CULT OF ILL-HEALTH.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4486, 1 November 1922, Page 1

CULT OF ILL-HEALTH.

SUGGESTION AND DISEASE! A DOCTOR’S WARNING. "If the psychology of the crowd had been studied more and the pathology, bacteriplogy, and statistics of disease less in our health propaganda in the past we should not suffer so mucn from, the increasing burden of the faddist, the valetudinarian, the hypncondriac, and the neurasthenic,” said Dr. Campbell Begg in a lecture in the Red Cross' Hall at Wellington. "Of all the factors' that make the body prone tb ill-health the influence of the mind holds pride pf place. Human beings in the mass are not trained to study the means of ’health and the causes of disease with the detachnient that they might bring to the sanitation of the poultry yard. . . Our enthusiasm for reform must not lead us to attempt to stampede the public. Fe.ar, is the ally of pestilence, and causes susceptibility to the very thing it dreads. Suggestion, that most powerful of all the means to combat, disease, can be the most dangerous instrument in its cause. After all, health is more universal than sickness."

While realising the value of the fullest possible instruction being given to the people i,n the matter of health, he emphasised that its dangers must not be ignored. It was necessary to remember the weaker vessels and counteract with the gospel of hope the stern realities that lead ,to despair. The cult of illhealth—the willingness to be ill—was becoming as great a drain on economic life as the support of the frankly sick. The gallons of medicine consumed and the amount pf money paid to healers of all kinds were out of all proportion to the real* sickness cl the community. Doctors must discourage the parent who taught his child to be delicate, Spoiled and

pampered children were the hypocbndriacs of the next generation. The highest domestic, hygiene taught the parent so to conduct his home that the growing child was not only protected from disease, but by precept and example led to such ah instinctive knowledge of the rules of health that without conscious effort he would follow them throughout his life.