What Worry may do to you
Many years ago, a neighbor my doorbell one evening and waged me and my family to be vaccinated against smallpox. He was only one of the thousands of volunteers who were ringing door bells all over the NY city. Frightened people stood in lines for hours at a time to be vaccinated. Vaccination stations were opened not only in all hospitals but also in firehouses police precents and in large industrial plants. More than 2k doctors and nurses worked feverishly day and night vaccinating crowds. The causes of all this excitement? Eight people in NY city had smallpox — and two had died. Two deaths out of population of 8 million
Now I had lived in NY for many years and no one had ever yet rung my doorbell to warn me against emotional sickness of worry — an illness that during the same time period had caused 10k times more damage than smallpox
No doorbell ringer has ever warned me that one person of ten now having in these US will never have breakdown -induced in the vast majority of cases by worry and emotional conflicts. So, I am writing this article to ring your doorbell and warn you
The great Nobel Price Winner in medicine Dr Carrel said, ‘Businessman who do not know how to fight worry die young’. And so do house wives and horse doctors and brick layers
A few years ago, I spent my vacation motoring through Texas and NM with Prof.Gober — one of the medical executives of the Santa Fe railway. His exact title was chief physician of the Gulf Colorado and Santa Fe Hospital Association. We got to talking about the effects of worry and he said, “Seventy percent of patients who came to physicians could cure themselves if they only get rid of their fears and worries. Don’t think for a moment trial I mean” their ills are imaginary. “He said, “Their ills are as real as throbbing toothache and sometimes 100 times more serious. I refer to such illnesses as nervous indigestion some stomach ulcers heart disturbances insomnia some headaches and some types of paralysis”
“These illnesses are real. I know what I am talking about “said Dr Gober, “for I myself suffered from stomach ulcer for 12 years”
“Fear causes worry. Worry makes you tense and nervous and affects the nerves of your stomach and actually changes the gas tree and often leads to stomach ulcers”
Dr Joseph F Montage author of the book Nervous Stomach Trouble says much the same thing. He speaks. “You do not get stomach ulcers from what you eat, you get from what is eating you”
Dr W C Alvarez of Mayo Clinic said: “Ulcers frequently flare up or subside according to hills and valley of emotional stress”
That statements were backed by a study of 15k patients treated for stomach disorders at the Mayo Clinic. Four out of five had no physical basis whatsoever for their stomach illnesses. Fear worry hate supreme selfishness and the mobility to adjust themselves to the world of reality -these were largely the causes of their stomach illnesses and stomach ulcers…Stomach ulcers can kill you. Accordingly, to life magazine they now stand tenth in our list of fatal diseases.
I recently had some correspondence with Dr Harold C Habin of the Mayo Clininc.He reads a paper at annual meeting of American Association of Industrial Physician and Surgeons saying that he had made a study of 176 business executives whose average age was 44.3 yrs. He reported that slightly more than a third of these executives suffered from one of three aliments peculiar to high tension living-heart disease digestive tract ulcers and High BP
Think of it — a third of our business executives are wrecking their bodies with hear diseases ulcers and high BP before they reach 45. what price success!!!And they are not even buying success I can envy man possibly be a success who is paying for business advancement with stomach ulcers and heart trouble? What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world — and loses his health? Even if he owned the whole world he could sleep in only bed at a time and eat only three meals a day. Even a new employee Cando that and probably sleep more soundly and enjoy his food more than a high-powered executive. Frankly I would rather be a carefree person a 45 by trying to run a rail road or a cigarette company
The best-known cigarette manufacturer in the world dropped dead from heart failure while trying to make a little recreation in the Canadian woods. He amassed millions — and fell dead at 61. He probably traded years of life for what is called “business success”
In my estimates this cigarette executives with all his millions were not half a successful as my father — a Missouri farmer who died at 89 without a dollar
The famous Mayo brother declared that more than half of our hospital’s beds are occupied by people with nervous troubles. Yet when the nerves of these people are studied under a high-powered microscope in a post mortem examination their nerves in most cases are apparently as healthy as the nerves of Jack Dempsey. Their nervous troubles are caused not by a physical deterioration of the nerves but by emotions of futility frustration anxiety worry fear defeat despair. Plato said that the greatest mistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to cure the mind yet the mind and body are the one and should not be treated separately
It took medical science 23k years to recognise this great truth. We are just now beginning to develop a new kind of medicine called psychosomatic medicine — a medicine that treats both the mind and the body. It is high time we are doing that for medical science has largely wiped out the terrible diseases caused by physical germs-diseases such as small pox cholera yellow fever and scores of other scourges that swept untold millions into untimely graves but medical science has been unable to cope with the mental and physical wrecks caused not by germs but by emotions of worry fear hate frustration and despair. Casualties caused by these emotional diseases are mounting and spreading with the catastrophic rapidity. One out of every six of our young men called by draft in the second world war was rejected for psychiatric reasons
What causes worry? No one knows all these answers. But it is highly probably that in many cases fear and worry are contributing factors. The anxious and harassed individual factors. The anxious and harassed individual who is unable to cope with harsh world of reality breaks off all contract with his environment and retreats into a private dream world of his own making and this solves his worry problems
I have on my desk book by Dr Edward Podolsk entitled Stop Worrying and get well. Here are some of the chapter titles in that book:
WHAT WORRY DOES TO YOUR HEART
HIGH BP IS FED BY WORRY
RHEUMATISM CAN BE CUASED BY WORRY
WORRY LESS FOR YOUR
STOMACH’S SAKE
HOW WORRY CAN CAUSE A COLD
WORRY AND THE THROID
THE WORRYING DIABETICS
Another illuminating book about worry is Man Against Himself by Dr Karl Menninger one of the “Mayo brothers of psychiatry”. Dr Menninger book will not give you any rules about to avoid worry; but it will give you starting revelation of how we destroy our bodies and minds by anxiety frustration hatred resentment rebellion and fear
Worry can make even the most solid person ill. General Grant discovered that during the closing days of the Curl War. The story goes like this: Grant had been besieging Richmond for 9 months. General Lees Troops ragged and hungry were beaten. Entire regiments were deserting at a time. Others were holding prayer meetings in their tents –shouting weeping and seeing visions. The end was close. Leeman set fire to the cotton and tobacco warehouses in Richmond burned the arsenal and fled from the city at night while towering flames roared up to into darkness. Grant was in hot pursuit banging away at the Confederates from both sides and the rear while Sheridan cavalry was heading them off in front tearing up railway lines and capturing supply trains
Grant half blind with a violent sick headache fell behind his army and stopped at a farmhouse,” I spent the night”, he records in his Memoirs, “I bathing my feel in hot water and mustard and putting mustard plasters on my wrists and the back part of my neck, hoping to be cured by morning”
The next morning, he was cured instanteously.And. And the thing that cured him was not mustard plaster but a horseman galloping down the road with a letter from Lee saying he wanted to surrender
“When the officer reaches me”, Grant wrote. “I was still suffering with the headache but the instant I saw the contents of the note I was cured”
Obviously, it was Grant worries tensions and emotions that made him ill. He was cured instantly the moment his emotions took on the hue of confidence achievement and victory
70 years later Henry Morgen thou Jr Secretary of the treasury in Franklin D Roosevelts cabinet discovered that worry could make him so ill that he was dizzy. He records in his diary that he was terribly worried when the President in order to raise the price of wheat bought 4,40000 bushels in one day. He says in his diary, “I felt literally dizzy while the things were going on. I went home and went to bed for 2 hours after lunch”
If I want to see what worry does to people, I don’t have to go to a library or a physician’s can look out of the window of my home where I am writing this article and I can see within one block one house worry caused nervous breakdown –and another house where a man worried himself into diabetes. When the stock market went down the sugar in his blood and urine went up
When montage the illustrious French philosopher was elected Mayor of his home town Bordeaux he said to his fellow citizens: “I am willing to take your affairs into my hands but not into my liver and lungs”. This neighbour of mine took the affairs of the stock market into his blood stream and almost killed himself
If I want to be reminded of what worry does to people I don’t need to look at my neighbor houses I can look at this very room where I am writing now and be reminded that a farmer owner of this house worried himself into an untimely grave
