The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1892-08-11

NERVE, Willy JIG Slau, JOY uo, IiuIAoi
present sweeps over them like the bright
to others; but hopeless death for them,
and all for what, nothing but ghost of
the past.
1t is no figure of speech to say person
is bowed down with trouble Really and
truly he carries a burden too weighty for
his frame. SO the muscular action of the
back and loins becomes impaired, the
muscles of the chest and abdomen lose
their tone. and the form is bowed with its
weight of trouble.
1t is no figure of Speech "This green
monster jealousy" that meanest of all
passions. That combination of SUSPICION
natural anxiety and anger which goes to
make up jealous nature marks itself I'M
mistakably in disarranSement OF the gall
cist of the liver, making bitterness of
the flesh as well as bitterness of the spirit.
So we might 90 on with instance after
instance culled from the experiences of
mental scientists and corrobrated 10y phys
biological researches of the best medical
authorities of the past and present; but
we have said enough to prove the action
of the mind upon the physical body and
its physiological processes. Mental
science most unquestionably locates the
cause of all disease in mind and the scien-
lists invariably asks himself if the physical
is affected not did | take cold. did | eat
wrongly. did | overwork OF expose my
self? but of what have | been thinking,
how have allowed myself to get wrong
mentally that | manifest this inharmony?
Just at this point we meet a whole ar
ray of questions. If all cause of disease
is in mind, just how are we to account
for the great epidemics that sweep over
the land like the diphtheria, yellow fever,
la grippe, and all the rest Just as we ac-
count for everything else. The mind and
the mind alone.
1t is difficult to trace an epidemic to
the beginning, but it is safe to say this,
we can never take a disease except we
have soil prepared for its reception and
propagation. This is a law we see exem-
plified in the vegetable world, and
throughout the whc!e universe there is
through all. The seed must fall into
fruitful soil adapted to itself or it will not
generate.
The fructifying pollen of bi-sexual
plants will pass through the air and fall
upon hundred different flowers, but on
ly in its own kind will it find a germinal
take what you are not prepared to receive.
And this preparation may be the result OF
years of wrong thought somewhere. 1t
goes right back to the question of mental
ity. question of mental temperament.
If this were not so all would be similarly
affected. A powerful agent in the spread
of any disease is fear: where one dies of
the disease itself. twenty die from the
fear of it, OF the disease induced by fear
Take away the fear of it and you have
destroyed the malady.
Years ago the scarlet fever excited no
special apprehension and the putrid sore
throat akin to the dreaded dipthelia of
to-day. gave no cause for alarm. The
sympathetic neighbors came and went on
their errands of mercy, and if the patti
ent passed away. came in large numbers
to the funeral with no thought OF fear
Was there any greater mortality than now
when such minute precautions are { bserv-
ed.
There is no special law of contagion
which might not be modified by the action
of fear. And fear may be subdued by the
cultivation of its opposite, courage. in
spired by a sense of duty, and a sense of
divine protection in the performance of
duty. Perfect love casteth out fear: love
for the family, love to the neighbor, love
to God are perfect antidotes for the par
alizing effects of fear. The faithful doc
tor battles with malignant diseases. The
faithful pastor stands by the bedside of the
sufferer, the faithful undertaken performs
the last sad offices of mortality, and the
world treats them as if special law of
exemption We're enacted in their favor,
while we must envelope ourselves in
4 Il hob
breath. The mother, the nurse, what
special law of exemption is there for
them, and yet how rarely they fall vic
Tins to contagious diseases. 1t is their
business, pursued without fear and with
the stronger consideration. The negative
condition of fear is subordinate to the
positive thought of love or duty.
The dangerous symptoms of most
diseases are due to intense nervous action,
OF to a disturbance of the circulatory sys-
tenn. The power of the morbid mind
over these functions is capable OF the full
est demonstrations.
Hence we may advance as Il principle of
mental healing, these words Of Dr.. W. +.
Evans one of its ablest opponents: words
which deserve to be engraved in letters of
gold and hung on the walls of every house
hold. ''To form thought rightly; to hold
to it steadfastly; to believe in its realiza-
ton by one of the deepest laws of our
being will transform the body after its
mental type
If this be true, you ask this power of
the individual thought to make manifest
disease or health, what of the infant, who
is incapable of thinking intelligently?
This brings us to the power of trans
mitted thought. In the case of the in
FAINT, this involves hereditary transmits
sion of mental states, or the outcome of
mental states, and the transmission from
the minds about it.
The question of hereditary transmits
sion involves more than we can compass
in the limits of this essay. Suffice it to
say that every child has the right to be
born healthy. Parents should consider
mental and moral conditions before they
send a child into existence. Hereditary
traits and deformities are unquestionably
the transmitted mental states of the an
cestors.
But the phase of the question best to con-
slider is, how the minds, or the power of
the minds about us are to affect us, either
in the manifestations of health or disease?
We all know people who depress us or in
spire us. There are plenty of these social
wet blankets, who carry an atmosphere of
chill and gloom about them; people who
are always prophets of darkness or evil: in
fact they quite outnumber the CHEEKY,