A Message to the Well; And Other Essays and Letters on the Art of Health (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III TO A SUFFERER FROM NERVOUS FATIGUE YOUR letter calls for an extended reply, but I will try to throw light on a few of your questions in such a way as to afford clues to the rest. There is abundant earnestness in your letter and you have read the books on mental healing to advantage. You wonder why, with all this reading, you fail to regain your lost strength. The same question is repeatedly asked by readers of such books. If theory sufficed, hundreds would quickly regain their health. But it is one thing to declare that all disease is mental and is psychically caused, and another to explain a given instance. The theories are far too general. To be told, for example,that nervous prostration is " psychical," is to be mystified. To be advised to" affirm health" is to be given a stone where one sought bread. The question is: What have you done, both physically and mentally, to bring yourself to tiie present plight? To give answer, one must investigate in detail. The results are as likely to be stated in physiological as in psychological terms. It is well, therefore, to set all preconceptions aside and to begin afresh. To regain your health so as to keep it, you need to know how the present state of ill-health was brought about. The fundamental difficulty is partly suggested by your own statements. As a result of overwork through the teaching of music, the nervous organism is in a state of severe prostration. But mere overwork is an insufficient cause. How have you worked ? How have you used your nervous forces ? What has been your attitude toward life and how have you lived generally? Has your mind been consumed with fear, anxiety, and worry ? Have you started out day by day in a state of nervous intensity and strain, and then exhausted your strength before the...