PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1306, 10 April 1883, Page 2

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE.

Among the papers left behind him by a German physician, who died a few weeks ago, is one containing notes of certain conclusions he had arrived at during a professional experience of more than forty years. In one of these notes he expresses an opinion that at least a third of the illness of the f>atients who sought his advice were purely maginary. He found it not only against hia own interest, but also against that of the self-alleged sufferers, to destroy the illusion by informing them that there was really no cause for anxiety. 111-health was to them a matter of almost vital importance. To destroy the pleasing belief that they possessed this blessing was absolute cruelty. In the few instances in which he broke to them the terrible truth that they were quite well, he found that the result was genuine illness. For the patients, all interest in life departed with their favorite occupation of nursing themselves, and their health became seriously affected by nervous depression. He also found that, as a rule, weakly persons live longer than strong ones. Without going so fur as to say that the best lives are those rejected by the insurance offices, bethought, nevertheless, that persons with a “screw loose ” more often attain longevity than those in whom no trace of disease can be detected.