To establish an independent health service : speech of Hon. John D. Works ... in the Senate of the United States, Monday and Tuesday, April 29 and 30, 1912.

  • Works, John D. (John Downey), 1847-1928.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: To establish an independent health service : speech of Hon. John D. Works ... in the Senate of the United States, Monday and Tuesday, April 29 and 30, 1912. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    the schoolroom. Better have someone to teach the children that good is more powerful than evil; that we make disease by thinking it; and to be thinking of better and higher things than the material causes of disease. This will never be a healthy Nation until the people are freed mentally from this dreadful, all-pervading fear of disease. Men and women burdened with all these false beliefs and fears are slaves to their wrong view of life. Mr. President, this nefarious onslaught on young children and the spread of disease through suggestion and fear has grown worse and worse. And now the Government is to be asked to become a party to this spreading of disease by collect- ing and disseminating like information for the whole country to read. What a fearful responsibility must rest upon the people who are disseminating such information. Every doctor worthy of the name knows that fear is one of the most prolific causes of disease. He knows, too, that sug- gestion of disease is equally deadly in its effects, especially on the timid and fearful. And yet, with full knowledge of this, they set about in the most direct and forceful way to suggest the existence and presence of the very diseases they claim to be combating and to implant in the minds of the old and young the fear that engenders the disease. If the evidence of this cruel wrong was not so direct and positive it would be beyond belief. A very interesting article on the effects of fear, by Di;. Orison Swett Marden, was published in the Philadelphia Even- ing Bulletin February 24, 1912, and is worthy of the attention of the Senate. It is as follows: Fear in all its different phases of expression, such as worry, anxiety, anger, jealousy, timidity, is the greatest enemy of the human race. It has robbed man of more happiness and efficiency, has made more men cowards, more people failures, or forced them into mediocrity, than any- thing else. Fear has a paralyzing, blighting influence upon the whole being. It impoverishes the blood and destroys health by impairing the digestion, cutting off nutrition, and lowering the physical and mental vitality. It crushes hope, kills courage, and so enfeebles the mind's action that it can not create or produce. Many people are afraid of nearly everything. They are afraid of a draft, afraid of getting chilled or taking cold, afraid to eat what they want, to venture in business matters for fear of losing their money, afraid of public opinion. They have a perfect horror of what Mrs. Grundy thinks. They are afraid hard times are coming, afraid of poverty, afraid of failure, afraid the crops are going to fail, afraid of lightning and tornadoes. Their whole lives are filled with fear, fear, 'fear. ******* Fear strangles originality, daring, boldness ; it kills individuality and weakens all the mental processes. Great things are never done under a sense of fear of some impending danaer. All work done when one is suffering from a sense of fear or foreboding has little efficiency. Fear always indicates weakness, the presence of cowardice. What a slaugh- terer of years, what a sacrificer of happiness and ambitions, what a miner of careers this monster has been ! One of the worst forms of fear is that of a foreboding of some evil to come, which hangs over the life like a threatening cloud over a volcano before an eruption. Some people are always suffering from this peculiar phase of fear, They are apprehensive that some great misfortune is coming to them, Hint they are going to lose their money or their position: or they are afraid of accident or that some fatal disease is developing in them. If their children are away, they see them in all sorts of catastrophes— railroad accidents or shipwrecks. They are always picturing the worst. *******