REFUSING TO BE ILL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XX, Issue 2063, 6 January 1925, Page 6

REFUSING TO BE ILL.

(By a Physician.) During the last few weeks I have been watching two people closely. They are both patients of mine—at least they will be if they are ill. Neither has ever, so far as I know, suffered from influenza. What is still more striking, both declare that they keep clear of this übiquitous affliction by the simple process of making up their minds that they will not get it. Let me confess at once that I used to have very little faith in this kind of "boasting." I had often heard patients say that they were determined not to be ill—and seen them fall ill like other people, in spite of their determination. But the cases I am now observing have definitely broken that rule. Neither of thorn has lost a single day in the present winter from any sort of ailment. One is a man, the other a woman. The man's wife had a sharp attack of influenza. His children, too, had colds of a more or less severe type. There was influenza in the office where the woman works. Consequently no doubt at all exists that both were exposed directly to infection. Two possible explanations present themselves. These people may be what bateriologists call "immune," that is to say that they may be unattackable by the influenza poison; or they may really be able to keep well by the exercise of will power. I have not yet felt able to come to any definite conclusion on the subject. It would have been a much easier case if, for .example, one of them had been a frequent sufferer in early life, but had ceased to suffer after he or she began to exercise willpower. On the other hand, the patients themselves are quite sure that if they "let themselves go" they would soon be ill. Doctors are s?pt to he sceptics about everything; but nurses do not, as a rule, share that habit of mind. Nurses, I know, have a profound belief in wili power, as a menns of health. One of them told me a few days ago, indeed, that if she heard a sick person declare that he was determined to recover she always fe,lt sure that recovery would take place. This may be mere superstition. Nevertheless, I think that it is not entirely without a foundation in reality.