TALKS ON HEALTH

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17536, 13 May 1925, Page 13

TALKS ON HEALTH

BY A FAMILY DOCTOR.

TALK ABOUT HORRORS. 1 .An extremely kind and complimentary correspondent asks me to call attention to the fact that very much harm is done and unnecessary anxiety and fear caused by the recital of details and description of symptoms of illnesses. particularly those that have terminated fatally. T willingly comply, because I fully realise what harm can be done by such talk. My genial lady friend especially refers to the alarm which is caused amongst young married women by certain discussions. .She tells me she tries to forget the horrors she has heard of, and never to recount them, but to store up for recital all the cheering stories of wonderful recoveries that have come to her knowledge. Excellent! I wish devoutly that the example could be generally lollotved. Xone of us want to have our flesh made to creep, and it certainly is not good for us. CU LTIVATE PHILOSOPHY. A counsel cf perfection would be to advise everybody to cultivate a philosi >phica tame mind. Folks should refrain from detailing horrors and, it they are themselves under the. impression that they are suffering from some malady, they should not think about it more than they can possibly help.. There are many people suffering from a weak heart who lead happy and useful lives for many years; it is cruel to let every man with a weak heart believe that he is in constant danger of a sudden catastrophe. To all my readers I would say that it is wise to maintain an even temperament. Join a smile club, as the Americans would say. THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT. Our health is dependent on our surroundings, our house, the street we live in, the people vve meet, the air we breathe—-in a word, our environment. I have always thought if I had to keep a shop I should like it to be a flower shop; it would be so hard to have pleasant aspirations in an atmosphere of fried fish. Our environment is to a large extent under our control, and it is a sin not to make our surroundings as cheerful as possible. I went into a man's house the other dav tha t was enough to depress the most ! cheery individual. The windows were dirty, so as to exclude what little sunlight there was. In the pariour there were only two pictures, both of a lugubrious character. There was only one book in the room, and that seemed to me, in the brief glance I gave it, to be more depressing than the pictures. And finally a number of memorial cards were hung on the walls, with plenty of cuiiins and skulls and cross-bones about. An excessive and unduly prolonged grief about a departed uncle seems to me a doubtful compliment, and suggests that his fate is not a happy one. f always cling to the slender hope that the grief of my friends at my departure will be tempered by the polite fiction that my state is not unhappy. BE CHEERFUL. Now I strongly disagree with the decorations of this man's living room. There is enough sorrow in the real world without adding the dismal suggestions of the pi-3—orial world Burn * the depressing pictures, put the mourning cards in a drawer. Away with melancholy, and let us have a picture of some girls playing “Hetsp we go round the mulberry bushy’ or an old gentleman with a face on him like the rising sun enjoying a good dinner. Make the street brighter by a united

! effort, and iet us have a little white or bright green paint about he windows and door?. Have some bright ribbon t to tie up clean curtains. Keep your i own little bit of pathway clean and ' tidy in front of your house. Now then, ’ altogether, please, make the street and vour house brighter, and vou will not be able to help singing as you jiass down the street, and dad will come home with a smile on him that will keep the doctor away for ever. WHERE THERE’S V WILL. Many people are ill because they have •such weak wills; the will-power can be developed just as much as the muscleof the arm can be- developed. Herein | lies the importance of training cliil(hen to govern themselves. The chilli ! who is taught to do things which i* , [ docs not want to do is being trained foi u future emergency; the child who is •never instructed to perform uncongenial tasks, but is weakly allowed tc indulge its own laziness is being ruined lor the struggle iu life. 1 get raanj ’ letters from patients who obviously : have nothing the matter with them, but they have not the strength of mind to throw off their symptoms. Jt is rather unfair on the doctor when ho is ask od not only to prescribe but io carry out the treatment. If a patient came, to me with some imaginary symptom, I can examine him and say that he ii mistaken in thinking there is anything wrong with him, and instruct him tvi j exercise his own will-power and deter miuation and throw oft’ his morbid ideas. I cannot use his will power for him : he must use it for himself. He wants me to give him medicine, blit there is no medicine which will remove n symptom that never existed in real fact. Let him make up his mind to occupy Iris thoughts with other things, and the cure will lx? effected. A MATTER OF WILL 1 i sometimes takes a tremendous stimulus to make a person us© his or her will. A good example is the case of a young woman who thought she was paralysed : her doctor told her she was mistaken, and that if only she would make up her mind to try and walk sho would undoubtedly succeed. Well, nothing would persuade her to the effort, and she lay in bed ior months, uutil one blessed day the house caught tire, and' she was in danger of being burnt in her bed. This 30 frightened her that she jumped out of bed and ran downstairs. It needed something more than the poor old doctor’s remonstrances to stir her up. ONLY FANCIES. Each man or woman likes to have a particular bugbear. One has,no fear of being drowned, but lives in terror of being caught in a burning house. One woman will bo quite pleased to stroke a. mouse, but will nearly die of general paralysis if a frog hops across her path. I am quite- fatigued after a fruitless attempt to convince- a patient- that she has not got a tumour. It is real hard work it is worse than rolling the. lawn. What 1 plead for is sweet reasonableness, and that 1 never get. Tr is against- my rules to permit you to make all these- mistakes. You must please be assured, madam, that there arc no indications of your having a tumour : forget your pains and your j pains will forget you. No, that is not i sign of cancer, that is only wind. No, vou are losing weight because you arc eating l-es,* and walking more, so- that is nothing go by. No. it. d follow that because Mr Brown died of r tumour, that therefore you will. ! am quite sure you will live to be seventy or else be run over by a motor-'bu; to-morrow. so it does no good to worry