IMAGINITIS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 154, 22 February 1932, Page 7

IMAGINITIS

PEOPLE WHO CONVINCE THEMSELVES OF ILLNESS. * AN EFFECTIVE CURE. SYDNEY, Friday. How "imaginitis" has definite physical effects on its victim and how easiiy it may be cured is evidenced in ilie case of a boundary rider from the West, who recently sought relief at Sydney Hospital, believing that he had lost his speech in the loneliness of his job. The man couldn't or wouldn't talk. Finally the doetors said to him: "It means a serious operation. Please sign this document agreeing to face the risk." The man was impressed with the profound procedure. He was placed on the operating table and given a small dose of anaesthetic. The surgeons made no move until the patient was almost "coming out" of the anaesthetic. Then they gave him a shoek of electricity! The patient yelled at the sudden pain — and gure! Hysteria Cases. He is no isolated example cf "imaginitis." Among the hundreds of patients who seek treatment daily in the three prineipal Sydney hospital s. hysteria cases are frequent.aud varied. Heart disease, pulmonary tuberculosis, and cancer symptomfe are the most popular, according to the experiences of one medical superintendent. "Hysterical types of men aifd Women study the symptoms of disease in home medical books, and become amazingly adept and cunning in creating convincing 'histories'," he said. "We have all sorts of deviees and tricks for beating these patients at their own games, but until we are eonvinced they are not legitimate cases we must exercise great care. It is tragic that dozens of beds must be filled with these 'lead-sv/ingers', while deserving cases are forced to wait. "Hysteria is simpJy a condition of the mimi. Very oftan it is mind over matter. A person may declare he has lost all feeling in a ieg below the knee. He will stoically ignore the pain of pins jabbed in the leg. "Medicine" Aids.. "Finally we will give him 'medicine' — only sugar dissoived in coloured water — and convince him with superbeside manners, that feeling will be restored in the 'paralysed' limh by two bottles of the 'medicine'. After it has been consumed, he yells ac the slightest pin prick!" Cancer symptoms are pafticular favourites with women. The horrors of the disease play on the mind so much that smellings actually take place. But they immediately disappear at the first sniff of an anaesthetic. i Then there are "insomnia" patients, who, imagining they are enjoying a course of drugs, completely recover after treatment with sterilised water hypodermically given.