Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/334

330 years we have had a surfeit of "mental suggestion." Everything from stone-in-the-kidney to bow-legs has been ascribed to mental suggestion, or to something buried in the psyche, and there has been a tendency to encourage a timidity regarding even the thought of disease. This does not make for a brave and virile race. Men who consider themselves physically brave will shiver at the thought of tuberculosis, cancer, or heart disease. It is well to defend ourselves from disease, but not well to fear it. Just as it is well to prepare against a foreign enemy while not fearing to meet him eye to eye. Unfortunately, a considerable proportion of our population is constitutionally pusillanimous with regard to disease. Such people must be safeguarded from undue worry, but we should endeavor to train them to a more courageous attitude towards life and its disease perils. To avoid looking for impairment lest we find it, and at the same time find an opportunity to check the sapping of our physical foundations, is certainly a naive philosophy. Will the "scare" be less when the actual breakdown occurs? It will then be a scare without hope as against a scare with hope.

The mind should not be constantly focused upon physical condition, but common-sense measures taken for the correction of the impairments, and then renewed courage and confidence should accompany the knowledge that there is no obscure or unknown or neglected condition at work undermining vitality.

In conclusion, I would urge that physical examinations be conducted along standard lines, as far as possible, in order that the data may be assembled in homogeneous form whenever possible. A complete survey of the body should be made, in order that any abnormality of any region may be recorded for future study, as well as for immediate use in benefiting the individual.

In carrying out the theory that this is a study in optimism, and not in pessimism, permit me to suggest to those who have been well satisfied with existing conditions that there is ground for felicitation in the fact that so many people are below par. If a farmer finds that his ground, good as he thought it was, is capable of producing double the quantity of corn and potatoes, must he then repine and become a pessimist?

I think we should view the matter in this way: Good as we may think we have reason for felicitating ourselves on being, it is a joyful thought that there is so much room for improvement. Strong and self-reliant as we are, as a nation, let us rejoice that what we are does not constitute the pinnacle of strength, and that future development may give us reason for even greater confidence in our power to endure and to prevail.