The fact that thought may affect the growth and functions of the body is coming to be regarded as a possibility by even the most conservative and material of Scientists. The more advanced and speculative members of the medical profession have experimented along that line for a number of years with very interesting results.

In speaking of the effect of thought on the body I am not exploiting Christian Science, faith cure, or anything of that kind; but am merely giving my individual opinion, which is based on a rather wide experience as a general practitioner of medicine.

In order to understand how a thought can influence the physical organs, it is necessary to have some conception of what is called the sub-conscious mind, which is that part of the mentality which carries on such involuntary actions as the circulation of the blood, the digestion of the food, etc. If these obscure functions were dependent upon the exercise of the conscious will, the very necessity of drawing the breath in and out several times a minute during one's lifetime would be such a stupendous effort as to appall the bravest and most energetic of creatures. But these matters have all been simplified by a beneficent Creator through the action of the sub-conscious mind. This mind, while distinct from the thought or intellectual faculties, may, however, be affected by them, and that sympathetic relationship is the foundation of all the phenomena of the faith curist and the mental healer.

Though these effects are generally unconscious on the part of the subject, there is no reason why this should be necessarily so; and a few simple experiments will convince almost any one that the mind may have a conscious effect on the body. One of the simplest experiments, though one which is of no use in a practical way, is to fix the mind intently on a certain part of the skin, say the inside of the wrist. If the mind is not allowed to waver from the point, in a few minutes the surface of the wrist will be suffused by a warm glow and an itching, burning sensation will appear. One of the most general effects of this concentration of thought on some part of the body is the restlessness which ensues, and the consequent difficulty of holding the part still for any length of time. It is, therefore, easy to understand how the constant dwelling of the mind upon some slight or imaginary ill may aggravate the condition if existent, or even cause it to appear if imaginary.

A curious case of this kind came under my observation not long ago. A young woman patient of mine consulted me about a hard lump in her throat, which had been gradually getting larger for some time. She seemed very much troubled about it, and confessed to me that there were few moments in the day in which the fear of its developing into a malignant growth was absent from her mind. On examination I found in her throat the purple congestion which is frequently encountered in connection with cancer. After consulting another physician, I decided that, on account of her fear of cancer, it would be not only useless but cruel to enlighten her as to the real condition of her throat. So we constantly referred to the swelling as a simple and common enlargement of a gland. The patient, thus re-assured, ceased thinking about her throat, and after a few weeks the swelling actually began to diminish in size, and at last completely disappeared. Hers was doubtless an exceptional case, but it goes to show the influence of the mind on the body.

There is an old superstition, which doubtless originated among people who understood the principles of mental therapeutics, that if a child of stunted growth is placed beside a young sapling and a peg driven into the sapling on a level with the top of the child's head, as the young tree grows and the distance between the ground and the peg increases, the child also will begin to grow. If the child really were to become interested in the procedure and should earnestly watch the growth of the sapling, I can understand how such attention on its part might impress its sub-conscious mind with the idea of growth so strongly that its body would respond to the impulse and actually begin to grow.

I think that the rapid growth of a child has often been augmented by the constant exclamations of its relatives and friends of "Why, how that child is growing!" Nervous children become more nervous when their attention is called to their condition by doctors' consultations with anxious parents in their presence, while the little sufferers from St. Vitus' dance or chorea become much worse on seeing that their antics attract the pitying attention of their elders. Most doctors have found that a child whose parents are terrified when a case of measles or scarlet fever breaks out in the neighborhood is much more apt to contract the disease than is the little ragamuffin who comes and goes where he pleases without thought or fear of measles.

Every physician will remember the great number of dysenteric and diarrheal cases he was called upon to treat during the cholera scare a few years ago. At that time there were about three times as many cases of that kind as are usual during the summer months, and most of them were undoubtedly caused by fear alone.

A whole volume might be written on the subject of the paralyzing and ruinous effect of fear. I have known many middle-aged women in whose family histories there was not a trace of mental weakness, who have fretted themselves into a state bordering on insanity through the very fear of becoming insane. Another dread which often attacks women when they approach forty years of age is that of abdominal tumors, and I believe that such a morbid condition of the mind has often been the direct cause of a morbid growth in the body.

On the other hand, there have been many cases in which tumors have actually existed, and the women suffering from them have refused operation and practically ignored their existence, with the result that after a few months the neglected growths have begun to decrease in size and finally disappeared altogether. I am not arguing against operation, by any means, but am stating these instances in support of the contention that the body is powerfully affected by the mind. This subject of thought affecting morbid growths of the body has lately received some attention from the medical scientists of England.

The cases of imaginary heart disease are innumerable. Many women whose hearts are perfectly sound become possessed with the fixed idea that they are victims of heart disease, and the strangest part of it is that they exhibit many of the minor symptoms of the real affection. This notion sometimes becomes a monomania, and a woman suffering from nothing more serious than indigestion will go into a sinking spell and summon a physician, imagining herself at the point of death. To tell such a woman that her pulse is full and regular and her attack of heart failure a figment of the imagination would be quite useless, for she would not believe it. Hypochondria is a complaint which should receive very much more attention than it does at the hands of medical practitioners, and the wisdom of encouraging its victims in their delusions is a nice question of ethics and expediency.

It is very amusing to an old practitioner to receive the confidence of young medical students who fancy they have discovered in themselves symptoms of obscure and terrible diseases which they are studying. This experience is universal among medical men, and has given rise to many practical jokes. A well-known medical scientist is quoted as saying that every first year's student is suffering in silent agony from four diseases, one of which is heart disease and another cancer of the parotid, both diseases, of course, being purely imaginary.

If people, especially women, would realize the absolute uselessness of worrying over either real or fancied complaints, the general health and happiness of the human race would be very much improved. I have known nursing mothers to worry so persistently over crying babies that the poor little mortals were very nearly poisoned through drawing in the impulses of fear and nervousness with every drop of the mother's milk. If those over-anxious mothers could only understand that crying is one of nature's ways of expanding the infant's lungs, their children would stand a much better chance of becoming healthy men and women.

Nothing so enervates and demoralizes the whole nature as fear. In one form or another it is responsible for nearly all the evil which curses the world.

T. W. Topham, M. D.
In the Kansas City (Mo.) Star.

The attempt to punish Christian Science healers for plying their vocation in New York will probably come to nothing. If people are determined to have this sort of treatment what has the state to do with it? And if it should become the fashion to imprison practitioners because of the death of their patients, all regular school physicians would be in jail and there would be nobody to practise medicine.—Topeka (Kan.) Daily Capital.