James J. Walsh

“ We cannot put new wills into a patient, but we can so brace up even an old and tottering will as to make it possible for the worst victims of drug habits to reform. The doctor, too, easily becomes discouraged. He has not confidence enough in his own methods to make assurance doubly sure for the patient as to his cure. This is what many of the pretended specific purveyors of drug habit cures have as their principal stock in trade. They assure patients with absolute confidence, while the physician only too often says the same thing, but half-heartedly. ”

“ Whatever of evil there is, is only due to man's failure to see the entirety of things. Evil is an error of mortal mind—only that and nothing more. In spite of the manifest absurdity of the underlying principle, if people can only be brought to persuade themselves that there is no such thing as evil or suffering, then many of their discomforts disappear, all of their symptoms grow less and a sense of well-being results. It is, indeed, surprising how many even physical ills will be relieved by this state of mind if sincerely accepted. ”

“ Death and Pain.—One of the most effective consolations in our day for all classes of people, quite apart from religious affiliations or beliefs, is the sociological import of death and suffering in the world. Life, without suffering and death in it, would be a riot of selfishness. Men, as a rule, would not care for others at all, the weak would go to the wall, the individuals who possess less efficiency than others would simply have to make out as best they could, and bad as social conditions are now, they would be intolerably worse. ”

“ Just because a man has a weak body is no argument at all that his mind may be weak and some of the world's finest work has been accomplished by men whose bodies were always delicate. Metchnikoff is the apostle of old age to our generation, but it is he, also, who has pointed out that many distinguished workers in science, in poetry, in art, men who have left a precious heritage in succeeding generations, were delicate all their lives. ”

“ If, when a physician is ill, a drug is administered in which he has lost confidence, he will really oppose its action by contrary suggestion, and perhaps neutralize it. Confidence added to the action of the drug itself, makes it much more potent and much more direct. Hence the suggestive value of a prescription the ingredients of which are unknown. Every physician knows of patients who have declared that a drug has been tried on them without avail, when it has only been used in such small quantities as to be quite nugatory in its effect. ”

“ A man may have formed the habit of doing evil things and then finds it easy to do them without compunction. On the other hand, the exercise of his will in doing what he considers right, in spite of the fact that it may not be pleasant at the moment, is a training of the will founded on its essential freedom. There is an essential distinction between right and wrong, and we have it in our power, as many a man has done, to follow the right even though it costs our life. ”

“ I have known not a few neurotic young women, who were preparing for themselves years of suffering by over-attention to little pains and aches, saved to a life of usefulness and even happiness by having to nurse near relatives through the last stages of fatal cancer. When these neurotic persons are brought intimately in touch with real suffering, have their sympathies aroused, and see how well human nature can bear pain when it has to, and yet not be impatient, nor wish to end it all, then a renewed life comes over them and they cease to be preoccupied with themselves. ”

“ The world's blame, however, is largely a bogey, a dread that is phantom-like and that disappears, or at least diminishes, to a great degree as soon as it is bravely faced. Besides, as practically every man who has been carrying around a guilty secret with him for years is free to confess, there is an immense sense of relief once the worst is known. ”

“ Hippocrates declares that "life is short and art long, the occasion fleeting, experience fallacious and judgment difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants and externals coöperate." No one emphasized more than he the necessity for differentiating the individual patient, and to him we owe, in foundation at least, the aphorism that it is more important to know what sort of an individual has a disease than what sort of a disease the individual has, for the chances of cure greatly depend on favorable individuality. ”

“ Peculiarities of Memory.—Memory is an illusive and elusive function at best. All of us have had the sensation of having a word, and particularly a name, on the tip of our tongues. We often know the first letter and sometimes the first syllable of it. What memory brings to us, however, may not always be the first syllable of a word or name, though we are prone to think it must be, and we may go looking for it in the dictionary of names only to discover after a time that we are many letters away from its beginning. ”

“ They have come to the feeling of being portions of a machine that moves hopelessly on, somehow, on the old principle, "The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine." The sufferings of humanity then, are, for these people, only a portion of a great universe of suffering that is constantly going on but for which they can see no reason and no purpose. ”

“ Little men do not forgive and cannot forget the failings of their fellows and they think that everyone else looks upon men's failings in the same way. It is only the small, narrow man who contemplates suicide as a refuge from disgrace, and the fact that he can complacently plan the abandonment of others not only to the disgrace which he himself is not ready to face, but to all the suffering consequent upon it, is the best proof of his littleness of soul. The utter pusillanimity of suicide is the best mental antidote for the temptation to it. ”

“ The shadowy terrors of what may come after death are too little realized to deter a man from his act when compared with the real disgrace that he is so familiar with and that he has often witnessed in actual life. It is the man, as a rule, who has most condemned others when something has gone wrong, who has found no sympathy in his heart for the slips of his fellows, who discovers no courage in himself when he has to face disgrace. ”

“ Probably nothing more harmful has ever been done than the public proclamation that alcoholism is often an hereditary disease against which it is hopeless to struggle, and that the poor victims of it are to be pitied and not blamed. Except in those of low mentality, whether of intellect or will, or in the actually insane, there never was a case of alcoholism that did not deserve at least as much blame as is usually accorded to it. ”

“ Men who try it whole-heartedly soon find a renewed interest in life. An hour of daily walking in the open air with the distractions of city life all around, provided the walking is done briskly and faithfully, is of infinitely more hygienic value than an hour of gymnasium work. There is only one thing that hampers this form of exercise—there are so many excuses to tempt one not to keep it up. If one gets to a gymnasium there is an instructor or director who keeps tabs on one's hours and so helps a weak human will, and excuses are easier made to one's self than to others. ”

“ We have wanted such remedies and methods of treatment so much that it has been rather easy to persuade us sometimes that they have been discovered. It is like the question of specifics in medicine. For centuries men devoted themselves to trying to find a specific remedy for each disease. It was thought they must exist in nature. Now we know that they probably do not exist, though those who claim to discover them find an easy livelihood exploiting the credulity of those who still cherish the belief in them. ”

“ We have no definition for insanity, that is, no formula of words, which will absolutely include all the insane and at the same time exclude all the sane, but we have a practical working knowledge that enables us to judge rather well between those who are compelled to do things by delusions, and those who do them from motives that are rationally weighed and that influence a will that is free to follow them as it pleases. We hold the rational man responsible for his acts because he knows he was free not to do them. ”

“ Unconscious Regulation of Muscles.—What is thus prefigured in early life invades every activity in later years. The boy who learns to ride a bicycle must at first devote all his attention to it, but after a while rides it quite unconsciously, his muscles having learned by habit to accommodate themselves automatically to all the varying positions of his machine. Anything well learned by habit is never forgotten. How hard it is to learn to swim, yet, after years away from the practice of it, the art comes back at once. ”

“ Nearly all of us have premonitions that fail. Only a few especially introspective people who are constantly afraid of what will happen to them, and who are sure that the worst is always preparing for them, have their premonitions come true more than once or twice in life. The striking fulfillments of a few premonitions could be paralleled by an endless number of just as striking failures, only that most people dismiss the idea completely from their minds as too foolish to be further talked about. It is quite the same with dreams. ”

“ It is worth remembering that more than 200 years ago, when an absurd and fantastic remedy was asserted to possess wonderful power, and when sensible persons ascribe its pretended influence to imagination, it was boldly answered that the cure took place when the wounded party did not know of the application made to the weapon, and even when the brute animal was the subject of the experiment, and that this assertion, lie as we all know it was, came in such a shape as to shake the incredulity of the keenest thinker of his time. ”

“ When the theater presents only the triumphs of crime, the misfortunes of virtue, when the books that are in common circulation because of the low price at which they are issued, contain only declarations against religion, against family ties and duties towards our neighbor and society, then they inspire a disdain of life and it is no wonder that suicide rapidly increases even among the very young. ”

“ It was utterly impossible for the people there to say nice things to one another when they had quite other things in mind, because if they did not like the person their tails hung down behind; if they did like them they wagged rather vigorously, no matter what their owner might be saying. This simple revelation of feelings, so much less than even the slightest degree of telepathy would occasion, was quite enough to work a revolution in the social affairs of this romantic island. It made the people truthful and candid in their relations with one another. ”

“ We have come back in this age, when evolution has so much influenced the thought of the time, after the curious cyclic fashion in which human thought repeats itself from era to era, to the attitude of mind of the old Roman poet who almost singly among his contemporaries, had been deeply affected by the same doctrine of evolution. The pessimism he was prone to as to the significance of human life has become once more the fashion. ”

“ It tends to make one shrink back and not to act.
Nothing quiets these patients like the frequently repeated statement that they will not do anything. It is necessary to show them the vast distance there is between the impulse toward suicide and murder and the phobia which, however distressing it may be, is a safeguard. One must keep at this education of the mind with imperturbable persistence and use the most forceful and convincing arguments that one can think of to correct the judgment of his patient, in order to make the strings of moral feeling and reason vibrate in unison. ”

“ The argument for free will that appeals to most men is the consciousness that we are free and that at any given moment we can do a thing or not do it, just as suits us. If two things are presented to us we can do that one which seems right to us to do, or we can do both of them, or we can permit ourselves to be led into the wrong, though always acknowledging to ourselves that it is the wrong and feeling downcast, or at least disturbed, that we should let ourselves be led away from higher motives. ”

“ Anyone who will consider for a moment the natural constitution of man and the principles of natural education, must agree that the deplorable thing called a dumb-bell offers an exquisite parody of what exercise should really be. The cat, as she exercises her kittens along the lines of their natural proclivities and needs, never telling them that this is exercise for the sake of exercise, and certainly prepared, if she could, to turn up her nose at any artificial implement we might offer her—should be our model in this respect. ”

“ After a little practice not near so much time is required for memory work as might be imagined, and the effects are excellent.
Much of this may seem too trivial for the physician to occupy himself with and quite apart from his duties as a practitioner of medical science. But it must not be forgotten that medical science is as yet quite imperfect and the practice of medicine is an art. What we have to do, is to treat individual patients rather than cure cases, for that is why medicine is a profession. Each affected individual who comes to us is quite different from any other. ”

“ There is no doubt at all that the more carefully and simply and beautifully and healthily the mother lives, and the more her mind possesses itself in peace and happiness, the better will be her own nutrition and consequently that of her offspring, and, all things considered, this will contribute to the perfection of the infant's body and so give the best instrument for the expression of its soul. ”

“ A color will bring up a scene or the memory of an individual. An odor will recall scenes long since apparently forgotten and will set trains of thought at work that are quite unexpected. Sometimes we wake in the morning with a name or a fact on our lips that we have been looking for for several days. ”