SCARED INTO ILLNESS.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 72, 22 September 1900, Page 3 (Supplement)

SCARED INTO ILLNESS.

« In "A Journalist's Note-Book," Mr. F. F. Moore tells an amusing and significant story of the influence of imagination upon health. A young civil servant in India, feeling fagged from the excessive heat and from long hour.? of work, consulted the best doctor within reach. The doctor looked him over, sounded his heart and lungs, and then said gravely, "I will write. you to-morrow." The next day the young man received a letter telling him thafc his left lung was gone, and his heart seriously affected, and advised him to lose no time in adjusting his business affairs. "Of course, you may live for weeks," the letter said ; "but you had best not leave important matters undecided !" Naturally the young official was dis mayed by so dark a prediction, nothing less than a death warrant. Within 2A hours he was having difficulty with his respiration, and was seized with an acute pain in 'the region of the heart. He took to his bed with the feeling he should never rise from it. During the night- he became so much worse that his servant sent for the doctor. "What on earth have you been doing to yourselff" demanded the doctor. "There were no indications of this sort when I saw you yesterday." "It is my heart, I suppose," weakly answered the patient. "Your heart!" repeated the doctor. "Your heart was all right yesterday " "My lungs, then." *' "What is the matter with you, man? You do not seem, to have been drinking." "Your letter," gasped the patient ; "you said I had only a few weeks to live." "Are ,you crazy?" said the doctor. "I wrote you to take a few weeks' vacation in the hills, and you would be all right." For reply the patient drew the letter from under the bedclothes, and gave it to the doctor. "Heavens!" cried that gentleman, as he glanced at it. '"This was meant for another man. My assistant displaced the letters." The young man at once sat up in bed, and made a rapid recoveiy. And what of the patient for whom the direful prognosis was intended?— Delighted with the report that a eojoum in the hills would set him right, he started at .once, and five years latei Was alive and in, fair health.