The Monmouth inquirer. [volume] (Freehold, N.J.) 1865-1933, 1924-09-11
INTERESTING DREAsa
Among them Morbid Horror q pira
and Of High Places.

Never have doctors written and
talked SO frankly about us and our
Ills. 1t used TO be the proper medical
attitude to listen attentiyely to our
rehearsal Of our symptoms and to
treat the same with at least an out
ward show of respect.
The modern method is different. The
fad for making light or sickness has
driven the doctors to show US that
they have all the time been secretly
making light of many Of our cherished
ills. They knew we were victims of
our own imagination and they treated
that imagination in their own shrewd
way We haven't had anything like
the diet Of drugs We thought we had.
A New York physician, writing in
the Ecclesiastical Review on the
general subject of scruples, tells Some
OF the interesting classes Of such cases
which come under the doctors care.
There are, for example. the people who
have a morbid horror of dirt. They
fear especially to soil their hands or
face and will wash themselves over
and over again, ten, twenty, even thi .ty
times day. Whenever they touch
anything they wash their hands.
They frequently SO rub the skin off
them that they become sore and de-
velop varioussforms Of artificial der
mathis because of the mechanical re-
moyal Of the epidermis and the irri-
tation of soap and water. No amount
OF reasoning will keep them from do
ing this. It may be pointed out to
them that most people enjoy quite good
health without any such solicitude
about cleanliness. but that makes no
difference to them.
Some of the women who are afflicted
with the affection would not think for
a moment Of touching a door knob:
they make all sorts Of excuses to wait
for somebody else to open the door.
Often they will not confess their I'M
willingness to touch an object that is
handled by 50 many people. AT the
door of store they will find some
excuse to pause a moment until some
one else opens the door.
They would not think for moment
of handling library book that had
been used by Others. They sometimes
put themselves to considerable dis
comfort and Inconvenience by refus-
ing to touch the railing Of boat or
railway station or the balustrade of a
porch or even house stairway. These
patients are amusing when they come
to visit the physician.
A very interesting set Of breads are
those associated with looking down
from high places. Everybody exper-
fences them to some degree. No one
can look over the edge of high build
ing without a shudder. Even the
workmen on high buildings must
gradually accustom themselves to
working at a height.
81 think I can say without any
breach of confidence" the physician
goes on. that there are more than
half a dozen priests who have told me
in the course Of professional visits Of
the difficulty they experience in saying
mass at nigh altar. They have no
difficulty at all in saying mass on the
level of the floor in convent. Even
being up a single step disturbs them
but slightly. To be up five or six
steps of high altar. however, COM
pietely unnerves some of them. They
have the feeling that they may fall
and so they have to cling to the altar
at times.
This is in reality physical and
not psychic manifestation 0rdinar-
lily our eyes are fixed on objects near
US and a portion of our sense Of equil-
ibrium is dependent on this fxation
of vision on steady objects not far
from us.
"Any one who has sat in a railroad
train and had the curious feeling that
his own train was moving when a
neighboring car was passing will real
ize this. Whenever the nearest OBJ
iects to us are not fixed or when our
immediate surroundings are SO far
from US that it requires special effort
Of vision to fxate them, then We have
q sense Of insecurity"