DISEASES AND DESIRES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19608, 9 April 1927, Page 6 (Supplement)

DISEASES AND DESIRES.

BY A FAMILY DOCTOR.

It may seem rather a paradoxical statement to make, but quite a lot of people are ill because they have so overwhelming a desire to be well. Their constant thought is health, for the possession of which they sacrifice all their most spontaneous impulses. Sucli people tend to become like misers who, having plenty of money stowed away in banks and odd places, are ailways skimping and scraping to save odd pennies here and there, and are afraid to spend an extra sixpence even on things that other poorer folk would consider necessaries. These health-misers are those whose life is so full of precautions against possible disease and the collection of remedies for imaginary illnesses that they never have time or energy left in which to enjoy such health as they have. For them every day has its peculiar dangers. Changes in the weather, some accidental alteration in their food, drink, clothing or circumstances fill them with apprehension. They cannot spend a night away from home, or alter in any way the strict routine of their lives, without being filled with apprehension of evil to follow. And of course it is small woiider that they sometimes come. Thus it is that, when health is so desperately desired, ill-health is apt to take its place. If we try to recall for a moment to mind those of our acquaintances whom we would select as being the healthiest and least troubled by illness, the chances are that we shall find that they are also the very people who seem to think least about health, and certainly never seem to take precautions to keep well. Health seems to come to them and remain with them as a matter of course. They never expect to be ill, and, by what seems to the so-called semi-invalid almost an illogical consequence, they seldom are. The answer to this conundrum lies, I think, in the fact that the human being tends to value things in proportion as they are difficult to obtain. To the robust person health is a commonplace; and, vice versa, the weakling is apt to over-admire the strong man, the poet, the man of action, and so on. These contrasts in life serve both as standards by which to judge our own achievements and also as spurs to further endeavour. They are Nature's dues which keep our desires active, for desire is life.

Now all this may seem to show that in displaying a passionate desire for health and strength the weakling or the invalid is not only doing what Nature intends he shall do, but also what is best lor him. This may be granted as so. But the trouble so often is—and this is the point that doctors stress—that mere desire, particularly the desire of a complex, civilised human being, is not always a reliable guide to action. The child, for example, desires all kinds of things that would be very bad for him. The grown-up, v with rather more wisdom, desires things'too. But he does not, merely because he desires things, always set about getting them in the right way. If a man wants desperately to become a musician, let us say, or a doctor or an architect, he has to reinforce his desire by learning the rudiments of these crafts or professions. Ho finds out, from someone who knows, jucfc what those rudiments are, and then his desire enables him to acquire them. And so it is with health. Therefore, while it is right and expedient that every individual should desire to be healthy, that is to live his life to the full, he must first understand what health is. Health does not lie in the taking of pills, the fear oif catching cold, or "in passive resistance to life, but in the active following of those simple hygienic laws must bo too familiar to need restatement.