The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1898-12-22
MIND PICTURES BY TELEPHONE
others Appearance and the
Strange Result.

SAPeAI oA nerves. MOI long ago had
visit from man who was afraid h..
was losing his reason because of very
simple persistence of certain thought
or idea which he could not shake off.
The history of the case is one often
found in cases of hypochondriasis de-
veloped from using the telephone. My
patient for about years time had &C.
casion to telephone every day TO a trade
customer in New York-Manhattan if
you like. The New Yorker had Pc
culiar high tenor squeak to his voice
and somehow my friend got to pictur-
ing him as little chap with a thin face.
This habit grew day after day until thu
customer took real shape and form il
the mind of my patient, all based, of
course, upon his voice. AS he talked
over the telephone there always was
mentally pictured that little chap with
the thin face and squeaky voice. Well.
one day my patient called at the offic.
OF his New York customer, and as he
walked into the place and saw tall.
fat man weighing nearly 300 pounds he
could scarcely believe his eyes. When
the fat man orened his mouth and
talked, my patient says, the squeaky
voice with which he was familiar sound
ed strange and unnatural. He told the
owner of the absurd voice, in view of
his size, about having pictured him as a
little thin person, and there was a good
laugh over the odd difference of the
reality.
but the next day when MY friend
used the telephone and the squeaky
voice came to him, he had to struggle
to get away from thinking Of his fat
patron as being little and thin. He
talked the matter over with mis- wife
and laughed about it, but soon there
came time when he forgot all about
the actual existence of his customer.
and the little thin-faced chap was again
talking to him over the wire. Then It
was that he came to me. He feared, he
said, that his mind was giving way, be-
cause of the persistence of the odd pic
ture of the thin man. I thought the
case was easily disposed of, and told MY
friend to go to New York every day for
week and visit his fat customer. This
he did. but every time he telephoned
the squeaky voice would bring up the
mental picture formed before he had
set eyes on it's owner.
II was in despair and my patient was
growing gray from worrying when I hit
upon the happy expedient of placing a
photograph of the fat man on the tele-
phone, where the eye of the patient
could rest upon it as he talked. The
result was the disappearance forever o:
the thin chap. My patient, in looking
at the picture of the owner of the
squeaky voice, got his mind working;
upon the same lines that would have
been followed had he met the fat man
face to face the first time he heard his
voice. These cases are common every
day. We form queerly opposite pic
lures of men and women we hear over
the telephone and never see, but in the
great majority ofinstances the impress
sion is momentary one, and it is sell
dom that the mistake is ever forced
upon us in the startling way described
by the patient I told of.
"The telephone. by the way. has pro-
duced very many queer cases Of neuras-
thenia that remain understandable ex-
cepting on the hypothesis that the new
habit brings them into existence. I
have had very many patients who had
to give up the use: of the phone alto
gether where it had been used to grea.
extent before IN. Y. Sun.
's''' ----
,s Had Lived Up to. His Agree ment.
When the woman came back the
fourth time the photographers pa
thence was about exhausted.
."Just look at that samnle of rn,,r