DON'T WORRY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8392, 9 April 1907, Page 4

DON'T WORRY.

In Cassell's. Magazine a Dr C. W. Saleeby contributes an article on "Worry, the Disease of the Age." He insists on the established fact that adults are much more gravely injured by worry than by fatigue. He greatly questions whether mere mental work has ever killed anyone, in spite of the prevalent impression that it is the cause of much insanity. Brain-work in a stuffy workroom will kill you of tuberculosis; brain-work with worry has slain its thousands; both with insomnia have slain their tens of thousands; but brain-work alone may fairly plead not guilty. Insanity, which Dr. Saleeby does not think is increasing anything like so much as is generally believed, is to a large extent the consequence or symptom of worry. It is especially the cause of "borderland cases" — persons neither distinctly sane nor distinctly insane—for which worry is responsible. One of the causes tending to increase worry is, Dr. Saleeby considers, the constant undermining of the foundations of orthodox belief. Inasmuch as worry lowers the general state of the health, and inasmuch as a lowered state of health predisposes to the reception of microbes, worry assists diseases other than mental and nervous. The more infection is feared, the more likely it is to be taken. Infectious disease tends to pass from those who stand up to face it, and to fasten on those cringing before it.