HOME TREATMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 114, 17 May 1933, Page 13

HOME TREATMENT.

LOVE AND ILLNESS. (By PERITUS.) In all eerioustiess love must be considered as a tonic remedy in sickness. Everyone must have observed the improvement in appearance and health in those of either sex when sincerely in love (not, of course, the unrequited), and every doctor knows how rapid is the recovery of men and women who have the will to live compared with those who are simply resigned. The wounded man in war time who fell in love with his nureo had a far better chance of survival than others. The fussy affection of wives and parents has not the same restorative effect, and often retards recovery by the show of deep sympathy which suggests the fatal termination of the illness to the afflicted.

Over-attention is as annoying as neglect, and sometimes as harmful. Eeal love is not often required to exprese itself in words, and the effect on an engaged man when ill of a visit by his fiancee, even if she is ordered to keep silent, ie none the less tonic and reviving. In an old copy of "Punch" a young girl on the DoverCalais steamer, travelling on her honeymoon, says to her newly-made husband, "Oh, kies me, Freddy—l'm going to be

sick." Faith in love will not prevail to that extent, but the mere presence of a loved ono will soothe and comfort in woree straits. The many men who died in the war and were found to have photographs of £irle in their posseseion did nt carry them to refresh the memory, for a loved face can bo visualised at any time; the photograph was a, talisman, a mascot, a reminder of protecting and healing love, which gave a ghostly, shadowy comfort when the living person could not bo present. I am not advocating the falling in love of nureea and patients as a routine- health measure, and I would not increase the number of visitors to the hospital, but it would bo for the general benefit of the sick if they were free to select their visitors and all others were excluded. If I were superintendent I would distribute postcards to the bedridden and permit them to address the cards to euggested visitors, and make those cards tickets of entrance to the hospital wards. In many cases love, would do the rest.