WORRY—THE DISEASE OF THE AGE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XV, Issue 892, 11 April 1907, Page 22

WORRY—THE DISEASE OF THE AGE.

In Cassel.’s Magazine and the Canadian Magazine, Dr. C. W. Saleeby writes a series of articles on this subject. He insists on the established fact that adults are much more gravely injured by worry than by fatigue. He greatly questions whether mere mental overwork has ever killed anyone, in spite of the prevalent impression that it is the cause of much insanity. Brainwork in a stuffy workroom will kill you of tuberculosis; brainwork with worry has s ain its thousands ; both, with insomnia, have s’.ain their ten thousands; but brain-work alone may fairly plead not guilty. Insanity, which Dr. Salesby does not think is increasing anything like so much as is generally believed, is largely the consequence or symptom of worry. It is especially the “borderland cases’”—persons neither distinctly sane nor distinctly insane—for which worry is responsible. Often the worry is made much worse by the habit of drug-taking, which is undoubtedly lamentably on the increase. Another cause tending to increase worry is,. Dr. Saleeby thinks, the constant undermining of the foundations of orthodox belief. In European countries belonging to the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches suicide is rarest, and in Protestant countries it is highest. The number in Paris is enormous; but Paris is a place apart. The Calvinistic doctrine of predestination may, it has been suggested, be partly responsible for this. Inasmuch as worry lowers the general state of the health, and inasmuch as a lowered state of health predisposes to the reception of microbes, worry assists diseases other than mental and nervous. The more infection is feared —i.e., worried about —the more likely it is to be taken. Infectious disease tends to pass from those who stand, up. to face it, and to fasten on those cringing before it. In its doctrine that to worry doctrine is true of so many of these ills

lies the success of Christian Science. The doctrine s true of so many of these ills that Christian Science really cures them. In other words, Christian Scientists, with al; their quackery, have got hold of a great fundamental truth.