Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-04-07
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRAcEWELL.

We often have wondered about the
sudden strange illnesses one wakes
with in the night.
Waking at am. with q sore throat,
1t is never q mild sore throat, or q
medium sore throat, but a very severe
one.
Yet when one wakes in the morning
again the thing Is gonel
Or that miraculously sore toe which
one acquired out of nothing at all, but
which led to the sleepy application of
liniment.
And in the morning this. too, was
gone.
Every one has had the experience of
awakening with q seizure Of coughing
or sneezing.
What a cold it seemed! In the
morning most Of the symptoms were
gone or abated. What had become Of
the illness?
The power of imagination, building
on slight hurt somewhere, constructed
them out of the whole cloth, as 1t were.
and as miraculously cured them during
the interval.
We speak not here. of course, of
genuine Ills, which have nothing to do
with ones thoughts about them, but
with those queer dispensations which
the mind builds up out of dreams and a
bit of pain somewhere in the bodily
economy
Night, silent and vast, Is a magnifying
glass which possesses the power of dis
torting and raising to an unprecedented
degree all those things which plain day.
light would show to be insignificant.
The curious interdependence of the
entire body. one part upon another.
permits news OF slight pain to travel
TO distant parts before the intelligent
mind OF the sleeper is aware of 1t.
We say nothing of the subconscious
mind, as 1t is called. because man knows
little of it. after all, and its workings
are too detached and automatic to de-
serve consideration, since little can be
done. one way or the other, in regard
to it.
1t Is only when the sleeper comes to
himself. drowsily trying to grasp his
place in the universe, that he is able to
realize That he Is i'll. The first thing
he should do, in the light Of past per-
formances, is to assure himself that this
pain or indisposition Is nothing, or per-
,, haps less than nothing.
commonly, however, this is the last
thlng ne does. 1t must be admitted
that the conscious reasoning is not at
Its best for some time after a waken-
ing IN the night, whether it be sudden
or slow.
What most persons do, and no doubt
1t is inevitable with some, is to think,
Heavens. I must be terribly i'll! What
a pain there is in my throat! I must
go gargle something"
X X x*
So to the bath room the sleepy one
| goes to indulge in the ridiculous-ap-
peartng practice known as gargling.
Is there anything in the world more
| silly looking than a human being
gargling some antiseptic preparation?
Some practitioners are able to trill
like canaries while carrying on this
practice, while others achieve nothing
more dignified than a terrible sound
| unlike any other in the world.
Back to bed the sufferer goes, won
| dering whether he will be alive in the
morning. Ouch how that throat
hurts! He tries not to swallow, know
ing that 1t will do no good but will
result only in more hurt, but for the
life Of him he cannot resist the expert
ment.
Sleepily he tries a few experimental
swallows, hoping each time that he
will find that he has been dreaming
But no, 1t is still there. He should
not swallow again, he keeps on telling
himself, but he goes right ahead, as If
this one thing he must do.
Sleep finally takes the notions away
from him. Now, here there are two
ways of looking at what happens
| Either the sore throat is genuine and is