking throw extra work upon those organs, which in time wear out under added burdens. Exhausting work, excesses of heat or cold, and other unusual conditions also bring about reaction of the inner bodily consciousness to adjust the body to its surroundings. The body makes the best of a bad matter and does its utmost to bring itself into harmony with its outer conditions.

Disease is, then, a life-saving effort of the body, directed by its inner consciousness, in ridding itself of harmful substances within, or of compensating for injured or overworked organs. It is the next best thing to health in that it is nature's way of attempting to bring the body back to that harmonious working of all parts which we call health, and often also of producing protecting substances which prevent future injury from the same source.

While the treatment rendered by the earliest healer, the medicine man, must seem to us absurd, so far as any direct alleviation of suffering is concerned, we can not but guess that the hope which his presence and his, to us, useless efforts inspired in the sufferer, helped not a little to stimulate, through the mind, the failing bodily forces. Mind and body are so intimately related that what affects the one affects the other, and throughout the history of the treatment of disease mental influence has always been used directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, to aid in restoring the body to its state of health.

The higher conscious mind is intimately a part of, or a manifestation of, the body, and is affected by bodily conditions of well or ill being. While it can take little part in directing the defense against foes which have gained an entrance to the body, the mental conditions—the emotions of hope or discouragement—indirectly support or depress the whole of the bodily fighting machinery, for the organ through which