The Chicago Clinic Volume 19; And Pan-Therapeutic Journal (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 Excerpt: ... all of the states of the soul are reflected. We are all familiar with the wonderful effects of the will, the passions, th emotions, the imagination, sympathy, hope, fear, faith and confident expectation tipon the physical system." The most extensive of all the morbid conditions which reflect themselves so disastrously on the human system is the state of fear. It has many degrees of graduations, from the state of extreme alarm, fright or terror down to the slightest shade of apprehension of impending evil. But all along the line it is the same thing--a paralyzing impression on the centers of life which can produce, through the agency of the nervous system, a vast variety of morbid symptoms in every tissue of the body. We have seldom reflected upon the fact that fear runs like a baneful thread through the whole web of our life from beginning to end. We are born into an atmosphere of fear and dread and the mother who bore us had lived in the same atmosphere for weeks and months before we were born. We are surrounded in infancy and childhood by clouds of fear and apprehension on the part of our parents, nurses and friends. As we advance in life, we become instinctively or by experience, afraid of almost everything. We are afraid of our parents-, afraid of our teachers, afraid of our punishments, afraid of ghosts, afraid of rules and regulations and punishments and afraid of the doctor, the dentist and the surgeon. Our adult life is a state of chronic anxiety which is fear in a milder form. We are afraid of failure in business, afraid of disappointments and mistakes, afraid of enemies open or concealed, afraid of poverty, afraid of public opinion, afraid of accidents, of sickness, of death and of unhappiness after death. Man is like a haunted animal from t...