- ■. ... 
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V;, ..... • . \. - , - THE HOPE OF THE VARIANT The 
Hope of the Variant 
BY 
JOHN GEORGE GEHRING, M.D., Sc.D. 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
NEW YORK • LONDON 
1923 Copyright, 1923, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
Printed in the United States of America 
Published May, 1923 TO 
MY WIFE 
MARIAN TRUE GEHRING 
WHOSE DEVOTION TO MY AIMS HAS 
BEEN THE INSPIRATION 
OF MY LIFE 
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED PREFACE 
The reason for sending out this book lies in the au- 
thor’s recognition that, owing to the unusual environ- 
ment in which for thirty years he has carried on his 
work, he has been permitted to come into closer rela- 
tions with his patients than ordinarily prevail. A 
limited number having been treated at a time and 
therefore exhaustively observed, results have been 
obtained which he believes demonstrate basic truths 
that justify their publicity. 
From these years, which brought close intimacies, 
deep and lasting friendships have resulted, and the 
appeal for years from former patients from many 
States, that they might be allowed to follow methods 
by which they had been re-educated or restored into 
a condition of well-being, is an incentive to meet their 
wishes; some of whose experiences have been embodied 
in the structure of this book—and whose continued 
appreciations are giving the author an aftermath 
which is the reward of his life-work. 
The writer seeks here to express his grateful appre- 
ciation to Dr. Frederick Peterson, of New York, whose 
sympathy and interest in the motive of this work 
place the author under deepest obligations. 
Bethel. Maine. CONTENTS 
CHAPTER PAGE 
I. The Purpose 1 
II. What Constitutes a Variant 4 
III. Variation in Man and Animals 17 
IV. The Escape of the Variant 27 
V. Cross-Currents 36 
VI. The Balance of Power 46 
VII. Training versus Teaching 55 
VIII. The Variant’s Start in Life 74 
IX. Obsessive Ideas 83 
X. The Way Out 100 
XI. Setting the Stage 112 
XII. Crutches for the Lame 126 
XIII. Put Yourself in His Place 138 
XIV. The Side Issues 151 
XV. Surviving, the Reward of Striving . . . 166 
XVI. Crystallization 177 
XVII. Application of Suggestion 187 
ix X 
CONTENTS 
CHAPTER PASH 
XVIII. Application of Suggestion (continued) . . 198 
XIX. The Release of Inhibitions 211 
XX. The Right of Alleviation 224 
XXI. The Clamor of a Need 233 
XXII. The Hope of the Variant 239 THE HOPE OF THE VARIANT CHAPTER I 
THE PURPOSE 
When after many years of earnest work one lays 
down the brush, the chisel, the pen,—the direction of 
financial, political, or philanthropic enterprises,—or a 
professional career; happy is the man who can still 
look forward with enthusiastic assurance that the 
passion of his life may go on into greater fulfillment 
through the lives of others. 
The object of the author in thus placing the result 
of his efforts before a thinking public is to make the 
way clearer for those interested in his line of service, 
remembering with what gratitude he would have re- 
ceived help in his early years of effort, when so much 
of his work lay in traversing unexplored fields,—had 
more pioneers left for him the practical application of 
principles wrought out into demonstration. 
Therefore he seeks to make an earnest plea on behalf 
of the nobility of the Art of Medicine, without which 
its Science must forever fall short of its complete ful- 
fillment, trusting that he may be able to give some 
degree of assistance to those who will carry on a torch 
which in bygone years would have lighted his way. 
The author has devoted his years of practice to an 
1 2 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
attempt at interpreting the sufferings and confusions of 
those who are called the “nervously ill.” Not those 
unfortunates who are handicapped with organic dis- 
ease, or the results of infectious organisms, but with 
those more or less obscure disturbances of the functions 
of the body, wherein the emotions and the general 
efficiency are so much involved as often to deprive the 
sufferer of the activities and the joy of life. 
This largest number of all those who suffer ill health 
in functional form, the writer has called the Variants, 
meaning that in one way or another they vary more or 
less from the hypothetical or arbitrary average. But 
he particularly desires to be understood as meaning 
that the Variant may be quite rightfully within the 
limits of the normal, if it so be that the business of 
body and mind may be maintained as the result of a 
more intelligent direction and understanding. 
The writer’s attitude towards the Variant is that he 
can be largely re-shaped; that his structural and func- 
tional development can be emphasized or repressed; 
that he can be stimulated to grow in that direction 
wherein he appears defective and controlled wherein 
he is excessive. 
In like manner, as so many helpful modifications 
may be wrought with his body, so may there be ac- 
complished still greater helps in the developing and 
moulding of his mind and character, since these parts 
of the Variant’s equipment are still more flexible and 
marvelously subject to environmental and educational 
influences. THE PURPOSE 
3 
Man is neither wholly an animal, an intelligence or 
a spirit, but all three, and he cannot hope to maintain 
his balance unless all three legs of the tripod which 
comprise his whole are recognized and used. 
We are living in an age wherein the tendency is 
towards intensiveness; wherein the pursuit of the par- 
ticular easily causes us to lose sight of the broader 
landmarks that characterize the face of nature. 
Medical men are often accused by the laity of per- 
mitting themselves to succumb to the lure of their 
special training until it becomes obsessive, and the 
ailment and treatment of the patient are seen only 
through the perceptions that the internist, the surgeon, 
the orthopedist or the neurologist has specially de- 
veloped. No fair-minded physician will hesitate for 
a moment in admitting that such danger exists, or 
that many an earnest medical adviser may be led into 
too narrowed grooves of interpretation in trying to 
relieve the distresses of the sufferer. 
The need is obvious that we interpret the sick man 
from the fundamental basis of his complete equipment. 
That our view-point shall consider his frame, his 
organs, his inherited qualifications of mind and char- 
acter, and his environmental possibilities. And that 
then, over and embracing all these, we shall keep ever 
in mind that incorporeal part of him, his Human Soul, 
which is so intimately interwoven with his destiny and 
which will not brook being ignored. CHAPTER II 
WHAT CONSTITUTES A VARIANT 
In some sense all human beings are Variants. None 
may look upon himself as being wholly distinguished 
as symbolizing the perfect individual of his type. To 
vary in body, mind, and character-potentials is our 
common attribute, and though we wander wider in the 
character of one or more of our equipments than is the 
usual, yet such variations may be as valuable, are often 
a privilege, and are always legitimate. 
Because of this universal law of variation it became 
possible for one individual to give us the talking- 
machine, for another the telegraph, and for still others 
the steam-engine, the wireless, and the telephone; and 
for countless others the marking of the world’s progress 
with the milestones of their achievements in science, 
art, statesmanship and learning. All of these were 
variants from the ordinary and owed their greatness 
to the fact that the pendulum of some special faculty 
swung farther from the perpendicular in the particular 
direction in which they excelled, than that of other 
men. 
Nature lavishly justifies her attraction for the 
student because of her infinite variety. Hers is a store 
4 WHAT MAKES A VARIANT 
5 
of inexhaustible resources, and a lure of endless fasci- 
nations. The speedy termination of all interest in any 
subject may be predicated when the limit of the possi- 
bility of its variation is in sight. Nature alone can 
levy perennial tribute upon the wonder and interest of 
man, because of the bewildering maze of diversity of 
forms into which she leads him. Were we to gather a 
hundred blades of grass from the lawn, and a hundred 
leaves from the oak or maple overhead, though the 
blades were all grass and the leaves all oak or maple, 
we know that not one would, in all particulars, be 
exactly like unto the other. Were we to sow all the 
seeds contained in the poppy pod which ripened in the 
garden the past summer, we should be likely to get as 
many plants as we had perfect seeds. Of these doubt- 
less the larger number would come true as regards 
general resemblance to the parent in form and color, 
but a smaller number would begin to show a slight 
variation, and a few would be likely to depart quite 
radically in color or in the form of leaf or petal from 
the parent. If we sow the seeds of our favorite variety 
of apple and should live to see their fruit, our disap- 
pointment would be keen since not by one chance in a 
million should we be likely to find even one that 
claimed relationship to its parent, further than that it 
was an apple. 
We know that there exist within the territory of the 
United States approximately some eighteen thousand 
species of beetles. These are grouped into families and 
genera and the genera contain few or many species. 6 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
Some genera contain hundreds of species, i.e., forms 
distinct from each other, but containing a sufficient 
number of characteristics in common to justify their 
being grouped in the common relationship of a genus. 
Among the millions of individuals, members of any 
one single species, that may occur within the territory 
of their distribution,—no two would be exactly alike. 
Were we to take a tiny fragment of one of the chalk 
cliffs of England and prepare it for the microscope, we 
should find it composed largely of the whole or broken 
fragments of the calcareous particles of microscopic 
creatures. These once inhabited the ancient seas and 
their soft, gelatinous bodies secreted out of the sea- 
water the lime which formed the protecting shell 
around them. These creatures, the Foramenifera (so 
called because the tiny structures, often very beau- 
tiful, are full of openings or foramina), are grouped 
likewise into families and genera and species. But of 
all the myriads of individuals that belong to any one 
species (though they would all have their structural 
points in common), the chalk cliffs of England would 
be disintegrated in vain were we to seek to find two 
exactly alike. 
Throughout the realm of nature, beginning with the 
swarming myriads of organisms, invisible to the naked 
eye, that constitute the primordial ooze at the bottom 
of the seas, up through all the stages of evolution to its 
present culmination in man, life is a bewildering 
kaleidoscope of greater or lesser variations in every one 
of its units. Among the domestic animals, in sheep, WHAT MAKES A VARIANT 
7 
fowl, cattle, horses, dogs, and cats, these variations are 
familiar to all. Among wild animals the same holds 
entirely true, save that these are present to a lesser 
degree since man has not arbitrarily interfered with 
their mating. 
When then we contemplate our own genus, Man, we 
should be prepared to meet with the manifestations of 
the same universal law, namely, that no matter how 
much the individuals of a race may resemble each 
other in the general characteristics of color, form, and 
habits, and no matter through what period of time 
such groups of human beings may have lived together 
and their peculiarities become accentuated because of 
environmental conditions—there will be no two who 
are even nearly alike. 
We are able very readily to make divisions of our 
fellow beings into races, and as we subdivide the indi- 
viduals of a race into families we can easily see in the 
latter the closer grouping together of similar traits, 
some of which may be so strongly defined as to enable 
us thereby to recognize the individual’s family. But 
we know that even in the children of a common parent- 
age there may be many points of diversity in character 
and form and physical fitness, and were we to search 
diligently enough, we should find that even twins are 
twins only in the sense of being couplets—and in none 
other. 
As, then, we know ourselves to differ to some degree 
in all things from every other of our fellows as regards 
size, color, and form, without feeling that such differ- 8 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
ences necessarily involve unfitness, so may we be as- 
sured of like differences in all things pertaining to the 
intellectual, moral, and organic equipment without 
necessarily involving our suitability for life, efficiency, 
and happiness. 
To vary is a fundamental law of nature. Because 
of this inherent tendency alone is it possible for life to 
persist upon the globe. The tendency to vary in the 
plant and animal is the throwing out of feelers, every 
single newly born individual of the organic world being 
more or less of an experiment to see if it be not a little 
better adapted to survive in its environment than its 
predecessor. In nature environmental changes take 
place usually upon a scale so vast as to involve long 
periods of time, and endless latitude is given organic 
things wherein gradually to adapt themselves. Only 
with man in his own affairs and wherein he interferes 
with those of nature, is the time period precipitated to 
the degree, often, of trying the patience of the patient 
mother of us all. 
The types of humanity passing before our vision 
make varying impressions upon us. In the case of our 
friends we know them by their various attributes of 
mind, heart, and character,—what they are to us, to 
themselves, or to the community. It is their per- 
sonality or ability to deliver much or little towards 
our interest or affection that attracts us. But with the 
great mass of other people who are acquaintances or 
strangers it is not quite the same. Here we get 
occasional glimpses of that other view wherein they WHAT MAKES A VARIANT 
9 
present themselves more as beings,—physiological and 
anatomical creatures. Indeed we have all in our lighter 
moments compared a squat, thick-necked and heavy- 
jawed individual, with the lower part of the face and 
neck greater in circumference than the vertex, with 
small light-colored, white-fringed eyes and a stolid 
manner, with what we are pleased to call a porcine 
type, and the wolf, the fox, the bull (as witness the 
time-honored sobriquet of “John Bull” to the phleg- 
matic Englishman) the fish and other striking types 
of the animal kingdom have all furnished us amuse- 
ment as the fancied prototype of various individuals 
of our own genus. 
Although it is not the purpose of the writer to 
venture into speculation as to the meaning of such 
fancied or real anatomic resemblances, it is well recog- 
nized that temperament and certain definite mental 
and character attributes pair themselves with certain 
more or less definite types of anatomical structure suf- 
ficiently often to have developed among us the recog- 
nition of a sort of natural association. Nor may we be 
permitted to dismiss this subject too lightly at this 
point, for to the discerning eye a much greater sig- 
nificance may be evolved from the anatomical equip- 
ment of the patient who presents himself to the 
physician than is often done; merely to assume that in 
one case as in every other, we are simply dealing with 
a stomach or a nervous system and that the one func- 
tions more or less perfectly than the other, is not 
sufficiently comprehensive. 10 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
The diagrammatic method of teaching anatomy and 
physiology, as of many other subjects, must of neces- 
sity be; but one should not lose sight of the fact that 
it is but diagrammatic and exists but for the purpose of 
giving us a fulcrum or base of operations. From this 
average base nature reserves the right to vary endlessly 
and widely and is ever intolerant of any attempt of 
ours to confine our interpretations of her to too 
restricted limits. 
The natural sporting and evolutionary tendencies of 
each individual organism carry it continually away 
from the arbitrarily conceived diagrammatic picture 
that lingers in our minds, and often perplex us sorely 
when we find that our established boundaries are never 
everywhere wholly observed. To the lack of recogni- 
tion of these ever-present variants of the physiological 
problem which a patient presents, in the vain attempt 
to coerce diverse phenomena into arbitrary groups and 
to compare these with as arbitrary text-book standards, 
much of our own confusion and the continued distress 
of the patient may be due. 
To such fundamentally erroneous concepts are owing 
the defects, so well although so despairingly recognized 
by educators, that lie at the core of all heterogeneous 
assembling of school children for the purpose of 
administering an instruction which is based upon a 
homogeneous premise. The individual whom such 
standardized dosage of instruction may happen to fit 
most easily, is most benefited, and all others in a de- 
scending ratio, and the greatest variant goes to the WHAT MAKES A VARIANT 
11 
wall. Such methods, by no means confined to the 
schoolroom but prevalent in all of the relations of man 
wherever the individual can not escape into freedom 
and more elastic requirements but is the victim of 
machine-made concepts, are, however, not wholly born 
of necessity, but are due to the ignoring of the greatest 
truth Science has ever taught us, the ever-insistent 
law of the Tendency to Vary. 
What constitutes the standard of the normal is a 
much mooted question and one that should receive 
wide latitudes of interpretation by both our own pro- 
fession and the laity. If a table be furnished of the 
average height of one hundred men, and another of 
their average weight, the deduction may be made that 
such average height would weigh the corresponding 
average of pounds, which would give a certain number 
of pounds weight for each inch of height. Now whereas 
this is perfectly true so far as the arithmetical calcula- 
tion is concerned, it does not follow that if a man of 
any given height should weigh more or less than the 
mathematical average, that his weight would be so 
much away from the normal. The term “normal,” as 
it would generally be used in this sense by the laity, 
is interpreted as meaning that which is consistent with 
health. It should mean that his weight may be incon- 
sistent with the arbitrary arithmetical equation. The 
fact is that authorities now agree that in all tables of 
height-weight ratios for grown-ups or children, a ten 
per cent variation either way would be within normal 
bounds,—a fluctuation from averages within physio- 12 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
logical limits. The average winter or summer tem- 
perature of any given locality, based upon a similar 
method of averages, would not necessarily give us a 
correct interpretation of that climate. 
In like manner the question of the normal of a man’s 
mental or physical efficiency may hardly be estimated 
by the usual method of averages, since nature does not 
seem to tolerate such arbitrary standards. A man’s 
normal can really be measured only by comparison with 
the potentials resident within himself and never with 
those of any other individual, and his normal may be 
defined as that maximum degree of energy he is capable 
of liberating without undue effort,—i.e., his maximum 
of easily produced energy. “A man permanently does 
well only that which he does easily” is a truism worthy 
of a second thought. 
Whatever a man is capable of doing that corresponds 
fairly with the equipment nature has given him, both 
in its conscious and subconscious possibilities, justifies 
the assumption that he is getting out of himselt that 
reasonable degree of efficiency to which he is entitled. 
No greater mistake could be made than to measure 
the sum of his own rendering by that of his neighbor, 
who may be more or less abundantly qualified and who 
may in his turn be realizing the maximum or less than 
the maximum inherent within him. He is accountable 
only to himself and his happiness may be much more 
within his own keeping than he is aware. “I weigh 
too much” or “I weigh too little.” “I can only do half 
as much mental work as my neighbor.” “I cannot eat WHAT MAKES A VARIANT 
13 
as much or sleep as well or enjoy as much as the other 
man,” these and many more habits of comparison are 
too often misleading, and are sources of unhappiness 
to the people who have these erroneous conceptions of 
what they have a right to expect of themselves. 
Within the wide radius wherein an elastic and 
tolerant mother nature allows her children to seek and 
find their equilibrium, we may find many divergent 
forms, and this is as true of the vegetable as of the 
animal world. Were not such latitude made possible, 
life upon this earth would have ceased with the 
moment of its appearance, since environment, itself so 
variable, demands from life variability, and there 
would have been no wonder-story of evolution from 
primordial cell to man. 
The pendulum of the tendency to vary swings 
within every unit of our race, and within every indi- 
vidual one of that countless agglomeration of tiny cells 
that go to make up each unit. This is the reason we 
exist today, sitting in imperfect judgment in an 
attempt to understand it all. 
We are all familiar with the diverse fate that befalls 
the tiny seeds of the pine, depending upon their falling 
upon the forest floor, upon the margin of the wood, or 
upon the open meadow beyond. In each case they 
may live and become trees,—but how unlike they will 
be to one another. The same fate befalls animals, not 
only their physical condition but their degree of cun- 
ning and their power to fend for themselves being thus 
variously developed. The potentials which make pos- 14 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
sible this variability and still maintain themselves are 
inherent. They lie in the fact that dormant possibili- 
ties are awakened when environmental conditions are 
favorable. 
But not only do such dormant possibilities become 
released in response to the call of changing environ- 
ment—they also are set free when for various reasons 
some usual method of functioning becomes retarded 
or even more radically suspended. The faculty of 
speech, which physiologists recognize as being in most 
instances located in the frontal lobe of the left hem- 
isphere of the brain, has been in some cases totally 
destroyed in consequence of disease or injury. This 
faculty may be capable of being developed anew in the 
corresponding region of the remaining lobe which 
change would never have taken place had the original 
site remained intact. 
No more familiar illustration of the presence within 
us of latent resources could be cited than the wonderful 
expansion of the other special senses when the sense 
of sight is for any reason destroyed. The suppression 
of this channel for the conveying of impressions to the 
consciousness from the outer world becomes gradually 
supplemented by an acuteness of hearing which seems 
almost uncanny, and by a development of the sense of 
touch that appears still more remarkable. In like 
manner when the exigencies of existence demand it, as 
among certain savage races, the sense of smell assumes 
a new significance and serves man almost as wonder- 
fully as it does the specialized dog. WHAT MAKES A VARIANT 
15 
Specialization of a sense or faculty is but the result 
of use, and use is the outcome of necessity, and neces- 
sity but draws upon the latent potentials which are a 
part of the inherent tendency to vary—the provisions 
of nature resident in living organisms to flow their 
plastic selves towards the direction wherein they may 
find an outlet for the purpose of more fitly and surely 
surviving. The one-armed man develops a double use- 
fulness in the remaining one and should this also fail 
him he discovers unsuspected possibilities in his feet. 
The natives of the steep hill countries of the Philippine 
Islands develop feet wherein the great toe stands off 
from the others much as it does in the ape, the result 
of the necessity of maintaining a footing upon the 
almost precipitous sides of the hills they inhabit—a 
degree of specialization that might almost become pos- 
sible in a single lifetime to a white man were he corre- 
spondingly environed. 
In this manner do the varying, often widely diver- 
gent equipments with which man is provided, furnish 
him with the power of great plasticity and permit him 
to save himself unto himself and his race. Since the 
first business of man’s organism is that of self-sustain- 
ment,—the matter of nourishing itself in such sufficient 
manner that all subsequent functions may be per- 
mitted, it follows that in the consideration of the char- 
acter of such equipment we may find a clue which may 
lead us to a more intelligent interpretation of his 
multiform degrees of efficiency. Human limitation, as 
we are too wont to interpret it, practically does not 16 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
exist within the vast latitudes of adaptation inherent 
in Nature’s plan. We use and touch upon only the 
margins. We need to learn that in man variation, even 
though to our feeble vision seemingly a barrier, is 
merely Nature’s eternal lure and invitation towards 
endless other fields of possible expansion. CHAPTER III 
VARIATION IN MAN AND ANIMALS 
Properly to study any subject in nature we need an 
extensive series of data wherefrom to make compari- 
sons and to observe differences, and such series is fur- 
nished ad infinitum in the individuals of our kind. 
Roughly dividing people into two classes we find the 
greater number of one class are relatively well or at 
least sufficiently so to permit them to fulfil their neces- 
sary duties and to live the average number of years, 
unless cut off by conditions of an infectious or epidemic 
type, by accidents, or by the culmination of vicious 
processes of a chronic or malignant character. Some 
of the above-mentioned conditions are as yet only 
remotely under our control and are not subject to the 
present discussion. 
Among this large number of comparatively well 
people we shall find many diverse degrees of efficiency. 
Some individuals will be able to render a very high 
maximum and others may border upon the verge of a 
standard that seems low in comparison. They may be 
alike, however, in the sense that they are fairly satisfied 
with themselves, that they make no complaint, and are 
at peace with the conditions of life as they find them. 
17 18 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
Among the other class we find those individuals who 
have not been able to identify themselves with the 
business of life; and who in their relation to affairs, to 
society, to their family and to themselves, have been 
compelled, apparently or really, sooner or later, to 
relinquish their claim upon their right to usefulness 
and happiness. 
It is obvious that in the case of the first mentioned 
larger number the natural equipment must be of such 
nature and degree as to permit the conscious self to 
attend to outside affairs sufficiently well to be oblivious 
and tolerant of subjective or unconscious interferences, 
since otherwise the individual would at once enter the 
ranks of the second class, the seeming or really unfit. 
It is with this latter unfortunate class which is visited 
with more suffering, real or imagined, than a beneficent 
Nature could ever have intended, that the writer is 
particularly concerned. 
In considering such unfitness we may for the present 
simply recognize that any interference with the uncon- 
scious pursuit of the conscious, of necessity causes a 
break in the automatic following of one’s activities. 
From that moment, it depending merely upon the fre- 
quency and duration of such breaks, and upon the 
power and resistance possessed by the conscious, the 
individual’s welfare may become threatened. The 
causes contributory to unfitness lead us back at once 
to a scrutiny of the factor of variability, in one or more 
of the patient’s physical or environmental equipments. 
It is from this basis alone that we may hope to get a VARIATION IN MAN 
19 
rational clue as to the causes that have led him astray. 
Chief among these must be held the matter of the 
framework of his body and the nature and position of 
the organs which actuate it. We will find the anatom- 
ical variations existing in individuals to be as numerous 
as the units considered, and to present some striking 
extremes. The tall, the thin, the fat, the stocky present 
the commonest contrasts and ordinarily the vision 
would rest content with the recognition of such obvious 
differences. 
But it follows, since such variations do exist in the 
length of bone and breadth of chest, in the develop- 
ment or non-development of fat or muscle; from an 
erectness of carriage with head, chest, hips, knees and 
feet all in perfect balance, to the opposite extreme 
where we see the head and shoulders thrown forward, 
the chest sunken, with a sagging abdomen and the legs 
presenting a knee-sprung appearance,—that the con- 
sequent power to endure must be a like variable quan- 
tity. To work as a day laborer or run a Marathon 
race, to be an oarsman or a member of a football team, 
and to do these things successfully, not only argues 
the existence of a suitable muscle and bone equipment 
but leads us also to look for like variations elsewhere. 
These we find abundantly in the character of the vital 
organs with which the individual is endowed. The 
man with a splendid digestion who can look upon all 
gastronomic horrors undismayed is easily recognizable. 
He has a wide body, correspondingly deep; his stomach 
is well tucked up under his diaphragm and makes no 20 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
delay in the timely digestion and passing along of its 
contents; he has his full allotment of small intestine 
which has undergone no such curtailment as may un- 
fortunately be the case with many of the opposite 
type; his under jaw is wide and deep, projecting well 
beneath the upper, all his masticatory muscles are in 
evidence, whilst his dental equipment so far as his 
grinding teeth are concerned, is superb. 
Such men are often six-cylinder engines, capable of 
great endurance. We see them at times in business or 
the professions, working interminably with no sense of 
fatigue, and setting a standard of work accomplished 
far above the physical possibilities of most of those 
over whom they have authority. It may be said, also, 
that these men see their fellows only out of the 
windows of their own capabilities and are often hard 
masters. But the opposite type unfortunately is far 
more frequent, from its extreme form up to innumer- 
able intermediate stages. Of such divergent forms the 
most conspicuous are those characterized outwardly by 
a slender trunk, contracted chest walls, sagging abdo- 
men, insufficient muscular development partaking of 
various unilateral irregularities and often striking de- 
partures in the posture and poise of the body which, in 
extreme cases, make it appear at times as though the 
individual were about to pitch forward. 
So well recognized have these aberrant or variant 
types become that it is an easy matter at once to single 
them out in any gathering of people, civilized or 
savage; and even in any photographic presentation of VARIATION IN MAN 
21 
a group of people the type declares itself easily, even 
to the eyes of the inexperienced when once their 
attention has been called thereto. Only of late years 
has the significance of these outward anatomical irregu- 
larities become associated by medical men with the 
coexistence of equally striking internal departures 
from the usual. It is in these cases that there becomes 
revealed to us a startling chapter out of the evolu- 
tionary history of the race. Here we find relentlessly 
demonstrated that man’s progress from the lower type 
to his present estate has by no means been an easy one, 
and that nature would seem to be exacting penalty for 
his aspiration in lifting himself from the four-footed 
to his present erect posture. It is in consequence of 
this upward progress that innumerable individuals (it 
has been estimated as many as one in five) still bear 
traces in varying degree of an arrangement of their 
abdominal organs that once must have prevailed, long 
before “Adam delved and Eve span,” in the dawn of 
man’s evolution. 
These variations consist of all degrees and kinds of 
deficiencies in the suspensory attachments of the 
stomach, bowels, kidneys and pelvic organs, out of 
which arise the multitude of provocations, legitimate 
and illegitimate, for surgical interference. Likewise it 
is because of these variations in the shape, size and 
relations of these organs to one another, and to the 
manner of their attachment to the supporting bony 
structures of the body, that an added impulse may be 
given to the endless list of disorders of the stomach and 22 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
intestines, and a host of others affecting the liver, the 
kidneys, the heart and circulatory apparatus, the 
quality of the blood stream and by no means least, the 
sanity of the mind! 
In our own race in like manner as with the lower 
animals, nature has gradually suffered one form of 
structure to become displaced by another and the lungs 
of the warm-blooded animal are billions of years re- 
moved from the gills of their ancestors, whilst the 
lower animals still crawl, or fly, or swim, or walk on 
all-fours. But such evolutionary advance entails the 
constant modifying of not only the body but its organs 
as well, and the appendix vermiformis, of unfavorable 
notoriety, long the most glaring offender as an organ 
of the first magnitude in the list of rudimentary rem- 
nants, has today a close rival in the large intestine, 
against which a list of arraignments is being brought 
to bear quite sufficient to class it among the suspects. 
Concerning both of these organs, however, the final 
word may not have been said and it may yet be shown 
that, as in the case of a delinquent man, we can often 
make an excellent citizen and servant out of a bad one, 
by putting him upon his honor and investing him with 
authority and responsibility, so may we, with the large 
intestine at least, obtain the happiest normal function- 
ing if we look upon it with trustful confidence instead 
of accusing it of criminal intent! 
In extenuation of Evolution as manifested today in 
man, it must not be forgotten that our modern civiliza- 
tion is persistently and aggravatingly, and never so VARIATION IN MAN 
23 
much as at present, hurrying Nature’s more gradual 
processes. The speed of modern life is set at a pace 
which subjects all of us to the need of such rapid 
readjustments that many an unfortunate is obliged to 
retire from the race,—in more senses than one—for 
whom a more deliberate and rational environment 
would have found ample room and usefulness. It may 
be reasonably asserted that out of this class of indi- 
viduals (those for whom environmental change and 
evolutionary speed are too rapid) the largest number 
of sufferers are recruited—and, in the writer’s experi- 
ence, out of which by far the larger number may be 
restored to a happier usefulness. 
In the breeding of domestic animals man has come 
to recognize the significance of the value of nature’s 
various types, and acting upon her suggestions, has 
accentuated them by judicious selection and breeding. 
It has thus become possible to breed the sheep for an 
increased quality and quantity of wool and mutton, 
the ox for beef, milk, or cream, and, in the case of the 
pig, the aristocratic breed of “Chester Whites” is a far 
cry from the plebeian razor-back of our South. With 
the horse the qualities that make for speed and wind 
are carefully studied and selected for breeding. We 
do not look to the race horse,—with his slender flanks, 
trim legs, prominent veins and deep chest and wide 
nostrils,—to pull the dray, since the Percheron with 
his massive body and legs like trunks of trees can do 
this infinitely better. We select and breed the domestic 24 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
fowl for her egg-laying or table qualities and the game 
fowl for qualities less justifiable! 
In dogs the degree of variation, due to the hand of 
man, is infinitely more specialized as witness the bull- 
dog, the dachs, the greyhound, the terrier and the 
collie. Were these widely differing breeds to be per- 
mitted to intermingle and the selection no longer to be 
persisted in, we would again have a dog in whom all 
of the above-mentioned highly accentuated peculiari- 
ties had disappeared. If we content ourselves in assum- 
ing that a dog is merely a dog after all, regardless of 
his breed and the well-defined qualities that go with it, 
and were to make demands inconsistent therewith, such 
as setting a bulldog to track a rabbit or to point a bird, 
disregarding the great imperfection of his sense of 
smell,—we should be quite as irrational and faulty in 
our sense of nature’s fitness of things as were we to 
expect a man with tuberculous lungs to run a race, a 
man with a highly developed brain to content himself 
as a day laborer, or one with a sagging stomach to eat 
pork and beans and cabbage and feel happy thereafter. 
In the case of the above-mentioned animals we tacitly 
accept and expect only certain requirements. We do 
not look to the mastiff for the speed with which to 
overtake the fox, nor the Chinese toy-dog to protect 
our homes. But do we apply a similar good judgment 
in the expectations we are apt to have of ourselves, 
regardless of what nature may have given us as equip- 
ment? In truth we seem to suspend, too often, the 
perfectly good judgment exercised over our cattle and VARIATION IN MAN 
25 
demand the impossible of ourselves. The more or less 
unfit of our kind are often only this in the qualities 
wherein others excel—they prove many times quite fit 
for useful living when they have found that brawn or 
breadth of beam do not constitute all virtue. They 
may be capable of developing new fitness in other 
directions, even though these be not the ordinary ones, 
and discover that life, usefulness and enjoyment may 
flow out and on through many channels, even though 
some of the usual ones seem closed. 
Our lowly prototype, the fresh-water Amoeba, an 
organism consisting of a single cell, embodies within 
itself the power to do and be all things which the 
primal needs of its existence demand. In order to 
propel itself along it sends out and withdraws pro- 
longations of its body; it simply wraps its plastic sub- 
stance around a particle of food in order to digest it; 
that it may multiply, it merely divides itself into two ; 
if it desires to pass through an opening smaller than 
itself it changes its form from a globular lump to an 
elongated and flexible finger, resuming its usual shape 
upon the other side. The analogy in nature holds good 
throughout, for we have innumerable cells in our blood- 
stream that do practically all of these things. This 
tiny creature, just discernible to the naked eye, repre- 
sents in its structure all of the primal characteristics 
of living matter, such as are identical within the indi- 
vidual cells of our own bodies (save that the latter, 
because they live together in a community life in 
countless millions, have in consequence become more 26 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
specialized in order that, as becomes a higher organism, 
special service may be rendered. The same power of 
plastic adaptation resident in the lowliest forms of life 
and in the simplest cell, wherein if no outlet is found 
in one direction it merely modifies its form and seeks 
another, resides in us all and is at the service particu- 
larly of him who finds it difficult to tread the beaten 
paths; he, too, may become enabled to take another, 
and thereby fulfill the reason for his being. 
Individuals who are unfit are often so only because 
they demand of themselves that they conform with the 
majority. They have not been taught that they need 
only conform with themselves. It is quite true that 
we come by inheritance into qualifications and dis- 
qualifications of our body structure, even as far as the 
quality of the brain cells themselves. We inherit 
family traits of ability or mediocrity, of vice and virtue, 
of health, disease and crime. We inherit the broad 
body, deep chest with its powerful machinery, as well 
as the flat chest with its constricted breathing power, 
and the digestive organs with deficient ligaments. But 
it is also true that we inherit something immeasurably 
greater than all of these. Ours is the privilege of com- 
ing into the world with the Divine Afflatus at the core 
of our beings, with the limitless power to vary, upward 
as well as downward, with the possession of the eternal 
principle within, which gives us latitude wherein to 
save ourselves! CHAPTER IV 
THE ESCAPE OF THE VARIANT 
Assuming that an individual finds himself in some 
degree handicapped in his efficiency, we are led to in- 
quire into the causes, whether they are of physiological 
or psychological origin, or both. That there may exist 
anatomical factors in his problem—slight or greater 
diversities of structure which render functioning more 
difficult when physiological fluctuations arise—we 
have been made aware, and in such case their reaction 
upon his psychology, i.e., upon his mental or emotional 
state, should not be difficult to trace. In most in- 
stances we shall find that such disturbances of the 
vegetative functions have become factors that are 
occupying the front of the consciousness, the sufferer 
being absorbed with the thought that he has a head- 
ache, or cannot sleep, or is depressed, or inefficient, or 
pursued by obsessive ideas to the degree that the 
symptoms, by reason of their insistent prominence in 
the consciousness, are having directed to themselves 
the remedial measures employed. 
The neurasthenic and psychasthenic are not by any 
means such well-defined types as they would appear, 
and which flourish so conspicuously as entities in the 
27 28 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
disease-nomenclature of the laity, and the medical 
profession itself is not free from a similar 
too-great readiness to make distinctive appellation of 
such terms. If by their use we imply that the sufferer 
is nervously or mentally unfit to take his proper place 
in the ranks of the happy and useful because of his 
functional disability, they may be allowed in the 
absence of something better, but if they are interpreted 
as pathological states, distinct in themselves and 
capable of clearly defined boundaries, as tuberculosis 
would be regarded, we are at fault, since no such 
definitions are constant. 
Mental and emotional states which produce in the 
individual exaggerated consciousness of self, are by no 
means confined to those who are ill or in any discern- 
ible manner handicapped by disorders of physiological 
function or anatomical variation, and may occur at 
times in any one. Nevertheless, in case of perversion 
of function, they are more marked in the variant and 
constitute the bulk of his unhappiness. As mentioned 
above, if an individual were permitted to pursue his 
affairs without being conscious of his subjective sen- 
sations, practically he would be a well person and his 
efficiency would be commensurate with his necessities 
or ambitions. If, however, there were unusual proc- 
esses going on within him, either in the matter of the 
efficiency of his muscles, or in the chemistry of his 
digestion, or in the proper functioning of any other 
organ, so that these irregularities obtruded themselves 
by sensation or other disturbing results of imperfect ESCAPE OF THE VARIANT 
29 
function upon his consciousness, the degree of his 
inefficiency would be apt to be proportionate. 
The possibilities of such interference are latent in 
all men. In some they may rarely come to the surface; 
and such fortunate individuals may come to the end 
of life without having experienced a ripple upon the 
surface of their well-being. Such are, however, the 
few and are not, on this account, necessarily superior 
to the vast rank and file who do not ride in chaises but 
accomplish the journey on foot, often finding the mile- 
stones far enough apart and encountering the mud and 
dust, sunshine and shadow, all in the course of their 
well-earned miles. It would be easy for anyone at 
once to call to mind individuals who may be thus 
readily dispossessed of the smooth flow of their objec- 
tivity, i.e., made conscious of themselves—of their 
subjectivity. Most of us could thus be “dethroned” if 
effort enough were made. 
Usually a slight degree of such dispossession re- 
adjusts itself, the individual himself not being quite 
aware of what has happened, save that for the moment 
he has lost his self-possession or his power of concen- 
tration. Many persons are unable easily to keep them- 
selves separated from themselves—they coalesce—the 
objective or conscious becomes displaced by an over- 
flow from the subjective—or unconscious—they be- 
come aware of themselves! The person who loses time 
in again taking up the broken threads of his attention, 
if interrupted in an occupation illustrates one of the 
commonest types of such distraction. If the inter- 30 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
ruption were carried further, or some new or impera- 
tive thought were placed before him, he might prove 
quite unable to pursue the original one with which he 
had been occupied. He would feel himself “put out” 
—the flanges upon the wheels of his powers of concen- 
tration were not sufficient to keep the rails in the 
presence of the pressure from an opposing direction. 
Whilst it is true that some of such peculiarities may be 
simply due to lack of training, there are often deeper- 
lying causes involved which probably have to do with 
a native peculiarity—a variational feature—of the 
anatomical, physiological, or psychological equipment. 
The differences existing in our susceptibility to pain 
are continually brought to the physician’s attention. 
Here, again, the one succumbs to that which would 
cause another scarcely to pause in what he may have 
been doing. Some individuals will become faint even 
to unconsciousness, not only upon experiencing a slight 
pain but even at the suggestion of pain, or at the sight 
of blood, or at the production of an instrument that 
may produce blood or pain. A strong, able-bodied man 
recently told the writer that he had just been bleeding 
from the nose so frightfully as almost to cause him to 
faint from loss of blood and weakness. The handker- 
chief being produced which he had held to his nose it 
was obvious that no more than a teaspoonful of blood 
had been lost, but its generous distribution over the 
entire handkerchief was quite sufficient to produce 
upon the sensitive individual an instantaneous suc- 
cession of mental images of a greatly distorted char- ESCAPE OF THE VARIANT 
31 
acter. The thought of a nauseous dose of medicine— 
such as the over-familiar castor oil—may even be 
capable of inducing qualms in the sensitive reader! 
To listen to the recital of another’s pain may cause 
shivers of discomfort or a sinking at the epigastrium 
to take place in a sensitive subject—and peering over 
a precipice, or out of the window of a high building, or 
attempting to climb upon any place that changes our 
accustomed relation to the surrounding floor or stable 
ground may, by suggestion, so endanger our equilib- 
rium as to endanger life. 
We all have personal experience of this common sus- 
ceptibility to being dispossessed of our objective atten- 
tion through the overflow of the subjective, and 
examples are innumerable. Yet some of the subjects 
in whom the above-cited tendencies are exaggerated, 
get accustomed to such sensitivenesses of their makeup, 
adapt themselves thereto, which then merely become 
a part of the individual-complex, which they learn 
to accept as a matter of course. The readiness, how- 
ever, with which such individual sensitivenesses are 
assimilated will depend upon their frequency and upon 
their similarity to those of other individuals. Were 
our symptoms quite unlike those of others, and had 
never been heard of before, we would become effec- 
tually startled, though they were quite innocent. A 
rarely occurring phenomenon of this kind, which does 
not give its possessor opportunity to recall that it has 
occurred before and that he has survived it, or one 
entirely new to his experience, may be capable of quite 32 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
disassociating him by its strangeness. In such case it 
would not be that the phenomenon is in itself one to 
be feared, but the distress arises because of the element 
of the unknown,—and thus is born Fear, our ancient 
enemy, and a powerful cause in the production of a 
disassociation wherein the conscious perspective is im- 
perilled. It is this large class of sufferers who find 
themselves upon the outskirts of that land wherein 
dwells security from chronic discomfort,—wherein are 
the people who eat and sleep and work and enjoy and 
who are enabled to count upon each day and each 
tomorrow with serene assurance—the Variants, with 
whom we have to deal, and seek further into the causes 
that contribute to their great susceptibility to dis- 
equilibrium. 
We are not forgetting that chronic functional dis- 
orders are often entitled to the suspicion of consisting 
of probable, though not often recognizable, modifica- 
tions in the histological and chemical relations of the 
cell. Indeed it is quite rational that a cell which at a 
given moment is functioning at a high degree of 
efficiency, should at the same time present a definite 
maximum degree of biological perfection; and that in 
the same proportion in which such functioning may 
deviate from the individual’s normal, we are justified 
in expecting the existence of an aberration in the 
biological and histological relations. Eventually, due 
to prolonged interference with perfect functioning, 
usually extending over a period of years, various 
organic and degenerative changes ensue. In some of ESCAPE OF THE VARIANT 
33 
these, as in the scleroses, wherein the natural pro- 
vision for the maintenance of functioning efficiency 
has reached the limit of its capacity, nature finally 
gives it up with the compromise of fibrous tissue,—but 
we know that it is a long time before her patience is 
exhausted and that in by far the larger number of 
instances she is long-suffering and forgiving. 
Since recovery from functional disorder is so com- 
mon,—we may even say the rule, it follows that it 
must be possible for a unit or group of cells to pass 
repeatedly from one state of functioning activity to 
another without necessary injury to their legitimate 
powers. We see this frequently illustrated in indi- 
viduals who may have reached middle life with an 
almost life-long history of chronic disorder wherein 
nutrition, owing to imperfectly working digestive 
organs, has always been at its lowest ebb and wherein 
the capacity of the stomach to contain and digest food 
is at a minimum. The psychic powers here also seem 
to have become in like manner permanently disquali- 
fied, and the mental and emotional life to have given 
up the apparently impossible task of ever achieving 
such reasonable efficiency as, in the absence of objec- 
tive organic disease, the patient had reason to expect. 
Nevertheless, as the result of moral and physical re- 
education, such people may be quite made over, taught 
to eat and sleep, work and play, and become rejuve- 
nated in mind and body. Such frequent births into a 
broader life would not be possible but for the existence 34 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
of a very tenacious vital force which may slumber for 
many years and yet become awakened. 
The psychic life, i.e., the mental and emotional, plays 
no small role in such re-creations, and is a lever of 
wonderful possibilities if employed with insight and 
sympathy. Skill of a highly perceptive type is needed 
in enlisting on behalf of the patient these subtle forces, 
so far removed from the militant measures of physic 
and surgery. It becomes necessary for the physician, 
above all things else, to recognize the existence of that 
mysterious force which can inhibit or release vital 
function, and then to play upon it with the finest tac- 
tile sense of the understanding! The variant cannot 
always charge to the faults and neglect of his early 
physical training that he is a semi-invalid at twenty, 
thirty or fifty years of age, for there are relatively few 
men and women, well or otherwise, whose entire child- 
hood history does not register a continued series of 
errors of gross and stupid violation of what mature age 
would recognize as the laws of health. We have 
abundant instances of a delicate and fragile childhood 
terminating in a robust maturity, and of an apparently 
well immaturity culminating in but an inefficient man- 
hood and womanhood,—all pointing to the existence 
of deep-lying forces that seem to work their way along 
paths of action and in obedience to laws that have 
their being in the deeps of his subconscious life. 
The writer will be found guilty of the frequent repe- 
tition of the proposition that no chronic ailment of a 
functional character can exist without in most in- ESCAPE OF THE VARIANT 
35 
stances involving both mind and body, either or both 
showing infirmity. The physical mechanism has the 
mental and spiritual engrafted upon it, and these in- 
variably suffer as one. The Variant continues as such 
just so long as he does not know it to be his right to 
escape from the prison of his own non-understanding 
of himself. His depression and discouragement are 
psychic; they are the sickness of his soul. But such 
soul-sickness has its roots in his physical self and by 
means of a broader understanding wherein both are 
more intelligently enlisted to hopeful effort, he may 
extricate himself and rise to levels of happiness and 
purposeful life. CHAPTER V 
CROSS-CURRENTS 
As we consider the possibilities of disturbances 
occasioned by the obtrusion of interfering, exaggerated, 
or unfamiliar sensations upon the consciousness, we 
have opening before us the vast field of the reflex or 
referred phenomena. For the sake of practical illus- 
tration these may be best likened to a system of in- 
tricate electric wiring wherein there has taken place 
a crossing of the wires. While traveling along one 
wire an impulse, either exaggerated in intensity or of 
undue prolongation, may become transmitted to one 
or more contiguous wires, and set up vibrations along 
the course of such wires, near or remote, relevant or 
irrelevant in character. A familiar phenomenon is that 
of sneezing upon venturing forth upon the dazzling, 
sun-illumined snow field, with its exaggerated stimulus 
to the visual nerves. Here the stimulus is so great that 
it is transferred to another group of nerve cells close 
by, the sneezing centre, and the individual may 
naturally interpret the act as the prodrome of a cold. 
A relation of intense interest exists between certain 
forms of emotional disturbance, such as the presence 
of various phobias and obsessions, and the splanchnic 
36 CROSS-CURRENTS 
37 
nerve ganglia of the abdomen. Disturbances of diges- 
tion, whether recognized or not, affecting the solar 
plexus, often have a direct agency in the creation or 
aggravation of disturbances of the emotions. Indi- 
viduals suffering with obsessive ideas are fixedly con- 
vinced of their truth and of the mental nature of their 
disorder and may look with grave surprise upon the 
doctor who intimates to the contrary and to the effect 
that such distress of the mind may be but a transferred 
or reflex disturbance, that may have its origin in the 
muddied stream of the digestive processes I 
One of the most interesting cases of reflex disturb- 
ance that has come to the writer’s attention of late, 
may be cited here. A lady of mature years was affected 
by frequent complete loss of voice which might be of 
several hours or several days duration. There was 
likewise present a profound disturbance of digestion 
attended by anaemia, furred tongue, laden breath, loss 
of appetite and general intestinal torpor. Examination 
of the abdomen by palpation elicited the surprising 
fact that whenever deep pressure was made over the 
solar plexus, though the patient was in good voice at 
the time, an instant extinguishing of the latter would 
take place. Frequent repetitions of the experiment 
were always followed by the same result and the in- 
ference was justified that so apparently unrelated a 
phenomenon as sudden complete loss of voice, follow- 
ing pressure upon the trunk of the pneumogastric 
nerve or its branches in the abdomen, must be of 
reflex origin. 38 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
The strange ease with which a person may become 
obscured in his intellectual and emotional horizon, 
when disturbances arise along the course of his 
abdominal functioning, is one of the most frequent and 
distressing occurrences. All humanity appears to be 
subject to such victimizing—for it is no less than that, 
and whereas such occasions are by no means always 
avoidable or easily remediable, in the largest number 
of instances the subjects of such distresses can and 
should be taught to rise superior to their confusions 
and keep clearer lines drawn. The patient should be 
taught to keep in mind that the focal point of his 
psychic and emotional distress is invariably in his 
abdomen since it is there that the storm centre resides, 
owing to the liability of disturbance to numerous 
ganglia. It is not his mind, nor his soul, that is at 
fault; it is his disturbed chemistry, the absorption of 
toxic products, the pressure and pulling incident to dis- 
tended or congested viscera, and, often his physician,— 
when he has not learned these things,—that are to 
blame! 
Such patients, and the cases are numerous, begin to 
question the goodness of the Creator and to analyze 
their spiritual omissions with a heart-rending minute- 
ness, when the trouble may possibly be residing in that 
still unexplored dark continent bounded above by the 
diaphragm and below by the pelvis. Because of the 
confusions caused by reflex agencies, obscurations of 
the intellectual and spiritual are pitifully common and 
seem to require the greatest amount of patience and CROSS-CURRENTS 
39 
education. Here there is great need for a re-education 
of the individual towards the serene handling of him- 
self, that he may recognize the existence of physical 
causes as being the most probable excitants of his 
spiritual depression. Numberless lives are made de- 
pressed, unhappy, and largely ineffectual, because of 
the coloring of gloom affecting the mind, the origin of 
which lies in all probability in some disturbances of the 
emotional centres! These instances range all the way 
from the common forms of low spirits and depression 
to the extremes of the melancholic conviction of un- 
worthiness and the Unpardonable Sin. The ancients 
were no mean observers of the phenomena of disease 
when they developed the maxim that “the seat of a 
word “emotion” for “religion,” the former being merely 
man’s religion is in his belly!” If we substitute the 
the more comprehensive term, we are not far from 
covering the ground today, in the larger light of our 
understanding of the intricate complex presented by 
suffering humanity. 
We comment upon the power of some individuals to 
bear great trials and strains upon their emotional life 
bravely, and notice their power of wholesome reaction, 
when at the same time they may take lesser trials and 
discomforts but poorly, with much unnecessary worry 
and depression of spirits. The explanation lies in the 
fact that for the larger pull upon their emotional life 
nature demands and exacts a prompt compensatory 
reaction, this reaction being so far imperative as to be 
taken out of the individual’s hands entirely, as witness 40 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
the profound sleep and oblivion, which establishes 
wholesome reaction, following upon unusual emotional 
strain. The lesser worries and apprehensions are more 
poorly handled because reaction from them is more a 
voluntary act, depending upon the will to do so, and 
upon the rational understanding of the combined 
physical and psychical nature of the trouble. 
The majority of the people who suffer are not the 
people who are very ill, if by this term we mean dis- 
ease. They are people who are bewildered, whose 
physical and psychical are in a state of confusion and 
who do not know what is at fault and why they are 
unhappy. No lesson seems of greater importance than 
that we teach our people to recognize the intimate re- 
lations of these two great factors of our being, the 
almost constant association of both in the symptom 
complex. The confused mind merely blames itself, its 
environment, its misfortunes, or even the Creator, as 
though such confusion and the often attending de- 
pression were actual conditions of themselves, to be 
separately dealt with, and seems to forget wholly the 
inevitable connection of its psychic states with the 
actual disturbance and lack of functioning harmony 
pertaining to the abdominal viscera. No elements 
enter so largely into the symptom complex of chronic 
invalids as these of the spiritual and emotional. The 
author in his own practice has seen thousands of suffer- 
ing people, largely labelled by themselves or their phy- 
sicians as neurasthenics, some of them ill for but a 
short period and others for years, in whom the suffer- CROSS-CURRENTS 
41 
ing was psychic and the causes physical. Every phy- 
sician of experience can but testify to the same. 
Not by any means, however, should it be implied 
that the remedying of such functional disorders would 
always necessarily be followed by the prompt clearing 
up of the psychic sequences. We have to face here one 
of the most startling facts in the study of our kind; 
namely, that in such cases, as the result of the long 
continuance of psychic aberrations, there have become 
established grooves of habit! Such mental habit- 
grooves are naturally inclined to remain and become 
practically separate entities, and need to be dealt with, 
often, quite on their own account. Among such 
patients there are many who would no longer know 
it, even if they became well! Among these we may at 
times quite succeed in restoring their functioning regu- 
larities and yet they may remain ill and unhappy; 
they have developed the habit of being conscious of 
themselves in abnormal ways. 
It is at this juncture that such unhappy and suffer- 
ing people cast about for the relief they do not obtain 
from their physician. And here is where they have the 
right to expect from us perception, intuitive under- 
standing, and the help that can only come from the 
spiritual enlightenment of him into whose care they 
entrust their welfare. They have a right to demand 
relief, re-education, and a new future. We find many 
people who are sick at heart, weary of life, weighed 
down by poverty or misfortune or environment or ill- 
ness or by unfortunate inheritance. There are some 42 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
who have no spiritual development, who are material 
and sensual, who are as animals, with all their spiritual 
possibilities in abeyance. There are others who have 
never had the opportunity to lift their heads and hearts 
with the courage or the understanding to say that 
they, too, are men and women with minds and souls as 
well as bodies, and to lay hold upon their inborn right 
to aspire and attain unto the privileges that are the lot 
of the more fortunate of their kind. But such spiritual 
poverty, induced by the sins or the ignorance of man, 
the remorselessness of inhibiting environment, the 
seeming mercilessness of the law of the survival of the 
fittest, need not pertain to the great multitude of peo- 
ple who suffer unhappiness in the more fortunate walks 
of life. 
The unhappiness of the chronic sufferer is due to the 
fact that he is somewhat ill in his body, and somewhat 
ill in his spirit, and that he is so lamentably and in- 
excusably unacquainted with himself. He goes from 
physician to physician and some treat his body exclu- 
sively, and others say that there is nothing at fault 
here but that it is merely his mind; but few recognize 
that it may be both that are in need, and fewer still 
that possibly it is a still greater factor and that it may 
be his soul that is out of health. “Renew his courage/’ 
we say of a man who is weighed down by failure, “and 
he will become himself again.” It may be true that 
we all recognize this principle in the abstract. But 
do we not forget that, though often enough applied 
to him in his relation to material things, it can so CROSS-CURRENTS 
43 
gloriously be applied to the restoration of a man’s 
happiness? 
The illness of such people is rarely alone that of their 
body. In one sense it is always that. But in another 
it is assuredly also always the soul that is ill, the spirit 
of the man that has become confused and he does not 
know it! Let us teach him these things, for the two 
states, that of the body and the mind or spirit, are 
inseparable;—working upon each other interchange- 
ably, combining to work accord or discord. We should 
not be afraid to talk to a sick man about his soul! 
Oftentimes the only thing a man needs, to rise into 
strong virile life, is to be treated as though he had one, 
and taught to face its needs. To the untrained mind, 
the interpretation of oneself is a difficult thing; it be- 
comes infinitely easier when one develops the larger 
vision. We should be so busy with innumerable inter- 
ests, things we would like, and others we are obliged 
to do, so driven by the urging of the life within us, that 
we have no ear for the perception of subjective sen- 
sations. As it is, it would appear that we are so 
vacuous, so unoccupied, so unsophisticated that we 
have a microscopic ear for every sensation and mood 
that may arise out of the subconsciousness. 
A mood is a layer of psychical atmosphere, thicker 
or thinner, darker or brighter than usual, which is born 
of the body. It is the result of some change in the 
chemistry, some emphasized sensation, some fluctua- 
tion of the vascular pressure, an extra influx of toxines 
into the circulatory stream, some acceleration or re- 44 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
tardation of the inhibitory centres of the brain. It is 
always earth-born. But it has the subtlety of the evil 
one. It has the power of coloring and deceiving the 
consciousness so completely that the latter instantly 
accepts it without questioning, and admits it into its 
recognition as a real thing, and so it is at once trans- 
formed into a state of mind! The individual there- 
upon has become the victim of the mood! He is 
colored and actuated thereby. He accepts it with as 
little question as he does the weather. It is a thing 
that is. Since he has not reasoned himself into it, i.e., 
acquired it as a result of evidence, he naturally does 
not try to reason himself out of it. The only evidence 
he has is the sensation that accompanies it. It is the 
same with a man’s politics or religion. They are often 
feelings and not convictions; states of mind acquired 
usually without challenge by the consciousness which 
he is therefore rarely able to defend. In much the 
same manner does his spirit acquire the coloring of a 
mood. Often is this mood no trifling matter and may 
well go beyond the bounds within which the conscious- 
ness has power to control. Here, only prompt and 
patient enlightened intervention can avail. 
But much more often may it be only a matter of the 
understanding, of the conscious perception, and here 
is a state of things that should well be challenged. 
Once this understanding established, wherein we are 
taught to look upon an existing unhappy state of mind 
as not an entity, originating in the spirit, but rather as 
a distortion foisted upon us out of the ever-changing CROSS-CURRENTS 
45 
vapors of the functioning and fluctuating organism and 
which we need not accept at all, our emancipation is at 
hand and we begin to be more worthy of that con- 
sciousness which allies us, above the lower organisms, 
to the Creative Power. CHAPTER VI 
THE BALANCE OF POWER 
Man is a (*) subconscious creature first, an organism 
actuated by instinct in the same manner that all 
creatures beneath him are actuated by instinct. The 
lower animals differ from him in no particular what- 
ever—so far as they go. The newly born infant for 
some time after its birth is quite to be compared with 
a puppy or a kitten, reacting to the same instinc- 
tive impulses of hunger and sleep, light and darkness, 
comfort and pain. If its mouth be brought into con- 
tact with the breast it will suckle, if its own tiny fist 
*The author has used the terms “Objective Consciousness,” 
“Objective Mind,” “Consciousness,” “Conscious Mind,” interchange- 
ably meaning thereby that part of our equipment which makes us 
aware of ourselves,—wherewith we reason, reflect, exercise will or 
judgment. 
In like manner the terms “Subjective Mind” or “Subconscious 
Mind,”—“Subjective,” “Instinctive” and “Vegetative,” are used 
synonymously, meaning all those processes, impulses and functions 
of the body that go on within us without our conscious interference, 
direction or knowledge,—whether we wake or sleep,—which have to 
do with the maintenance of the life of the creature. 
The terms “Consciousness” for the former definitions and the 
“Unconscious” for the latter, might furnish a fairly good working 
definition. No attempt has been made to draw fine distinctions 
with regard to a closer analysis of the human consciousness as dis- 
tinguished from the animal, other than in such general terms as 
might be understood by the thoughtful reader and applied to a 
practical grasp of the writer’s thought. 
46 THE BALANCE OF POWER 
47 
be substituted it will do the same; it has no power of 
discrimination and is merely a bundle of reflexes. It is 
only after some months that the infant begins to show 
signs of the dawning of that which distinguishes it 
from all other creatures—the beginnings of the objec- 
tive consciousness. From this time on a dual develop- 
ment takes place wherein the subjective or instinctive 
pursues its inevitable course of growth, along the lines 
paralleled by all other animals and in pursuance to 
the endless chain of evolutionary impulses that reach 
back to the beginning of organic life upon the globe. 
With the objective consciousness, however, it is 
vastly different. This is a relatively recent acquisition 
(possibly a matter of but a few millions of years) and 
places upon the organism that has become human a 
responsibility growing in magnitude with its continued 
development and increasing distance from the time of 
its birth in the remote ages. It is now that the sub- 
conscious or instinctive is no longer permitted to live 
the life that is purely vegetative, because of the inter- 
ference of the conscious, which drives, develops and 
specializes it, whilst in its turn the conscious is ham- 
pered and even chained to the animal body upon 
which it is engrafted. 
In the training of the infant quite the same proc- 
esses need to be employed as in the training of the 
puppy. Would we teach the latter the necessary dis- 
cipline which would make its membership of the family 
desirable, or any of the canine accomplishments, we 
resort only to methods of training which are subcon- 48 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
scious. If we desire the puppy to sit up, we do not 
explain, but with our hands place it in the sitting posi- 
tion. It will promptly fall over, which we expect, but 
without argument we as promptly restore it to the 
desired position, ten or a hundred times! At last, at 
the word of command, which will be the only word we 
should have used in connection with the training, the 
desired position is automatically taken and the trick is 
acquired. Quite the same processes prevail in the edu- 
cation of all animals, save that for the guiding hand 
many other methods such as hunger, pleasure, or pain 
may be employed. 
With the young of man all early training is likewise 
automatic, the subjective being the only medium with 
which we have to deal. Only with the dawning of the 
consciousness and the reasoning self do we begin to 
appeal to this new entity and then, forever after, there 
goes on the double training between these often con- 
flicting selves, with the sometimes justifiable mystifica- 
tion as to which promises to be the winner in the race! 
Could the above general principles be borne in mind in 
the education of ourselves, since they apply through- 
out our lives, an infinite amount of confusion and 
unhappiness might be avoided. 
The author has laid particular stress upon the auto- 
matic nature and susceptibility of the instinctive self, 
since it is only when this fact is borne in mind that it 
becomes possible to interpret and deal with the latter’s 
manifestations in health and disease. It is the office of 
the subjective to attend to all of the functions of the THE BALANCE OF POWER 
49 
body that pertain to its life—the processes of repair 
and waste, development and reproduction. It is not 
intended by nature that the conscious mind, the man’s 
mental and spiritual nature, should need to concern 
itself with these vegetative processes unduly or to the 
exclusion of its own development. 
Ideally these two entities that make up the whole of 
man should coexist and function in perfect unison. 
They should each pull their burden separately, yet in 
complete harmony so that neither is made conscious of 
the other through the over- or under-manifestation of 
either. They should be comparable with the two 
hands, laid palms together, so that when held up before 
the eyes they appear as one. The slightest shifting of 
the hands that would cause it to become obvious that 
there were two, would parallel the uneven working of 
the two consciousnesses when the mind and body of a 
man are out of harmony because of the accentuation 
of the one above the other. All through a man’s life 
this duality of his vegetative or subjective, and his 
objective life goes on. It is, of course, not the intention 
of nature that there should be conflict, although in 
reality this is what does happen. It happens because, 
although his subjective functions are doubtless attend- 
ing to their business, or would if not interfered with, 
the objective is ever prone to become conscious of sub- 
jective processes, to the confusion of both. 
The subjective should be looked upon as a mecha-' 
nism of high perfection and intelligence which had 
received, at the moment of its birth (or even concep- 50 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
tion), an impetus to carry it to the end of its journey. 
In addition to such impetus, it should be thought of as 
being endowed with the capacity to attend to all sorts 
of repairs and emergencies that may arise,—the power 
to repair mechanical injury, to produce antitoxins 
when invaded by the toxins of bacterial infection, to 
work over food for nutrition and to remove the waste 
of such combustion. Within certain very wide and 
elastic limits all such matters are attended to by the 
organism by reason of the energies vested within itself. 
Beyond certain limits, however, it must appeal to a 
higher court, the objective self, that the latter may 
protect it through the exercise of thought and reason, 
the peculiar function of the latter. When there is this 
mutual recognition of function, each consenting to 
work along the channels peculiar to itself, we have 
coordination and harmony and the well-being of the 
individual should be at its ideal best. 
But such a condition of harmony can only prevail 
when the individual, by the exercise of his conscious- 
ness, knows that these two sides of himself exist, that 
the subjective must be entrusted with its own work, 
and that the objective must not interfere but remain 
within its own province. Farther than this, one other 
very wonderful fact should be understood by the man’s 
reasoning self. This is, that although the subjective is 
so highly endowed, surcharged with ceaseless energy 
and instinctive intelligence, yet it is in some ways 
singularly subservient to being influenced through the 
channels of the mind, the organ of the objective self. THE BALANCE OF POWER 
51 
The objective self, though the flower and fruit of the 
subjective, being the highest product of evolution and 
expressing itself as man, has come to have a marvelous 
determining power over the latter. The subjective 
may thus be depressed or uplifted, inhibited or re- 
leased. It is capable of having its latent potentials set 
free so that function goes on with a high degree of 
efficiency and the processes of disease overwhelmed 
with a flood of renewing energy—or by the inhibition 
of this force, all resistance on the part of the organic 
self may be so minimized as to permit the organism to 
give way before disease. 
Most of the troubles of the chronic invalid, the so- 
called neurasthenic or psychasthenic, and hosts of dis- 
qualified and unhappy people whose efficiency has 
become impaired, are the result of interference between 
these two selves. It is difficult to say how this comes 
about primarily. It does not occur necessarily among 
the unintelligent. Laboring people, those fully con- 
cerned each day with the need of gaining their daily 
bread and those particularly whose occupations involve 
physical labor, seem less afflicted. They have not the 
leisure to develop the habit of consciousness of self. 
A certain amount of idle time, or time that is not occu- 
pied with the urgency and stress of life, would seem 
to make more possible the development of the habit of 
chronic invalidism. It would appear that with the 
development of the finer sensibilities an increased 
degree of misdirection of these becomes possible. It 
is instructive to see how many hypochondriacal sub- 52 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
jects may become completely diverted from the con- 
sciousness of their ailments by the sudden insistent 
presentation of a new and absorbing idea. 
An instance in point came to the writer’s attention 
recently wherein a gentleman who for several years 
had been plunged in a continuous stream of woe, and 
whose attention was wholly centered upon himself— 
upon the occurrence of a fire in the building in which 
he was living, suddenly forgot himself completely and 
for several hours was one of the foremost to rescue 
property, working with enthusiasm and acting like any 
other perfectly well man! After the subsidence of the 
excitement he again found leisure to take up the 
burden of the obsessing self-thought. In another in- 
stance under observation a gentleman of high cultiva- 
tion and intelligence, similarly afflicted, upon the 
receipt of the news of a startling family calamity, 
began to get well from that hour! Instances of this 
kind are within everyone’s observation. They but 
illustrate the perversion of the objective self wherein 
it becomes fastened to the subjective in a manner 
incapable of voluntary detachment. It is much like 
having hold with both hands of the metallic poles of 
a Faradic battery. Whilst the current is on, the muscles 
of the hands are so contracted that they cannot over- 
come the contraction, or be diverted to other uses. In 
the above and similar cases the violent substitution of 
another thought would seem to deflect the current of 
the attention from self into another direction. 
A sharply stinging mustard paste applied over the THE BALANCE OF POWER 
53 
site of pain—or even at times at some other point— 
has given relief too many times and under too many 
diverse conditions not to lead us to suspect that similar 
juggling with the subconsciousness was at work! The 
rattle or picture-book suddenly held up by the sophis- 
ticated parent before the attention of the crying infant 
is a time-honored device, which ranks high in the 
unwritten textbook of parental psychology. 
One chronic invalid lady, after reciting to her phy- 
sician enough pains and distresses to entitle her at least 
to decent interment, failed to see the humor of her 
answer, in reply to the crafty question as to how she 
felt “otherwise,” that “otherwise she was quite well!” 
Everyone may become the victim of such conditions in 
himself. It is not a sign of superiority if one does not. 
It is merely that he happens to be so equipped as to be 
less easily made aware of self than another. To be 
thus handicapped with a too easily distracted con- 
sciousness and to suffer, and then to learn that it is in 
one’s power to be helped and to become able to help 
one’s self, and thus to become ever after infinitely more 
self-sustaining—is to have made an advanced step in 
the direction of larger living—and is in the power of 
by far the greater number of those who feel themselves 
to be helpless in the grasp of chronic invalidism. 
The chronic sufferer from so-called functional ner- 
vous disorders is too often such because he continues 
ignorant of his possibilities. He accepts the situation 
and continues therein because he is not taught to 
know that nature does not intend that his life should 54 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
be a matter of sheer endurance, but that she is above 
all things, and despite all things, beneficent. It is the 
privilege of the Variant, if he has varied away from the 
status of comfort and usefulness which lies somewhere 
within the boundaries of the wider swinging of his 
pendulum, also to vary back again into this more com- 
fortable region, and to abide there with a sense of 
increased security. To be a variant does not mean that 
one is an exile, but rather that if he does not like the 
region into which he finds himself to have emigrated, 
he may the more intelligently choose to return. CHAPTER VII 
TRAINING VERSUS TEACHING 
We are thus naturally led to consider the importance 
hinging upon the training of children, in whom sub- 
conscious irregularities may be so rife. A young child 
is the most wonderful creature in nature, capable of 
responding like the most delicate musical instrument 
and vibrating to the slightest touch of the strings. 
Here is the most fruitful of all fields for our profession, 
which should awaken to the existence of the enormous 
possibilities for the moulding of the future man and 
woman by turning its attention to the child in whom 
lie potentials for good or evil, health or disease. The 
child is as plastic as the sculptor’s clay and though it 
may not be so much in our power to mould its natural 
form into symmetry of feature or beauty of outline, 
those infinitely more enduring things, mind, character, 
and soul, are susceptible of marvelous modifications 
and developments. 
Allowing for the natural limitations inherent within 
all organisms whose boundaries, by the way, we do not 
at all know,—the invisible barriers that would seem to 
hem the embryo man are susceptible of the widest ex- 
pansion under the influence of perceptive teaching. It 
55 56 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
has remained for such gifted and intuitive minds as 
that of Madame Montessori to perceive what psy- 
chologists and medical men have not, namely, that the 
child is purely an instinctive creature and should first 
be approached only along the avenues of its instinctive 
and subconscious self. Beginning with the first year 
of its life and from then on up to the portals of 
puberty, the child is a sensitive mirror reflecting first 
what it hears and sees, and afterwards tardily and 
imperfectly reasoning why. 
If we were to look upon the man as being merely a 
mature child, carrying throughout his life—at least his 
subconscious life—altogether the same traits and in- 
stinctive habits that he had throughout infancy and 
youth—we should be helped to understand the vast 
significance of the importance of training rather than 
teaching. The indelible character of training may 
easily be seen in cases of illness where the conscious- 
ness or higher reasoning self is suspended and the 
individual reverts to simple or primitive ways of his 
childhood. Such acts are acquired before reasoning is 
developed and are automatisms—indelible imprints 
outlasting any of the more superficial dents made in 
maturer life upon the subconsciousness through the 
agency of the reasoning consciousness. Training, and 
talking or teaching are very dissimilar forces, hardly 
comparable with each other in their efficiency as re- 
gards their influence upon the shaping of conduct, 
which continues to hold true from childhood to the 
end of life. But to train rightly it is necessary to per- TRAINING vs. TEACHING 
57 
ceive rightly, and correct perception of a child’s needs 
implies some reasonable degree of understanding on 
the part of parent and teacher. One cannot afford to 
ignore the use of the intuitive faculty which is by no 
means a mystical sense, but merely a sharpened and 
coordinated use of those faculties we commonly recog- 
nize and already possess. It would be far better were 
the mother, in dealing with young children, entirely to 
lay aside the idea that she was dealing with a reasoning 
being since, in truth, the reasoning or objective mind 
is quite in abeyance. 
The child is merely a bundle of very impressionable 
and susceptible instincts, a mirror of many facets, 
catching and again reflecting impressions from all 
sources. The parents themselves, and all that occurs 
around, are the sources of the impressions; and what 
they so unconsciously—and often so heedlessly—give 
out, become the subtle moulding forces upon the child, 
which go so far in determining what the future man or 
woman is to be. It is a never-ceasing wonder that so 
many grown men and women have evolved into normal 
and useful members of society. Indeed the writer 
would qualify the word normal into relatively normal, 
because the majority of us do bear the stigmata of just 
such imperfect training or neglect. But to whatever 
degree of normality we may have attained, the result 
can hardly be attributed to the thought and care exer- 
cised by the parents during the plastic years, but rather 
to the belated restricting and restraining forces brought 
to bear in school and through contact with the rest of 58 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
humanity. Much care is often exercised in the dis- 
ciplining of the favorite dog or cat that is singled 
out to become a member of the family, with the privi- 
leges of the home or boudoir, but not nearly as much, 
oftentimes, over the infant son or daughter. The 
effects of such neglect of discipline are often tolerated 
in the child to a censurable degree, when they would 
not be for a moment were the dog or cat similarly 
guilty. 
The little child differs in no respect from the puppy 
or kitten since it is also singularly an instinctive 
creature and responds to a similar training. It is utterly 
plastic and as capable of doing the wrong as the right 
thing. It is indeed quite the same to the child whether 
it be allowed to act wrongly or rightly since it has no 
reason and therefore no judgment. We do not expect 
judgment in the puppy; we simply insist, until accom- 
plished, that it should sit up or charge or bring the 
ball or handkerchief, and do not rely upon its sense of 
the fitness of things. 
But in our dealings with the child we are hampered 
by a confusion of interpretation. Somewhere in our 
own consciousness exists a feeling that because this 
is our own child, and because we know, it also must 
know! This is a fallacy accountable only because we 
take no earnest thought and are inclined to treat the 
mysterious process of “growing up” as though some 
subtle and providential moulding power were at work 
in the child’s behalf, be we as blundering and fatuous 
as we may. Fortunately for us this latter is in a TRAINING vs. TEACHING 
59 
measure true, but it is the moulding force of accident 
or a reasonably safe environment which operates so 
many times favorably in the child’s behalf, despite the 
obstructive purblindness of the parents. We trust to 
the child’s playmates, those brought up in a similar 
way by similarly unperceptive parents, to its teachers, 
who often give the first real training the child has re- 
ceived, and to its contact in later years with the world 
of humanity. Few parents know to what dangers the 
average child is subjected through contact with other 
children. Their own personal experiences, if reflected 
upon, should arouse their interest in and caution for 
their own. 
The above needs of discipline apply to all children 
in the everyday and ordinary course of their develop- 
ment, but should the child show peculiarities and 
sensitivenesses out of the ordinary, the greater and 
more imperative the need for their prompt modifica- 
tion. In so simple a matter as an avoidance of any one 
or more particular articles of food, we can perceive the 
birth of a bias of the subjective self. Whatever the 
mother, either by act or speech, may especially like or 
dislike, is often perfectly reflected in the child. It 
may, for example, be a dislike for fish concerning which 
the parent expresses a positive feeling and from which 
she very objectively abstains; the child is capable of 
absorbing this notion as greedily as though it were the 
measles and forthwith forever after may avoid fish 
without knowing any reason therefor, yielding merely 
to the feeling. 60 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
It may be that the child is naturally sensitive in its 
emotional equipment and is easily moved to tears or 
anger or sulkiness, in which case all of these faults will 
the more easily be reflected upon it by either parent. 
If it be the parent who is thus at fault, reflecting his 
own shortcomings, the remedy should be an easy one. 
Should it, however, be due to the child’s own equip- 
mental instability that it yields to emotion and passion, 
what great need does there not exist that it should be 
wisely and patiently trained just at this particular 
juncture when still upon the parting of the ways? 
The author is thus laying particular stress upon the 
word “train,” since it is training and not teaching that 
is required. Teaching implies an appeal to the under- 
standing and the latter exists but in embryo. Train- 
ing can be begun from the day of the infant’s birth 
and has to deal only with the instinctive, which will do 
what we put it into the way of doing to the end of its 
life. 
Of so primal a function as that of the bowels, results 
of the observance of regularity must have brought 
themselves to the attention of even the most thought- 
less. But it does not seem to be recognized that so 
many others of our functions are equally receptive of 
the most rigid discipline. What is the regularly re- 
curring sensation of hunger or discomfort at such hours 
at which we are accustomed to take our meals, when 
this periodic act is omitted for any reason, farther than 
an expression of habit acquired? It would be easy to 
accustom ourselves to one or six meals a day with a TRAINING vs. TEACHING 
61 
corresponding adaptation of our sensations. We as 
regularly acquire the habit of dressing or undressing 
in a perfectly observed automatic routine. Doubtless 
the greater number of people put on either the left or 
the right shoe or stocking first and if the wrong one be 
laid hold upon by accident it is usually dropped and 
the accustomed one substituted. A popular super- 
stition applies here which takes account of the viola- 
tion of whatever may be the accustomed habit of 
getting out of bed: “he got out of the wrong side of 
the bed”—being an attempted explanation of any 
irritability of temper or other irregular or unusual 
phenomenon in the supposedly unlucky person’s day. 
In putting on a coat nearly every one puts the same 
arm into the sleeve first, although he may not know it. 
The observance of a regular time in the 24 hours for 
sleep is a habit reaching back into the dawn of our 
existence, merely based upon the obvious fact that 
there was least to do at night in the matter of obtain- 
ing the means of subsistence, but even now capable of 
being modified and even reversed, if the individual’s 
needs require it. 
Among the above citations some are obviously 
merely muscular acts, first instigated by the will and 
then becoming practically automatic. But similar 
automatisms may be established with the involuntary 
muscles such as those of the stomach, bowels and 
bladder. In such case the initiative arises from within, 
from the physiological promptings which knock at the 
door of the consciousness to arouse its attention— 62 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
whereupon it rests with the latter to pay heed and to 
lend its directing power. It has thus become a matter 
of intelligent perception and we should understand 
that it is quite within our province to assume the role 
of intelligent direction. Thus, we can do almost any- 
thing we please by rightly beginning with the child in 
the training of the function of digestion, which is so 
purely an instinctive automatism. Like the bowel 
the stomach is an organ which has a marvellous in- 
telligence, although this is purely subjective. It is 
quite possible for some individuals to reverse at will 
the direction of the peristaltic waves of the stomach 
and cause it to empty its contents upward, and this 
without the slightest distress. Others less gifted by 
nature may acquire the art; and it is not beyond the 
bounds of possibility that the ancient Romans, among 
whom a vomatorium was a necessary adjunct to a 
banqueting hall, had made great progress in the direc- 
tion of this accomplishment. 
The word “intelligence,” used in connection with the 
functioning of the above organs, is meant to imply a 
subconscious reaction to stimuli and is in some in- 
stances a reaction upon which the life of the individual 
may depend. This is observable in some of the lower 
animals as well as in man, wherein we observe the 
prompt manner in which a stomach or intestine, 
burdened with an irritating or even poisonous sub- 
stance, may promptly relieve itself of the offending 
presence. But such involuntary intelligence is further 
supplemented by an acquired one, which is the result TRAINING vs. TEACHING 
63 
of training. These organs, like the puppy,—like- 
wise an instinctive or subjective organism—will do 
anything in reason that we train them to do. If a 
woman of mature years appears before the physician 
with a stomach whose entire capacity is that of a half 
pint, and who has never in her life eaten more than 
would sustain a canary bird, and has developed in 
consequence an attenuation of all her physical capaci- 
ties, it is because she was permitted to begin and 
perpetuate such habits from childhood. 
The stomach of a child from the beginning should 
be trained to accept a variety of reasonable kinds of 
food, if there be no mechanical peculiarity to prevent 
it. Should there be conditions present forbidding the 
above, then again the training should be directed to- 
ward the ingestion of such food as proves itself adapt- 
able, and none other. In either case training is essential 
and all haphazard ways incline toward future troubles. 
The advantages to such a rationally trained person in 
future life are obvious, for the habits thus acquired 
become subconscious automatisms that are bulwarks 
of strength operating mechanically in the individual's 
behalf. 
In the writer’s youth there was much interest mani- 
fested by adults and physicians in a new kind of flour 
named after Dr. Graham, its publicist. This flour 
contained some of the coarser and outer parts of the 
wheat kernel and has appeared again in our time in a 
modified form, known as “whole wheat flour.” Though 
such preparation of the wheat may have been an ex- 64 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
eellent thing in itself, it was lauded as a sovereign 
remedy for “dyspepsia,” particularly if the product 
were eaten exclusively. The instance of one man is 
remembered in particular who appeared to be in the 
last stage of emaciation and who declared himself 
able to get along with only two Graham crackers at 
each meal! This man, upon the subsequent post 
mortem findings, had no evidence of organic disease 
and need not have died from starvation. Over a long 
period of years he did have a difficult digestion or a 
“dyspepsia,” and he had reduced the capacity of his 
stomach to that of an infant and its size and muscular 
development proportionally. He might as easily have 
trained and built it up to do the work of a man’s 
stomach. 
The bowel also is an organ capable of being trained 
to a large degree to function as suits one’s convenience. 
This was indeed undoubtedly nature’s intention when, 
during some millions of years, man’s colon was assum- 
ing its present character. It became a reservoir or 
pouch for the very reason that the exigencies of life 
besetting its owner required that he should choose his 
own time and convenience for the discharge of its con- 
tents. It became somewhat under the control of the 
will by reason of the emergencies of existence and it 
can be literally “led” (trained) to do what is its func- 
tion to do at such time as suits our convenience. No 
chapter in the work of Dr. DuBois is of more value 
than his graphic description of his talks with his 
patients concerning this matter. Parents should be TRAINING vs. TEACHING 
65 
informed and teach their child that the bowel is an 
organ that has an intelligence of its own; that it should 
be talked to, figuratively, believed in and encouraged. 
That it should be caused to make the attempt to 
evacuate itself at absolutely regular times, and that if 
then not successful no subsequent impulse should be 
yielded to that day. The next day the same regular 
routine should be observed. Naturally during that 
time no laxatives should be taken since this would be 
an open confession of disbelief in the bowel’s ability 
to act for itself. The action of laxatives is at best but 
a bungling attempt to stimulate a sluggish bowel to 
greater peristalsis, and if this natural work is taken 
away from the organ and artificial means substituted 
it will sulk and go into retirement so far as any natural 
impulse towards activity is concerned. 
It is amazing what results may be obtained with 
many individuals through the institution of this 
method of training. The writer once kept a record of 
forty selected cases of chronic constipation, cases not 
due to obstructive conditions owing to ptosis or flexure, 
and obtained over seventy-five percent of successful 
results. One of these cases, in an elderly lady, had 
been of forty years standing. Some of these relapsed 
again but always owing to neglect of the observance 
of the proper precautions, such as resorting to the old 
habit of taking drugs, or yielding to the stress of in- 
convenience when the physiological prompting of the 
impulse should be heeded, together with the great force 
of the older habit of irregularity. Even when suffering 66 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
a relapse some of these backsliders were easily able to 
recover themselves. But it is not meant to assert 
that the return of such automatic functioning is always 
possible, or always sufficient, since there may be many 
conditions wherein the use of intestinal stimulants or 
disinfectants may be required, over and above what 
the bowel might be able to do for itself. 
The process of habit-formation in a child takes 
naturally a twofold channel; the one concerning itself 
with the establishment of such rational physiological 
routine as will best develop and maintain its physical 
well-being, the other taking the direction of the de- 
velopment of all things pertaining to its mental and 
moral health, and consequent happiness. Confusion is 
more often the rule than otherwise as to the relative 
significance of the above several ends. The real happi- 
ness of the child is never attained through the with- 
holding of wise discipline, which is merely another 
word for training. No child is so wholesomely happy 
as the one that is trained to work or study in alterna- 
tion with its play. The long summer vacation of our 
public schools, wherein an excessive dosage of play or 
idleness is enforced upon the child, is as ill-judged as 
the still longer period of strenuous study with its in- 
sufficient opportunity for relaxation and alternation of 
interests. Always, in desiring to obtain the greatest 
happiness for the child, should it be remembered that 
discipline, training and obedience are terms synony- 
mous with happiness, all of them concerned in the TRAINING vs. TEACHING 
67 
establishment of such habits as our human experience 
has shown to promote the maximum amount of good. 
The unhappy child, which becomes the unhappy 
adult, is the one permitted to be at the mercy of an 
untrained will, or of the vagrant impulses that are 
continually arising within the aimless subconscious 
functionings of the animal self. Only the busy child 
is ideal in this respect, because for him the day does 
not contain hours enough for all the things he wishes 
to do. But since not all children are thus fortunately 
endowed, the need is paramount that a superior intelli- 
gence should furnish the direction of that training 
which shall enable the will to fall into lines of desirable 
habit. 
The complexity of the human physical and psychical 
processes can often be the more easily understood by 
observing the simpler phenomena occurring among the 
lower animals associated with man. A well-trained 
dog, one who is taught to exercise his faculty of 
obedience in many diverse directions, who is taught 
various accomplishments and kept busy in maintain- 
ing them, is an infinitely happier dog in consequence. 
Men fond of dogs and accustomed to having them in 
their constant companionship, bear abundant testi- 
mony to this effect. The inference is amply justified 
that, given a creature endowed with the potentials for 
a great variety of functioning, such as we know to 
exist in some of the domestic animals and to a greater 
degree in the child, the law of its being demands that 
the opportunity for such functioning must be provided 68 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
and maintained, if the maximum happiness of that 
creature be desired. 
The little human animal contains within itself a 
seething, boiling mass of impulses, most of them at 
first quite indeterminate as to their direction but eager 
to take whatever shape may be thrust upon them or 
they may be led to follow. The little motherless chick, 
hatched in an incubator and its virgin subconsciousness 
therefore an as yet unexposed photographic plate as 
regards the first impressions yet to come, does not 
know how to eat until its eyes observe some glittering 
particle amongst grains of sand at its feet. It makes a 
few vague pecks with its bill and some of the surround- 
ing chicks, seeing this action, are stimulated to imita- 
tion of the same, and thus there becomes awakened the 
vast machinery of latent instinctive impulse which 
quickly causes the act of swallowing to follow, and the 
feet to scratch, discovering still other particles, and the 
routine of eating and digestion has been released for 
the rest of its life. Not having a mother hen for its 
nurse and trainer, the little atom of imitativeness fol- 
lows with instinctive impulse the huge feet of its 
human caretaker with the same implicit obedience 
that it would the hen, showing preference for the latter 
only in case she be permitted to enter the field of 
competition. 
This illustration is given merely to point to the 
enormous significance of training, and the imperative 
necessity of directing that huge mass of inherited 
potential forces, which comprise nine hundred and TRAINING vs. TEACHING 
69 
ninety-nine one thousandth parts of our being, almost 
the sum total of what man is, since he is merely the 
condensation of all life that has gone before which has 
been nearly all subconscious and instinctive. If then 
a child should have a habit of sticking its thumb into 
its mouth—which might even be considered amusing 
by its parent—it is an automatism which may become 
formidable and result in some instances in one of nail- 
biting in the young woman, a by no means desirable 
accomplishment and one significant of possible other 
stigmata of equipmental inferiority. The writer knows 
of one little girl who always insisted upon clasping 
the maternal ear in her hand, when near her mother, 
a habit still not wholly overcome when she married 
and the cause of no little embarrassment. So great is 
the force of the impulses acquired by subconscious and 
instinctive automatisms that they may become, un- 
checked, as resistless as the march of a Juggernaut— 
and yet in their infancy these same impulses may be 
shaped with a touch as light as that of the inspired 
sculptor on his clay. 
It is in childhood that all sexual perversions and 
abuses have their beginning and these are as wholly 
innocent in their incipiency as may be the habit of 
sucking the thumb. Ever does the young organism 
lend a listening ear and an excessively susceptible per- 
ception to impulses that arise from the whirling, urging 
mass within and that come to it equally through the 
developing special senses of sight, hearing and touch 
from without and thus are made the earliest impres- 70 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
sions upon the virgin subconscious memory, impres- 
sions which, because they are the first, have the right 
of way over all subsequent ones; and if undesirable, 
increasingly difficult of effacement. Here in this field 
is true creative work for the parent, the highest privi- 
lege God has given him, for it is not the authorship of 
its being that is a virtue but the exploitation of the 
wonders of its possibilities. 
At the formative period, when the earliest impres- 
sions pour in a hurrying and bewildering stream upon 
the plastic subconsciousness, there are numberless frag- 
mentary and incomplete ones which are only partly 
understood; and in these lie the beginnings of many 
of the subsequent phobias and obsessions of after life 
which harass the happiness of many an otherwise well 
person. Could these but be promptly recognized and 
intelligently modified or explained away, they would 
often disappear as easily as they came. If we scan the 
literature upon the teaching and methods of the 
modern practice of psycho-analysis we shall observe 
that all inquiries are persistently directed toward 
ascertaining what may have happened to the patient 
in childhood, for it is back in these early formative 
years that the initial cause of the adult phobia is 
sought—and often found. 
It is true that we do indeed spend a large part of 
our adult lives in trying to overcome the faulty acqui- 
sitions and habits of our childhood. What parent does 
not know the far-reaching effects produced upon the 
child through the bug-a-boo and fear-of-the-dark TRAINING vs. TEACHING 
71 
teachings of ignorant and superstitious nurses or asso- 
ciates. From early childhood many an adult brings 
with him the fear of the harmless snake, and the 
innocent dragon-fly still awakens subconscious mem- 
ories of malignant sartorial designs upon our ears; 
whilst many a dignified matron instinctively raises her 
hands to protect her hair if an adventurous bat is 
lured into the house in its quest for toothsome gnats! 
Thus it is, then, that to an enormous extent the 
parent has the child’s whole and momentous future 
subject to the shaping of his own understanding. It 
is quite the same with the moral as with the physical— 
both are alike wondrously plastic. It is so easy to 
develop in a child a universal distrust and suspicion of 
the motives of people—it needing only that one 
parent cherishes such feelings himself and ventilates 
such views to the other often enough in the child’s 
presence. Thus is readily produced a pessimist and 
the blight upon the character of him who sees always 
an ulterior motive in the actions of his fellow man. 
“Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage-patch” could have pro- 
duced only optimists among her brood. A spirit of 
obedience and emulation, if it be lacking, may as easily 
be dealt out to the child, at the table or in the family 
circle, as the passing of the bread and butter. Judicious 
and tactful comment, by one parent to the other, in 
the child’s presence, upon some good and commendable 
thing the child has really done, is all that is needed to 
arouse a further desire for such praise in their offspring. 
Praise and blame, when wisely administered, are 72 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
arouse a further desire for such praise in their offspring, 
one and the less of the other. To blame a child first 
in an attempt to correct a fault is unpardonably stupid 
and is wholly comparable with the action of the man 
who beats a dumb animal because it shows no greater 
intelligence than his own. There is always an oppor- 
tunity to praise somewhere and would we prevent the 
closing of the doors that lead to the entrance of our 
efforts at correction we must not begin with blame, 
needing only to imagine ourselves as the recipient to 
realize the significance of the caution. The less savory 
morsels of correction will always find easy entrance 
upon the margin of the consciousness, upon the sub- 
consciousness in fact, when the former is held at atten- 
tion by the welcome (exaggerated, even, if need be) 
words of approval. 
Would we indeed literally plant seeds of certain 
fruition in the mind and character of our children; 
would we have fair and wholesome fruit instead of the 
unsymmetrical which the haphazard of environment 
will give us, let us bear in mind that we are little likely 
to accomplish much unless we observe that direct in- 
struction or command are vastly inferior methods to 
those of training. If we remember, over and over 
again, that the little subjective organism demands 
nothing so much as training; that we recognize with 
stern self-knowledge that it is what we are ourselves, 
what we say to other adults across the table and by the 
fireside, how we look and how we act in the presence of 
the keenly alive and sensitive little mass of protoplasm, TRAINING vs. TEACHING 
73 
that is photographed indelibly wtih lightning speed 
upon its character,—we shall come into a reward that 
is above all others, for we have been engaged in shap- 
ing and directing the beginnings of an immortal soul. 
“What you are, shouts so, that I can not hear what 
you say” was long ago recorded by the Sage of Concord. CHAPTER VIII 
THE VARIANT’S START IN LIFE 
After the home-environmental obligations are recog- 
nized and met, the consequential and final obligation 
the parent owes his child lies in the wise choice of its 
educational environment. This is embodied in the 
selection of teachers with the right methods and ideals, 
and in the association-influences created by its school 
companions. These things apply quite as much to the 
child that may be considered normal as to the less 
usual or variant one. The so-called “normal” child is 
not necessarily always one better qualified for happi- 
ness or usefulness, it is only one that comes nearer the 
mathematical or arbitrary average in its physical or 
mental or emotional equipment—much like the child 
with the “average” foot which can the more easily be 
fitted in the shop with the “average” shoe. But every 
being born into this human world has the right to have 
its peculiarities particularly considered and in the case 
of the child born into the world with a feeble consti- 
tution, an impaired digestion, an instability of the 
nervous system, or any idiosyncrasies of taste, inclina- 
tion or bent of mind—special help and considerations 
are a logical imperative. 
74 THE VARIANT’S START 
75 
The whole career of such a child demands, tc a 
greater degree than that of the “usual” child, selective 
education. Because a child has the stigma of being 
considered “delicate,” it does not necessarily follow 
that little should be required of its mentality. A less 
robust body than that of another does not need to 
imply inferiority in the business of life, and we must 
not permit ourselves to dwell under the mistaken idea 
that if a child cannot do as much with its body as an- 
other, that it may not do as much or even more with 
its mind. A “delicate” body may quite easily be made 
into and kept a well body, even though the ranks of 
the foot-ball team be not reinforced. If only intelli- 
gent efforts be made to see to it that the irregular or 
variant child gets all the help it needs to keep its body 
up to its own individual and peculiar standard of 
normal, we may then freely go ahead and give the 
more attention to its mental training than to that of 
the more evenly equipped brother, in order to develop 
the inequalities, the result often proving that the child 
seemingly poorly equipped by nature is the one who 
wins the race. 
There is one great fundamental law that lies at the 
base of all developed life, physical or intellectual, 
namely: the law of overcoming resistance. The weak 
and flabby muscles of the mind and will must be de- 
veloped and caused to grow by persistent effort, as 
much as those of the body. If the body appears to 
have undue limitations, these should not be accepted 
as final but should be developed as far as the equip- 76 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
ment makes possible, and then the more attention 
should be given to the expansion of the character and 
mental equipment. The man or woman who at middle 
life is an invalid is far too often such as the result of 
a misdirected or unwisely indulged and neglected child- 
hood. Because the languid, fretful, bored child is a 
difficult pupil to help, instead of receiving a passion of 
zeal, it is permitted to take its own course, make its 
own limitations, and therefore suffer with a prolonged 
life of invalidism of the mind and character. The 
character-onesided derelicts that drift through all the 
highways of life in such pathetic numbers bear elo- 
quent testimony to such neglects that might have been 
avoided. 
We see the results of such misdirection sufficiently 
often in the case of individuals who in childhood suf- 
fered from disease of the hip-joint or the spine. There 
is truly no more pitiful object than the emaciated body 
of a child, confined for months or even years to its bed, 
harnessed to braces or plaster jackets or pulley-weights 
through all the interminable months, with all the 
pleasures so legitimate to its young life, denied. All 
the mother-love yearns over the poor sufferer and is 
lavished in reckless abandon. All sacrifices are made 
for it, all possible indulgences allowed. Even the just 
rights of its sisters and brothers are sacrificed, if by so 
doing anything can add aught to the greater content- 
ment of the invalid. Its peevishness is hushed, its 
languid interest stimulated by unheard-of concessions. THE VARIANT’S START 
77 
The family life shapes itself around the sick body and 
the worn spirit of the unfortunate cripple. 
Not one of us but would feel the same, nor escape 
the danger of doing a still greater injury to the child 
already stricken by causes that were beyond our con- 
trol. It is an utterly human instinct, the first primal 
impulse to lavish love and devotion, that stirs our 
deepest emotions. But, alas! this impulse is at the 
best only an emotion! It is a feeling which so domi- 
nates us, and a feeling is by no means at all times the 
safest guide to every course of action. We owe the 
unfortunate infinitely more than this. We owe it judg- 
ment and that far-sighted look into the future which 
can recognize that when the present disease has run 
its course, there will be long years wherein the grown 
man or woman will need the sanity and self-control 
which will enable him to live, happily and usefully. 
The boy or girl, by reason of variations or imperfec- 
tions or irregularities of physical or mental develop- 
ment not readily fitting into the conventional channels 
of training, may be unfortunate far less because of the 
accident of equipment with such variations, than be- 
cause of the fate that has equipped it with undiscern- 
ing parents and teachers! On the other hand we are 
encouraged by seeing that many a trained mind and 
character even in middle life, has saved a feeble body 
from bed-ridden invalidism, so that both body and 
mind have finally come up into a joyful partnership. 
Whatever teachers or schools are selected for the 
variant child, one vital thing must be insisted upon, 78 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
namely: that the power of overcoming obstacles shall 
be inculcated! It is with great ingenuity that the 
teaching world is making fine record of “reading with- 
out tears,” and with this spirit of modern compre- 
hension of the infant mind the writer is wholly in sym- 
pathy. But his long years spent in the re-education of 
adults have taught him that those patients from whom 
he has the right to expect most, come from a class in 
whom the early set of the brain and direction of the 
will were shaped and trained, to hold as a dominant 
force, the brave, bright, expectant and overcoming 
attitude towards obstacles. 
It is somewhat a question as to what sort of a spirit 
it is that walks side by side with the child that is 
taught that all lessons are plays, to whom concentra- 
tion only comes when it is amused. This is the child 
which naturally will bring itself up against a duty or 
task only when it wishes to, and not at all as readily 
because it should. The point must here again be made 
that it does not at all matter what things the child 
learns as the result of the training and disciplining of 
the will, it only matters that it is trained to use the 
will—or its power of application—that first and most 
important of all the implements of character. It must 
have been something very virile, very un-superficial 
that gave the hard-working youth of early New Eng- 
land his hold upon life; a hold that has never been 
equalled when compared with that of the youth whose 
paths up the hill of knowledge have always been strewn 
with flowers. THE VARIANT’S START 
79 
With the greatest enthusiasm for all the progressive 
forms of imparting knowledge, we would urge with all 
possible force the vital necessity of giving the muscles 
of the mind, and even more the will, of a child needing 
special care, an increased training towards making 
resolute effort. Let us make the lesson as gay as we 
have the power or the charm to impress, interesting 
above all things; let us conceal the drudgery as much 
as possible; but we need to surround with a bright and 
hopeful halo a real task. This is something that can 
be accomplished only by effort and needs a full dash of 
zeal and inspiration, so that we glory in the work. By 
bridging with closer readjustment every gap that 
threatens failure, so that the child never knows defeat, 
we find the key-note to the child’s future healthful 
attitude of mind attained. 
With patience based upon such teaching the result 
will be beyond expectation. For this the plea is made 
that the little variant, the unusual child, the seemingly 
handicapped one, shall not be condemned to the ranks 
of the unhappy and inadequate; that it shall receive 
greater attention and the more conscientious devotion 
to its first great need, the exercise of the power to grow 
and overcome obstacles. Such overcoming brings with 
it a conscious joy to every child-mind and with it a 
marked improvement to its body,—for conquest is a 
wonderful stimulant. 
The overcoming of the resistances offered by undis- 
ciplined faculties of mind, or traits of character, is 
after all a relatively simple thing! It seems difficult 80 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
merely in direct proportion to the amount of time and 
attention we give it. Let anyone honestly question 
himself as to his own conduct when brought face to 
face with a task or duty that to him is irksome, he will 
find that his invariable impulse, too often followed by 
action, will be to turn away therefrom after the brief- 
est period of time. The horse that is permitted to 
turn away each time it shies at a harmless object con- 
tinues to shy throughout all its impaired life. In 
quite the same way, the duty we find difficult we shall 
forever continue to find difficult,—until such time as 
we calmly seat ourselves before it and train the stupid 
undisciplined animal self to grow familiar therewith 
and then eventually discover that instead of adamant 
the wall is putty! 
There are men who achieve success in the appar- 
ently difficult task of training animals to do things 
which to the uninitiated seem no less than marvellous. 
These men may be unlettered but they are none the 
less keenly perceptive. They recognize that animals 
do not have reason wherewith to deal, or what we com- 
monly call intelligence as the result of a reasoning pro- 
cess and they are not hampered by confusing intellect 
with instinct, but merely confine themselves wholly 
and single-mindedly to the training of the dumb sub- 
consciousness. In exactly the same manner can we, 
by means of our will, lead our unreasoning subcon- 
scious self up to the irksome but needful task, and 
train it to do that easily which may to us naturally 
be so hard. THE VARIANT’S START 
81 
In quite the same manner as we are afflicted with a 
phobia in adult life, so are we intimidated to turning 
away from a duty or a task or anything for which we 
feel we have no aptitude, in childhood. We blindfold 
a horse before leading him from a burning stable, that 
he may be led forth in safety and that fear may not 
paralyse his muscles; we shrink from the edge of a 
precipice that fearsome imagination may not overcome 
our power of muscular equilibrium; we do the above 
unusual things merely because the occasion is unusual. 
But in the disciplining of ourselves for the daily emerg- 
encies of life we should know that our only safety lies 
in never once permitting ourselves to be frightened 
away from any obstacle whose kind is constantly recur- 
ring upon our path. If we lack the will to promptly 
attack, just to sit down in front of the obstacle at 
first has a wonderful power of intimidation upon it 
and develops an equally wonderful power of growing 
courage in oneself. We soon find that we are en- 
couraged to draw our chair up nearer and then, if we 
cared only a fraction as much for the acquiring of a 
desirable trait of character as we did for the mere 
accomplishment of playing the piano, or even a modern 
dance, we should become master of the thing desired. 
Running as an ever-present guiding thread through 
all the maze of childhood education, passing theories 
and methods and fads encamped in ever-changing 
forms and numbers by the wayside, there should 
always be kept in plainest sight the simplest and great- 
est of all methods—to recognize the cardinal things of 82 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
value that go to make up useful and happy life—and 
then train and train and train in these things, and 
argue and reason with the child afterward! We adults 
always train throughout our entire life, merely sub- 
stituting our own developed understanding and will 
wherewith to lead our subconscious selves to the 
development desired, in place of the parent or teacher 
for the child—and this one great principle is all that 
is involved for the making of a balanced, all-round 
man or woman. CHAPTER IX 
OBSESSIVE IDEAS 
In the battle with phobias no direct, frontal attack 
in the attempt to displace, avails. The enemy must 
always be outflanked, or in some way approached 
indirectly. 
A young man of twenty, of robust habit and excel- 
lent mental attainments, was obsessed with the con- 
viction that there was water running down upon the 
inside of his skull! He had no argument to offer in 
support of his extraordinary statement but was simply 
absolutely convinced that such was the case. Al- 
though the author knew from experience that no argu- 
ment he could bring to bear would have the slightest 
effect in dislodging the obsessive idea, he yet essayed 
the pleasantry that there were no anatomical cases on 
record wherein nature had provided a place in the 
cranium for such hydrostatic phenomena; likewise 
that there was room for much legitimate speculation 
as to where the continuous stream of water might come 
from and go to! The only reply the patient could 
give was that concerning these things he did not know 
--he only knew that he felt it running down and that 
this must be proof conclusive. In this case, as in 
83 84 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
practically all others where obsessive concepts occur, 
argument with the patient is utterly futile. The 
reason for this becomes at once apparent if we realize 
that the patient has never arrived at his conviction 
in consequence of any process of reasoning; he has 
come into it through the channels of feeling. Where 
a feeling is thus dominant it is like a colored glass held 
closely in front of the eyes—all things which he sees 
are colored. He does not even see one rift of ordinary 
daylight with which to make comparisons. 
The treatment of this patient, who became entirely 
well in a few months and resumed his college course, 
consisted in the correction of his digestion which was 
noticeably disturbed, and a series of treatments by 
suggestion given when in a semi-hypnotic state. Prior 
to this treatment the patient was told that no remarks 
would be directed to his conscious or reasoning self 
since his affection was a matter of the subconscious- 
ness ; that the subconscious self was capable of having 
an obsessive idea displaced by a rational one, by posi- 
tive statements directed to it, and that so far as his 
objective self was concerned in the process it was to 
consider itself as excused. At no subsequent time was 
the patient argued with about his obsessive idea. 
Another case of a similar character is that of the 
man who was utterly convinced that he was being 
spied upon and followed up by emissaries of an insane 
hospital. Whilst suffering from digestive disorders 
and doubtless manifesting signs of a beginning con- 
sciousness of vegetative disturbances, he had been OBSESSIVE IDEAS 
85 
examined by an alienist. This examination furnished 
the nucleus for the obsessive idea mentioned above, 
which subsequently developed. The patient was con- 
vinced that he was being spied upon through the key- 
hole and listened to through the walls and ceiling of 
his room. In walking upon the street he would 
frequently cast furtive looks behind him, and one 
moment’s conversation would show the absurdity of 
attempting to dislodge his idea by discussion or argu- 
ment. This man was treated by giving proper atten- 
tion to the obvious focus of the primary disturbance— 
his disordered digestion, and by the added prescription 
of liberal doses of exercise at the wood-pile. In three 
weeks, when questioned as to whether he still felt 
himself being spied upon, he replied, with more force 
than elegance, that he was, “but didn’t care a darn,” 
and a few weeks later the whole idea of persecution 
had disappeared. 
In these two instances, brought in for the purpose 
of illustrating practical detail, the focal point of dis- 
turbance was obvious, although it is by no means so 
clear in other cases. But in the case of neither had the 
above clearly marked disturbances of digestive physi- 
ology been recognized or treated as the probable basic 
cause, which is the point the author would make. 
These men had merely become the unconscious vic- 
tims of a “feeling” that had slipped itself over them, 
which seemed so real and urgent that there was no 
perspective left and the reality of which they accepted 
without question. Had they known such to be the 86 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
case they could have kept a grip upon their reasoning 
selves and would have said, “I feel as though I had 
water running down upon the inside of the back of 
my head/’ or “I feel as though I were being spied upon 
by the emissaries of an insane hospital” but not “I 
have this or that.” 
It may be said here that no argument with the 
patient is so potent as the non-argument or sugges- 
tion that no further attempt is made to argue with 
him. After it has once been explained that his trouble 
is not a matter of his intelligence or his reasoning self, 
but of his subconscious self, such explanation serves to 
reinstate his self-respect and establish a wholesome 
mental reaction which enables him to look with much 
more equanimity and tolerance upon the obsessive 
idea. 
It is much more easy to tolerate a few flies if we 
accept the fact that they are in season, and in case of 
an obsessive idea a similar point of view, namely: 
that since the uncomfortable feeling happens to be 
present it should therefore, for the time being, be taken 
tolerantly and philosophically. It should be looked 
upon much as though an imperfectly trained member 
of an innumerable family of subconscious concepts had 
lapsed from its good behavior, or as though a child 
were practicing a naughty prank. The more a child 
engaged in such naughtiness receives the attention of 
its elders, the more pronounced becomes the misde- 
meanor. Equally surely does any obsessive idea which OBSESSIVE IDEAS 
87 
succeeds in gaining the full and serious attention of 
its victim immediately assume greater proportions. 
Persons suffering from such more or less pronounced 
lapses of certain subconscious traits, from their good 
behavior, i.e., from their normal and usual, differ 
widely in their ability to live at peace with the dis- 
placement. Long-persisting disturbances of this sort 
are at best eventually quite prone to become burden- 
some, but much depends upon the temperamental 
equipment. A friend of the writer, a well-known phy- 
sician, has a phobia of some ten years standing with 
regard to administering medicine to his wife. Its origin 
was a serious fright originally received in this con- 
nection. Since that event he never is quite able to 
believe the evidence of his senses in measuring out 
any medical dose for her, but frequently throws it all 
away and proceeds again from the beginning to read 
the label, smell at and examine the contents of the 
container, and even at times taste the drug—all this 
in the attempt to enlist the evidence of as many senses 
as possible. Even after all these precautions and the 
dose is administered, a sudden fear assails him that 
perhaps a mistake has been made. 
His reassurance always comes after a few moments 
when he reminds himself that this is his own pet 
phobia and that it is purely an obsessive phenomenon, 
an automatic habit of fear justified by just one episode 
ten years ago and now still repeating itself because 
for some reason it was not more effectually extin- 
guished at the time. He assures the writer that he 88 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
gets only amusement and interest out of it and that 
he has in regard to it a feeling of the friendliest toler- 
ance. 
Certain obsessive ideas, however, seem capable of 
instantaneous dislodgment if a flaw in the argument 
can be pointed out by the physician. As remarked 
elsewhere there is usually a starting point, which gives 
a certain degree of reason for being. Thus a medical 
patient had stepped accidentally upon a nail which 
produced a clean puncture in the sole of the foot. Im- 
mediate antiseptic cleansing and dressing were applied. 
Within forty-eight hours from that time the patient 
experienced occasional stiff feelings in the lower jaw 
and a distinct sense of worry and exaggerated self- 
consciousness. At this juncture an interview with 
another physician was suggested by the patient’s wife. 
After the wound was inspected and the fact elicited 
that only forty-eight hours had elapsed since the 
injury, the entire bubble instantly collapsed when the 
consultant gravely reminded the patient of a fact he 
had obviously forgotten, namely, that it usually took 
at least ten or twelve days for lockjaw to develop! In 
this case the flaw in the argument was very obvious 
and the patient, being a medical man, could not help 
but recognize it. Not so easy, however, is it always 
to find the error in the argument furnished by the 
victim of an obsession, for there would appear to be 
an almost uncanny cleverness in the completeness of 
the way in which the victim sees to it that there be 
no least crevice in his armor of logical deduction. A OBSESSIVE IDEAS 
89 
certain blind fatuity seems to drive the sufferer wherein 
he obviously and apparently almost wilfully closes his 
eyes to the oftentimes clearly to be perceived flaw in 
the assumption of premise. Obviously fear and only 
fear is at the bottom of all this, since fear is paralyzing 
and effectually inhibits the usual clearness of percep- 
tion. Once such process established, the tangent from 
the straight line entered upon, the road may be end- 
less. 
It will not be foreign to the discussion of this point 
to call attention to what happens to large or small 
bodies of men when actuated by the unreason of fear. 
The unthinking and unjustifiable actions of a mob; 
the rout of an army which is oftentimes only effect- 
ually checked by substituting another fear, namely, 
by firing upon them; the bewilderment of the passenger 
crossing the street crowded with vehicles; the absurdi- 
ties practiced by people with regard to the disposition 
of household effects and perhaps the baby when the 
house is on fire; and thus down the endless line of 
human experiences when the usual clear working of 
the mind is eclipsed. 
The nature of this kind of mental disturbance may 
be elaborately and helpfully explained to the intelli- 
gent patient, provided the physician confines himself 
to the discussion of the principles of psychology in- 
volved. But he should steer very clear of more per- 
sonal applications since, in such event, the conscious 
or objective self, thoroughly deceived by the subjective, 
is instantly on its guard and challenges and repels all 90 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
direct reflection upon its perspicacity! There are some 
cases wherein a method of gradual education of the 
individual may be pursued, treating whatever digestive 
or other functional disturbances he may have as best 
one can, and at the same time entering into a simple 
explanation of what the primary character of an ob- 
session is; showing that it has its roots in so many 
instances in perversions of the circulatory, the secre- 
tory or the eliminatory functions of the body, and that 
from these sources arise the subsequent imperfectly 
controlled automatisms of the subconsciousness. 
It is to be remembered by the physician, and made 
clear to the patient, that since he has once been the 
victim of an obsession he may become so again upon 
the supervention of similar disturbances at the focal 
point which gave rise to the first! This need in no 
sense be a discouragement to him because if he once 
has learned at what point in his physiology—and here 
the author wishes to place himself on record as imply- 
ing, in the large majority of instances of those cases 
that have come under his own observation, somewhere 
in the functioning of the abdominal organs—his mental 
distress has its origin, he will thereafter be much more 
likely to exercise intelligent care of himself and will 
come to entertain a merely amused interest or curiosity 
as to the absurdity of the entire lot of quixotic vagaries 
that happen to be knocking at his door. 
In all people there exist innumerable grooves of 
habit and of thought. Any habit or thought, if only 
once carried out, repeats itself the more easily the OBSESSIVE IDEAS 
91 
second time. The longer the period of time in which 
such grooves have been used, the deeper they become 
and the more automatic, and with the greater diffi- 
culty effaced. Useful habits of mind and body make 
no deeper grooves than useless or undesirable ones 
unless they have been longer established, it being 
simply a matter of the more frequent repetition as to 
which assumes the right of way. Curious illustrations 
of the marvelous tenacity of such established habit- 
grooves often come to light. A friend of the writer, 
seventy years of age, after the lapse of fifty years, had 
returned to his boyhood home upon a Pennsylvania 
farm. Roaming about the attic chamber of the old 
house he came upon a saddler’s “horse,” a contrivance 
arranged to hold pieces of harness, with a seat and a 
pedal for the foot, the latter for the purpose of clamp- 
ing more tightly the leather to be sewed. Seating him- 
self astride the seat, assuming thereby the long for- 
gotten initial act, he found his right leg suddenly make 
vigorous downward and sidewise movements with 
the pedal—a movement necessary to clamp that leather 
tightly, but one he had wholly forgotten and which 
was awakened out of the memory of fifty years by the 
suggestion of association, instigated by the first act 
of the series, sitting astride the “horse”! 
Probably only a regard for the more sober conven- 
tions of adult life holds most of us back from repeating 
the childhood formulse of evidence of good faith, such 
as “cross my heart,” or “hope to die!” Sometimes, 
however, a wholly new obsessive idea may occur which 92 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
appears to have the tenacity of years of possession. 
In such case we may assume the existence of a soil 
peculiarly sensitive and receptive, either congenitally 
so or, as seems more probable, kept so by an existing 
provocating cause elsewhere than in the mind, never 
wholly out of commission. Here then we have an 
occasion for developing in the patient that exercise of 
the tolerance of his subjective self, which is capable 
of causing such tendencies to be retired into the re- 
moter regions of his consciousness where, like old furni- 
ture in the attic, it does not often appear before his 
vision and, even then, continues to be looked upon as 
rejected. 
As an illustration of a somewhat different form of 
obsession the author would mention the case of a 
young married woman of fine physical development 
who had always been well up to the time of the pres- 
ent infirmity. She could not sit alone or sleep alone 
without the immediate presence of an attendant in 
her chamber. She could not pass through the gate of 
the grounds of her garden, upon the public highway, 
even though accompanied by the nurse. With much 
insistence occasionally her former physician prevailed 
upon her to accompany him upon a drive in his car, 
but upon such drives she was always uncomfortable 
until back in her home and then felt as though she had 
been through a great strain. She was subject to fre- 
quent attacks of what she described as a sort of terror, 
for which she could recognize no provocation. She 
complained of only a mild degree of digestive distress. OBSESSIVE IDEAS 
93 
This lady had become in fact a prisoner within the 
confines of her home and her degree of helplessness was 
pathetic. The effect of such disability was heightened 
by her appearance of perfect physical strength and 
health. She declared that when she attempted to pass 
through the gate she was overcome by an overwhelm- 
ing sense of distress quite incapable of description but 
which prevented her taking another step forward. 
Under such circumstances, when attempting to force 
herself as the result of urging on the part of her com- 
panion, her countenance showed noticeable pallor and 
terror. The patient was entirely open to argument 
and accepted the explanation that her trouble had its 
origin somewhere in the digestive tract—which was 
proven to be the provoking cause—and that the symp- 
toms of fear and convictions of disability were sub- 
conscious phenomena out of which she was capable of 
being trained. She was willing to admit the above 
premises but the fact remained that she felt herself 
helpless nevertheless. 
The digestive needs were treated in accordance with 
their indications, vigorous exercise of a character to 
increase respiration and at the same time to compress 
the abdominal muscles was ordered, and the patient 
was given a series of talks explaining that an obsessive 
idea such as hers, was the result of a fear, transform- 
ing itself into a habit conviction. How the fear first 
came about would have been an interesting excursion 
into the field of psycho-analysis, but into this we did 
not go. She was told that, whatever the remote cause 94 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
might be which was now manifesting itself as a fear, 
the fact remained that she was the victim of a habit 
which, by frequent yieldings, had excavated grooves 
in the subconsciousness and that for her to fall into 
that particular groove had become practically an 
automatism. 
Experience has shown that such automatisms of an 
undesirable character are best treated by the substitu- 
tion of other and normal habits, and that they cannot 
be dislodged by merely trying to drive them out. In 
this case, then, there came in the application of the 
principle mentioned in the training of the puppy. The 
patient was not argued with but asked to walk as far 
as she could through the gate and to stand still when 
the moment came when she could go no farther. After 
a few moments of such surrender to the fear, the acute- 
ness of the distress would lessen and she was told to 
then go a few steps farther to some easily remembered 
landmark such as a tree. Arrived there she was to 
retrace her steps and consider the first lesson accom- 
plished. Under no circumstances was she to allow the 
first terror to frighten her back home. This lesson was 
to be repeated a few days in succession without any 
further attempt at increasing the distance. 
It was interesting to observe that every repetition 
of the above act became easier. When the patient 
admitted this, another tree by the roadside was desig- 
nated as the goal and much the same experience of 
resistance, offered and overcome, was encountered. 
After some weeks, not without much protest and OBSESSIVE IDEAS 
95 
shrinking and supported by continued encouragement, 
the lady reached some friendly door-steps at a distance 
of one-eighth of a mile, upon which she would sink 
with great relief and the consciousness of a mighty 
work well done. From this time progress became more 
rapid and in less than two months from the beginning 
of the training, a half-mile was accomplished, and a 
little later a pleasure journey of some two thousand 
miles! The substitution of the normal act, insistently, 
in the very teeth of the inhibitory fear, conquered by 
the mere force of its persistent displacement. 
It should be noticed that in this case aside from the 
matters of hygiene, diet and medication, the treatment 
of the patient was of an educational character purely. 
The patient was kept in constant touch with the idea 
that she was engaged in the re-education and training 
of the subconscious habit that had become engrafted 
upon her. Picturing to her the animal-like, instinctive 
nature of the thing she needed to overcome, and bring- 
ing to bear merely the same methods one would with 
a child which needed to be taken out of the wrong way 
of doing a thing by causing it to do it in the right way, 
equipped her with a wholly comprehensible concept 
which she was able to carry out. She was enabled to 
see the reasonableness of the teaching and thus could 
lend her own voluntary cooperation. 
Parallel cases of types frequently recurring may 
be appropriately discussed in the above connection. 
Among these are those of people unable to take a 
journey or absent themselves from their usual environ- 96 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
ment. Others have a fear of places, of crowds, of 
public gatherings in church or theatre; of music, wind 
or lightning, of light or heat, of contaminations, some 
of these latter pathetically strange; in fact of almost 
everything that may be imagined and often of things 
which one would think could not be imagined—most 
of them characterized by distinctive names. The 
author has had occasion to treat people of both sexes 
in whom an infinite variety of these distressing things 
occurred, some of them dating back into the childhood 
of the patient, often persisting in the same form 
throughout, but at times shifting to others, more or 
less undesirable variations of the same fundamental 
panic theme. The educational method has proven a 
success in nearly all—always provided that the physi- 
cal irregularities were kept under continued scrutiny, 
and that both physician and patient had the courage 
to persist. 
In this connection another instance of a phobia may 
be mentioned which was brought to the attention of 
the author some fifteen years ago, which was then new 
to his experience and has not occurred since. A lady 
of fine mentality and mature years, upon one pretext 
or another had for some time evaded carrying out the 
doctor’s instructions, when ordered a full bath. She 
finally confessed to not being able to suffer herself to 
become covered by the water in the tub. Each time 
upon attempting it she had been seized by a terror, so 
that she no longer dared try the experiment for fear of 
some possible disaster. OBSESSIVE IDEAS 
97 
It would be difficult to know, without a prolonged 
period of questioning and analysis into the past his- 
tory of the patient, how this fear might have origi- 
nated, but it was apparent that, from the time of its 
inception, the patient must have begun to yield to it 
increasingly, so that eventually the subconsciousness 
developed a mere dumb automatism which had finally 
taken the bit entirely in its teeth, producing in its 
victim a state of complete terrorism. Consequently in 
any attempt at a bath, it would seem as though the 
subconsciousness would become enraged at the at- 
tempted violence to its “feelings,” i.e., to its estab- 
lished grooves of activity, and would vigorously pro- 
test in a manner to produce the distressing reactions 
she experienced. The lady was told to take the bath, 
though she might expect to meet with a violent pro- 
test; but that since she was obviously within her rights 
in attempting so salutary and reasonable a procedure, 
the subconsciousness might protest until it got blue in 
the face! 
It was explained that each successive bath, com- 
pletely carried out, would gradually break the opposi- 
tion urged by the subconscious automatism, by the 
simple process of displacement, inasmuch as she was, 
after all, merely replacing a faulty and irrational habit- 
groove by one that was reasonable and natural. To 
the best of the author’s recollection no more than four 
repetitions of the bath, each one completely gone 
through with, served to lift the ban and the patient 
was free. This lady was at the same time the victim 98 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
of several other phobias, one of them an inability to 
leave the bed and walk even so short a distance as 
around the four sides of the room. This latter obses- 
sion disappeared in a few days by observing exactly 
the same methods as those pursued in the case of the 
bath, the patient making the attempt to stand and 
walk, reinforced by the moral support furnished by the 
doctor, each successive attempt becoming easier until 
the inhibition upon her will suddenly lifted. Co-exist- 
ing with the above psychic disturbances were pro- 
nounced disorders of the digestion, noticeably much 
gaseous distention of the stomach with duodenal dis- 
turbances. The radical improvement of digestion was 
accompanied by the complete subsidence of the psy- 
chic disturbances, but upon the return of symptoms 
of digestive disorder the spectral crew of phobias 
would loom upon her horizon. The connection in this 
case of chronic disorder of digestive functions and the 
co-existence of obsessive fears was again strikingly 
obvious. 
But it must be fully understood at the beginning 
that there are many cases wherein the training of the 
understanding, in order that it may cooperate, must be 
insisted upon before the patient can accept the mould- 
ing influence of suggestion. An extraordinary degree 
of helplessness may be present and the re-education 
must often begin upon lines so simple and comprise a 
task so light as to cause comment, but the task itself 
is not the point—obedience to a law is the goal. A 
famous neurologist, now deceased, made in one case OBSESSIVE IDEAS 
99 
the task of stringing three large beads a day’s work 
for a lady who was far below the power of using her 
own cooperation, unaided. When she had arrived at 
the point where eight beads had been strung per day, 
her recovery was well under way. The day of small 
things assumes great proportions to the watchful 
physician and the greater number of failures arise from 
the unwillingness of the undeveloped subconscious or 
instinctive self to accept the needed training. 
In reflecting upon the afflicted lives of the victims 
of such disturbances it would surely appear as though 
the pendulum of their “variation” had swung far from 
the mean of the normal—and yet these sufferers are 
often most generously endowed with superior traits of 
mind and character—ranking upon the plus side of 
those desirable equipments. They are by no means 
abnormal, only varying more readily in their greater 
susceptibility to certain kinds of psychic disequilibria 
which should not, and are not, to be considered as 
serious as they seem, and which in almost all instances 
are susceptible to readjustment to the degree of re- 
storing and maintaining their happiness and efficiency. CHAPTER X 
THE WAY OUT 
It is usually a difficult matter for a person suffering 
with obsessive fears to win the understanding and help- 
ful cooperation of his family. Since the sufferer rarely 
comprehends himself, it is naturally impossible to 
make himself clear to others. The role assumed by 
the emotional self is an exceedingly variable one in 
different individuals, and it is safe to say that in the 
majority of human beings its vast significance as a 
factor in their distresses is almost wholly overlooked. 
We need only look to the negro, as he is familiar to us 
in this country, as an example of a simpler organism 
than that of our race, for illuminating illustrations. 
In this race we have a less complex development, a 
status more like that of the child, a degree of develop- 
ment wherein the emotional nature much more com- 
pletely dominates the objective or intellectual. The 
ease with which the more uneducated of the colored 
people can have illness “conjured” upon them through 
the hoodoo of some evil-disposed enemy is so well 
known, that to “be hoodooed” has become a familiar 
phrase of our language. The only thing that saves us 
from like susceptibility is the intervention of our su- 
100 THE WAY OUT 
101 
perior powers of reasoning—the greater development 
of the intellectual faculties;—the emotional equipment 
is equally present within us all, being merely kept more 
in abeyance by the controlling influence of the mind. 
The highest degree of intellectual development is 
not infrequently accompanied by exceedingly dominat- 
ing emotional susceptibility, it not being by any means 
a matter of the degree of intelligence but one of the 
kind of equipment. Indeed it would appear often as 
though our various faculties, such as our intellectual, 
our reasoning powers, our emotions and our “igno- 
rances,” made the journey together upon the same 
train, each confined within its own locked compartment, 
with the free intermingling of its passengers as only an 
occasional occurrence! It would otherwise be difficult 
to explain why a keen business man permits himself to 
consult a clairvoyant for the determination of his busi- 
ness policy, or an apparently balanced man or woman 
should feel easier if he has seen the new moon over the 
right shoulder instead of the left—or why so many of 
us permit ourselves, more or less jocularly it is to be 
hoped, to “rap on wood!!” It may be assumed that 
intellectual development takes place with us usually 
in spots. The several areas coalesce more perfectly in 
some individuals, giving what might be called balance 
—whilst in others they seem to exist more as islands, 
separated from each other by a non-conducting 
medium of more or less insulating power. 
To be of real help therefore to our patient, recog- 
nizing that we invariably are brought to face problems 102 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
of more or less serious involvements between the physi- 
cal and the psychical, it should be our endeavor to 
make his position more tolerable and self-respecting, 
to clear up the understanding of all concerned, the 
family oftentimes as much as that of the sufferer, that 
no unjust inference as to the patient’s sanity or ra- 
tional status may be entertained. The sick man has 
a sufficient burden to bear in his own discomfort and 
perplexities, and needs all the intelligent sympathy that 
is his due. It is of great helpfulness to encourage him 
to unburden himself freely and as often as he feels the 
desire—more often than he may be inclined indeed. 
The only person to whom he can do this effectually is 
naturally the one who first explains him to himself, 
the physician in fact, but he may not always be at 
hand and it would be of great help if some member of 
the family could be so educated as to receive the con- 
fidence of the invalid and discuss with him his dis- 
tresses—with sympathy to be sure, but also with under- 
standing. But the author would draw a sharp line of 
distinction between the sympathy of understanding 
and that sort of sympathy, all too prevalent in the 
atmosphere surrounding many chronic invalids, which 
merely serves to plunge the patient deeper into the 
soundless depths of self-consciousness. 
All physicians who are concerned with chronic func- 
tional disorders meet with instances wherein nothing 
short of the total elimination of the family of the 
patient would seem to give him any chance of recov- 
ery. Indeed it is no small matter for the immediate THE WAY OUT 
103 
friends or family who constantly surround the patient, 
to escape being gradually colored by the insistent 
reiterations of the former’s pains, disabilities or feel- 
ings. The natural bond of family affection becomes a 
great menace by virtue of the manner in which we are 
all drawn too close, in our anxiety and sympathy, to be 
able rightly to interpret with sufficient perspective. 
No one recognizes this danger more quickly than the 
physician when he himself is ill, and none is so ready 
as he to fall back upon the larger horizon of his brother 
practitioner, wTho is unhampered in the calmness of 
his judgment, by the distorted emotional factor so 
capable of disqualifying us all. 
In the family of the patient we may find one of two 
attitudes towards his status as an invalid; either an 
exaggerated or wholly credulous sympathy, which 
steadily undermines the patient’s character and helps 
him deeper into the indulgence of his symptoms, or an 
attitude of skepticism and intolerance which causes 
him to turn into himself and brood over his misfor- 
tunes. In each case the patient is misunderstood and 
in neither is he helped. Numerous cases suggest them- 
selves to the author wherein, from the moment that 
the patient’s real condition—with all of the involve- 
ment between his psychical and physical,—was made 
clear to him and to his intelligent family, and he was 
made to understand that it was helpful to try to 
crystallize into thought and words the atmosphere of 
vague discomfort that surrounded him, relief would 
be at hand. Under such elucidation the cloud of 104 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
physical and mental distress would resolve itself into 
a few concrete ideas, infinitely easier to bear in their 
definite form than the murky atmosphere of the mood 
from which he had emerged. 
As an instance illustrating this point the following 
account will serve: A lady who had suffered from 
childhood with various manifestations of the “doubt- 
ing folly” and from hyper-conscientiousness, came 
under the author’s care after she was thirty years of 
age. She also had occasional visitations of the con- 
tamination phobia, wherein she would feel strongly 
inclined carefully to wipe off the door-knobs before 
venturing to open doors. The first examination re- 
vealed a badly disordered digestion, cold and moist 
hands and feet, and great indecision of mind as to 
whether she should place herself under treatment. 
Before arriving at this final decision she had been sev- 
eral years in making up her mind; indeed she had 
once travelled three hundred miles of the journey 
when her courage failed, and she returned home to 
dwell for another year in her distresses. She was 
afraid of the doctor, of what he might possibly do to 
her, of the possibility of disappointment, and was 
afraid of being afraid. 
The character of her mental distresses, which were 
capable of much variety though a certain few persist- 
ent ones had the greater dominance, may best be illus- 
trated by the well-known German fairy tale concern- 
ing the maid whom the master sent down the yawning 
cellar-way to draw a mug of cider, and whose woes are THE WAY OUT 
105 
narrated in the folk-lore of many nations. In no 
sense does the author mean to treat other than seri- 
ously of the unhappiness of such sufferers. This lady 
had become utterly wretched and unfitted for any 
relations of wife or mother, all of which suffering being 
accentuated by her inability to interpret her symp- 
toms to herself or to explain them to her family so 
that they might intelligently sympathize. 
Three months of treatment of the disordered diges- 
tion, with active outdoor physical exercise, without 
any attempt being made to secure the patient’s moral 
cooperation through the re-education of her psychol- 
ogy, produced marked amelioration of all the symp- 
toms. Another three months made the symptoms 
easily tolerated, and the patient able to enjoy her 
friends and her interests in a manner she had not been 
able to at any time within her recollection. At the 
end of this time a persistent course of psychological 
instruction was given her and the subconscious, auto- 
matic nature of her phobias explained, with endless 
illustrations. The patient was taught that her fears 
probably all started from some actual provocative 
point—some real thing of greater or less importance, 
of similar nature to those happening to most people 
many times in their lives. That then, owing to an 
existing tendency on the part of the subconsciousness, 
possibly to a greater natural predisposition, or to an 
acquired one owing to physical provocative causes 
such as she brought with her in her disordered diges- 
tion, the habit to amplify and to doubt took up the 106 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
refrain. She would then be helpless in the grasp of 
what was in reality merely a subconscious automatic 
process which continued to reverberate through her 
consciousness and by its persistence succeeded in 
demanding all of her attention. 
This condition was compared, for the purpose of 
illustration, with a person seated in a room with sev- 
eral undesirable people present who could not be dis- 
lodged. The more they were urged to go, the more 
they were argued with, the tighter they sat, because 
they then occupied increasingly the centre of the 
patient’s consciousness. The simile was carried further 
and the patient told that, since she had found that 
these undesirable people could not be dispossessed, 
they were to be therefore left undisturbed and her 
attention was to become engaged, as far as lay in her 
power, with some desirable person whom she was to 
invite into the room and with whom she was to absorb 
herself as completely as possible. So long as thus 
engaged with the centre of the consciousness, the ob- 
jectionable people would at once appear more dimly 
to her perceptions—they could only occupy the mar- 
gin of the consciousness and at times would become 
wholly forgotten. The undesirable people were equiv- 
alent to the obsessive thoughts, fears and doubts which 
had automatically thrust themselves before her con- 
sciousness, and the desirable person the same as some 
earnest interest or occupation which by its dominant 
presence in the foreground of her attention, of neces- 
sity must displace the unbidden worries. THE WAY OUT 
107 
If once a patient can be made to realize the great 
significance of this simple truth, and induced to prac- 
tice the principle, no matter how imperfectly, the be- 
ginning of the end of his troubles will be at hand. It 
is of the greatest importance patiently to teach this 
principle because to the mind obsessed by fear-thoughts 
and intensely absorbed with them, the obscuration of 
the outlook upon normal things is complete. The 
patient is completely shut out from the world of the 
normal, from the brightness of the sunshine, by colored 
glasses; and he cannot get away from this absorbing 
consciousness even sufficiently to give ordinary atten- 
tion to what is said to him. Such patients often have 
the appearance of being always preoccupied. Whether 
witnessing a play or seated amongst others at a table, 
their attention is wholly or partly elsewhere. They 
cannot detach their consciousness from themselves. 
This lady, as above mentioned, was treated at first 
emphatically for her obvious attendent digestive and 
emotional unbalance, to which end our pharmacopeia 
is abundantly equipped—if the modern therapeutic 
iconoclasm does not get in the physician’s way! She 
was always given opportunity to unburden herself and 
listened to with respectful interest, even though one 
could foretell that the burden of her distress would be 
ever the same. After such narration was over she 
would be told, “Yes, but you know that I have ex- 
plained to you that these troublesome things are mere 
automatic thought-habits which repeat themselves 
because they have become involuntary. You have but 108 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
to recognize this fact each time anew and eventually 
you will succeed in detaching your real self from them, 
more and more successfully.” 
The patient was told that she would thus be able, 
by actually saying to herself: “This is but an auto- 
matic thought-habit, I will take up some more agree- 
able thought or occupation and thus crowd the other 
farther out of the way,” to establish new and more 
desirable ones. She became enabled, with increasing 
ease, to detach herself from the objectionable and to 
hold more fast to the desirable. A little success gave 
her courage to do more and thus she grew in the power 
to become less dismayed when the undesirable things 
knocked at the door of her consciousness. To these 
she would say, in her thought, “Yes, I know what you 
are, you can sit there ’till the crack of doom if you 
wish, but I am otherwise engaged!” After this simple 
process had been carried on for some months she 
finally expressed herself as feeling for the first time 
she could remember, “out of prison.” For another 
year there would still come occasional visitations of 
the old thought-habits, fainter by far, and only at 
intervals, but at the end of that time she declared 
herself as well as she could wish to be. 
Thus was wrought the emancipation of a human 
soul from the tyranny of twenty-five years of a mind- 
habit. The mental distresses experienced by this lady 
originated in causes that reached back, doubtless, to 
the years of her childhood and could these have been 
definitely determined they would have appeared tri- THE WAY OUT 
109 
fling at the most. It does not require that any serious 
frights or shocks should have been experienced by the 
patient obsessed with phobias. It is true that such 
do occasionally appear to mark their starting point, 
but in far the larger number of instances their origin 
lies in trifles which would almost appear to serve 
merely as an excuse for the subconscious wheels to 
take up a harmony of discord. The real reason why 
such inharmonious and incoordinated processes ever 
succeeded in foisting themselves upon the subconscious 
mechanism of the victim lies, in the judgment and 
experience of the writer, in that peculiarly vulnerable 
and susceptible status of the individual induced by 
fluctuations from the normal physiology of those 
organs, and that vast interlocking network of nerve 
ganglia, which reside in the region commonly called 
the abdominal, but which many a sufferer might justly 
designate as the “abominable!” 
But given a susceptible soil, perverse automatisms 
may arise as uncannily, to the mind of the sufferer, as 
were the supposed phenomena of spontaneous genera- 
tion sixty years ago. Any of the multitudinous im- 
prints existing upon the subjective may assume virility 
and merely through repetition make ever-deepening 
grooves upon the subconscious automatic mechanism. 
Like wrong fingering at the piano, the early mis- 
spelling and mispronouncing of a word, the playful 
imitation of a stammerer, or any other undesirable 
habit persisted in for even a short time during the 
early formative years—the grooves thus made cannot 110 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
be eliminated in any other way than by the deliberate 
excavation of new ones. But in such process of cor- 
rection the undesirable automatic habits should be left 
severely alone. They should not be argued with, they 
cannot be forcibly thrust out, they must not by such 
methods be kept in the centre of the consciousness— 
since these but give them greater recognition and serve 
to deepen and keep them alive. 
The “Chrisian Science” people carry out this prin- 
ciple admirably in their practice when they “deny 
evil.” They contemplate and affirm the “good,” the 
desirable or ideal; they have a working use of the 
principle of substitution; thus if it does not happen 
to be pneumonia or typhoid or some other concrete 
and specific entity which they are refuting, but some 
psychic disequilibrium, they often do literally replace 
the undesirable by that which is desirable. 
In the treatment of the innumerable cases of long 
standing which present endless variations upon the 
above citation, one cannot but experience great regret 
that such patients could not have had the benefit of 
a more intelligent direction while young. It is the 
writer’s opinion that such tendencies are easily recog- 
nizable in the child, that they can then be much more 
readily corrected and better ones substituted, and that 
in this direction lies one of the most fruitful and fasci- 
nating fields of the preventive medicine of the future. 
The child is, what it will always continue to be, a 
child; when it is older it has become merely an adult 
child, it does not change in the least in its potentials. THE WAY OUT 
Ill 
If we believe in the necessity and possibility of train- 
ing the child, as all parents believe and practice more 
or less perfectly and more or less consciously, we need 
in no sense despair should the child have reached the 
age of fifty and still be in need! The possibilities of 
such training are equally existent; we can still, meta- 
phorically, take our hands and remodel the rugosities 
and excoriations of the fifty or sixty-year-old auto- 
matic self into a new topography which, when put 
upon the turn-table of the phonograph of our daily 
life, will prove to be a “record” yielding more pleasing 
harmonies and conforming more nearly to the inborn 
destiny of our inheritance,—namely, the right to vary, 
in such direction as may be for our best! CHAPTER XI 
SETTING THE STAGE 
Though the prevalence of obsessive ideas in the 
young is exceedingly common, their presence is often 
recognized by the parent only when they have become 
pronounced by their unusual manifestations. Even 
the parent is apt to look upon such irregulariies as 
transient vagaries out of which the child is expected 
to grow. Yet it is in these incipient stages of their 
development that the peculiarities of a child can be 
most effectively pruned, and the right direction given 
to an impetus which appears to be departing at a tan- 
gent from the normal. The author recalls the case of 
a boy who was devoted to playing the childish game 
of “tag,” touching with his hand every hitching post 
upon his way to school. This habit soon became in- 
voluntary and his progress along the street was regu- 
larly broken by the necessity of touching every post 
and even retracing his steps if one had been over- 
looked. A little later in his career he formed the habit 
of whistling when drawing on his stockings and soon 
discovered that he could not draw them on unless he 
did whistle! Whilst attending boarding school it was 
observed that in ascending a staircase he always talked 
112 SETTING THE STAGE 
113 
to himself and inquiry revealed the fact that in his 
opinion he could not mount the steps without saying, 
before taking each step and each time in a louder 
voice, “Now I’m going up, now Fm going up,” the 
pitch of his voice keeping pace with the height of the 
stairs! It was also discovered that he felt himself 
obliged to count a certain number of counts between 
each letter in the spelling and reading of a sign be- 
cause, he explained, “I should die if I didn’t!” 
Here was an instance of a child abnormally sus- 
ceptible to suggestion, and doubtless of a congenital 
equipment which made it an easy prey to every ill 
wind that blew. His ordinary waking state was almost 
as open to the moulding force of any modifying im- 
pression as though he were plunged into the deepest 
hypnotic trance and in a state of pure subjectivity, 
with the correcting influence of the conscious and 
reasoning self in almost complete abeyance. Neverthe- 
less this boy proved to be equally susceptible to cor- 
rection. He was referred to a skilled colleague in his 
own home town who gave him positive suggestions in 
the hypnotic state wherein the greatest emphasis was 
placed upon his future ability to do only normal, 
natural, and usual things and never again erratic and 
grotesque things such as above cited, or any others of 
like kind. His nutrition was improved through atten- 
tion to his digestion, he was given an active outdoor 
life, and in six months after the writer first saw him 
the boy appeared to have undergone a change almost 
as radical as though he had assumed another person- 114 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
ality, with the complete disappearance of all crip- 
pling and freakish obsessive habits. 
One of the most classic of the author’s cases as 
illustrating the ease with which the modifying wedge 
of suggestion may be inserted into the subconscious- 
ness of a child, and a normal habit be caused to dis- 
place an abnormal one, was that of a lovable little 
boy of five years of age. He had acquired the habit 
of consuming from three to four hours in the eating 
of each of his simple meals, so that he had hardly 
concluded one before the following one was at hand. 
The situation had become desperate since it consumed 
nearly all of the child’s time and that of the nurse and 
the little body had become exceedingly under-nour- 
ished. The little boy’s explanation was that he 
couldn’t eat any faster. He would take a spoonful of 
porridge, turn it over in the mouth once or twice, mak- 
ing no attempt to swallow, and then cease all further 
attempts at mastication. When told to chew his food 
and then to swallow it, he would make a few attempts 
at turning it over and then desist. This habit had 
been upon him for some months and was increasing 
in intensity and there was also a nocturnal inconti- 
nence to the extent of as many as twenty-four times in 
some nights. No history was obtainable save one of a 
prolonged period of indigestion. 
Since it was obvious that the pressing need in this 
child’s case was the improvement of his nutrition, and 
this latter was not possible so long as his obsession 
regarding the chewing and swallowing of his food stood SETTING THE STAGE 
115 
in the way, this perverted function was attacked 
through the channel of hypnotic suggestion. After 
repeated failures to make any impression upon him 
this method was abandoned and attempts were made 
to give him suggestion whilst asleep, but again with 
negative results. Thereupon all further attempts to 
enter his subconsciousness through the portals of the 
hypnotic state were relinquished and the problem was 
considered from the standpoint of indirect suggestion 
in the waking state, with results that were exceedingly 
satisfactory and phenomenally prompt. 
The nurse, an intelligent woman of rare skill and per- 
ception and peculiarly well adapted for this work, was 
first privately instructed that when the doctor called, 
all of his remarks were to be addressed to her and that 
she was told to hold herself in the attitude of a per- 
fectly passive but deeply interested listener. She was 
to assent, with much earnestness, to the doctor’s state- 
ments but was to make no comment upon them after- 
ward to the child, but was to act as though everything 
he had said was for her ears alone. The little patient 
was of course to be present at all such interviews but 
no attention was to be directed to him by either doctor 
or nurse, in fact his presence was to be quite ignored 
and all conversation was to go over his head. The 
stage having been thus arranged, and with his back 
to the patient, the doctor assured the nurse that he 
was perfectly convinced that the little boy had thus 
far really not been able to eat his food in less time 
than he had been consuming. That he believed he had 116 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
tried his best but had not been able to accomplish it 
and that he had no fault to find whatever with his 
earnest attempts to eat his food properly. But after 
carefully examing him he had come to the conclusion 
that the trouble was one that could be helped and he 
now wished the nurse to write the patient’s father (of 
whom he was passionately fond) assuring him that he 
need no longer worry and feel unhappy about his child, 
since henceforth he would be able to eat every one of 
his meals on time! That hereafter he would even be 
able to eat them in half an hour, or in just the same 
time as the rest of the family, and that hereafter there 
would be no more wetting of the bed at night! 
All this having been delivered to the nurse, over the 
child’s head, with much impressiveness, the doctor pro- 
ceeded to leave the room. But, as a seeming after- 
thought, he stopped to whisper to the little boy before 
going out. He explained to him in substance just 
what he had told the nurse, reiterating carefully all of 
the salient points of his discourse, namely, that he 
knew that he had not been able to do any better in 
the past, but that hereafter he would be able to eat his 
meals on time and that he would no longer be dis- 
tressed by wetting the bed in his sleep. He then made 
his departure with a manner of having decisively set- 
tled a very important matter. 
The following day the doctor called in a mental 
state of much expectancy, feeling that he had now got 
all of his eggs in one basket and that these needed 
careful watching. The little patient had been brought SETTING THE STAGE 
117 
into the room; the doctor addressed himself to the 
nurse, and the latter reported that thus far he had 
not been able to do any better with regard to his 
manner of eating, but that during the preceding night 
there had been absolutely no sign of incontinence! At 
this report much gratification was expressed by the 
doctor and the same procedure was gone through with 
as upon the day before, i.e., emphatic statements and 
explanations to the nurse and the seeming afterthought 
of confidential explanation to the little boy. The next 
day the nurse reported that the breakfast had been 
eaten promptly on time, but that the other meals had 
still lagged somewhat! But by the end of a week all 
meals were being eaten promptly and there had never 
been any return of the nocturnal incontinence. The 
little patient rapidly became better nourished and up 
to the moment of the present writing, which is ten 
years later, there has never been a reminder of the 
distressing obsession. 
In this most interesting case, wherein an obsessive 
automatism seemed to be anchored so firmly as actually 
to threaten the child’s health through the embargo 
upon its nutrition, the psychological disturbance was 
again the outcome of certain disturbances that were 
primarily of the digestion. It had taken such form, 
however, as to necessitate therapeutic measures 
through the channel of the subconscious, the reflex 
that was dominating the will and mentality being of 
such nature as to prove obstructive, and it was neces- 
sary to deal with the end product as manifested in the 118 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
phobia, rather than with the first cause, the digestion. 
In this instance peculiarly, though also true of many 
others occurring among both children and adults, the 
singularly penetrating value of indirect suggestion was 
admirably shown. Direct statements, such as made to 
the nurse, if made to the child would have been com- 
pletely rejected by the consciousness, because the lat- 
ter would then have been directly concentrated upon 
them and in all such cases suggestion is no longer sug- 
gestion. But when made to the third person, the nurse 
in this case, the child’s attention was not directly chal- 
lenged and the statements, which were suggestions, 
fell upon the marginal consciousness of the listener 
and found easy access into his subconsciousness where- 
upon they were as easily carried out. 
In another instance occurring in a little girl of ten 
there was a rather remarkable illustration of a not 
unusual state of affairs that may be produced in per- 
fectly well-regulated families. The child had devel- 
oped a complete inability to eat anything save two 
slices of bread and butter at each meal. She was even 
inclined to hesitate at the butter, using but a small 
quantity. A general malnutrition was obvious, the 
little ears were translucent, the conjunctivae bluish 
and she was too languid to manifest any interest in 
play. Inquiry showed that, the girl being slight and 
delicate, owing to an already existing malnutrition, the 
mother had, not unnaturally, fallen in with the idea 
that a delicate child could not and should not eat very 
much. To this suggestive attitude on the part of its SETTING THE STAGE 
119 
natural mentor the child fell an easy prey and at the 
time the patient came under observation, there had 
become developed a beautifully typical case of obses- 
sion with regard to her inability to partake of but the 
smallest quantities of food. 
She was a sweet and affectionate girl, with a good 
intelligence, and could be talked with much as though 
she were upon one’s own plane of maturity. She met 
the doctor with absolute trust and an actually pathetic 
belief in his wisdom and the wonders he might be 
able to perform. To the end in view the aunt of the 
child who was present, and the nurse, had been pre- 
viously instructed. They had been told to give her to 
understand in various ways, both by direct talk and 
by other more mysterious and subtle allusions to the 
doctor’s power in the direction of making little girls 
get well, how much they were expecting and how 
much she might expect. The field of suggestible 
expectancy had been thoroughly prepared. The 
patient’s mind, i.e., the subconscious part of it, had 
been put into the condition of a sensitive photographic 
plate and was ready for, and highly expectant of, the 
restoration of the ability to eat and the consequent 
strength to follow. 
The author was consciously anticipating a rare ex- 
perience, since never had he found conditions so favor- 
able and rightly attuned for the principle of suggestion, 
purely by indirect means, through the channels of 
confidential talks to the child, and also at the child, 
by directing his remarks to the nurse in the former’s 120 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
presence. The patient was first told in the presence 
of the aunt and the nurse that the doctor was quite 
satisfied, upon examination, that she really was in 
a condition wherein she obviously could not eat any 
more than she did. That he believed that her own 
conviction as to her utter inability to take one spoonful 
of milk was doubtless correct. That the exceeding 
tiredness of which she complained was, of course, due 
to her inability to take more food, but that it was 
unfortunately true that such inability existed. This 
talk, and all others, were always conducted with the 
utmost gravity and earnestness and great care was 
taken that the child should never in the slightest 
degree be shaken in her own self-respect. Had she 
been told that she was quite wrong in her interpreta- 
tions of herself, or foolish, or that she really could eat 
a reasonable amount of food but merely imagined that 
she could not, the entire combination of carefully 
thought out and arranged psychological paraphernalia, 
directed toward promoting the receptivity of her sub- 
conscious mind, would have tumbled over like a struc- 
ture of cards. 
The result of this carefully prepared approach to 
the stronghold wherein were lodged the obstructive 
concepts, the obsessive convictions as to the inability 
to eat, was a condition of expectancy; in other words 
a readiness to be convinced to the contrary, to be 
helped against her inability to help herself. It will 
be seen that here we had the same condition that pre- 
vails with the devotee approaching the shrine of SETTING THE STAGE 
121 
miraculous relics, who has undergone such preparation 
of expectancy as to be easily receptive to the auto- 
suggestion of the cure of his ailments, and who is 
capable of becoming thus cured,—providing his con- 
dition he of such nature as to be susceptible of such 
methods! 
The various stages of preparation having been thus 
gone through with—and herein lay the major part of 
the treatment—the child was given her first talk with 
regard to the possibility of taking more food, the nurse 
always being present. Both child and nurse were ad- 
dressed alternately, with the same earnestness and as 
though they were of the same age. She was gravely 
assured that this day she would, for the first time in 
some years, be able to take one-half glass of milk at 
luncheon. That under no circumstances would she be 
able to take more, even though she tried, and she would 
only be permitted to take it at one meal, her luncheon. 
That after two days the nurse would be allowed to 
increase the amount of milk to three-fourths of a glass, 
but it would be absolutely confined to that one meal. 
A few days later a second half-glass was allowed at a 
second meal and after another short interval a third. 
Thus was begun the simple process of steady in- 
crease, carefully graduated to appeal to the child’s 
own sense of proportion and the fitness of things. In 
due time plenty of butter and beefsteak began to 
appear upon her menu and in a month the little girl’s 
consumption of food rivalled that of the average adult 
with a healthy appetite. In the course of time it be- 122 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
came necessary to instruct the little patient that she 
was taking about as much food as most children of her 
age consumed, and that hereafter she was to give the 
matter no further thought. Owing to the extreme sug- 
gestibility of the child her pendulum of psychic equi- 
librium was capable of swinging too far the other way 
and a reasonable limit had to be established as to the 
average amount of food to be consumed. With the 
continuation of better digestion and nutrition the 
psychic stability became established. 
In an analysis of this little girl’s condition it became 
apparent that one had to deal with an extremely sen- 
sitive organism. The equilibrium between the physical 
and psychical was congenitally delicately adjusted and 
possibly might always continue to be so. But it is not 
the author’s belief that mere delicacy of body is any 
criterion of the existence of a vulnerable psychic poise. 
Strong and rugged people would appear to be quite as 
frequently victims of such disturbances and when they 
do appear the very robustness of the individual 
heightens the contrast. In the eyes of both patient 
and friends such accentuated contrasts are the more 
noticeable and the bewilderment of the patient the 
greater. It would appear that this vulnerable factor 
in at least many individuals is dependent upon pro- 
vocative causes of a physical nature and that we have 
to search here for their elucidation and relief. 
The author is of the opinion that most persons can 
be upset and disastrously acted upon by subconscious 
manifestations. He has seen it occur in men who up to SETTING THE STAGE 
123 
sixty and seventy years of age had never been ill, had 
always continued active in their vocations, and then 
suddenly become victims of strange fears, obsessions 
and phobias, so that we may safely assume that some- 
where in the functioning mechanism, other than in the 
ultimate expression of subconscious phenomena, the 
discord had been made possible. Nor is he of the 
opinion that we need to search the remote recesses of 
the subconsciousness for memories of startling episodes, 
oftentimes of a suspected sexual origin, for the expla- 
nation of obsessive conditions which in most cases 
yield to methods that make no attempt to trace their 
origin to such sources. 
It is true that various forms of self-abuse happen 
in very young children, in some cases of no more than 
three or four years of age, but these morbid manifes- 
tations are reflexes of disturbances that are primary 
elsewhere. Such occurrences, even after they are 
obliterated, may make indelible memories upon the 
subconscious storehouse and be capable of being 
awakened and associated subsequently with kindred 
or unlike impressions, forming complexes wherein he 
who seeks only the sexual factor will assuredly find it. 
The existence of psychological aberrations, or at least 
the potentials for their future development, are recog- 
nizable many times in children so young that it is in- 
conceivable that any kind of sexual consciousness could 
have made itself manifest; and in cases wherein sexual 
roots do reveal themselves as the causative factor for 
subsequent psychic disequilibria, it may safely be 124 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
argued that it is likely to be, after all, the presence of 
the unstable basic balance, which responds with a 
readiness that is almost pathological to any upsetting 
cause that may happen along. It does not appear that 
an equally single-minded search has as yet been made 
for special factors other than the sexual one, and the 
entire field of psychic research appears infinitely too 
vast to permit of conclusive deductions of a single 
factor type. 
The writer has in mind two children, brothers, whom 
he has known since infancy and who are now in their 
thirties, who when less than a year old showed the 
probability of a future deficient psychic balance. As 
they developed, various little queernesses became 
patent, the older particularly developing such pecu- 
liarities as made him easily the butt and the victim of 
various persecutions from the other boys at school. 
He became the prey, in rapid succession, of one fad 
after another, whilst in preparatory school and college 
always going to the utmost extreme, and though now 
a mature man he is not wholly able entirely to extricate 
himself from the handicap of his naturally unstable 
equipment. The younger brother seemed better 
balanced in youth, but is likewise given to being car- 
ried away into courses of conduct that are largely 
governed merely by feeling,—the objective reasoning 
consciousness being so easily eclipsed as to occupy 
second place even in matters of vital importance. 
An analysis of these two cases seems to show an 
unusual susceptibility towards reasoning deductively SETTING THE STAGE 
125 
from false premises, such premises being accepted by 
the subconsciousness before the objective mind had 
had time properly to consider and pass upon them. A 
certain kind of what appeared to be intellectual ability 
was present in both individuals, making possible high 
marks at school, but this consisted chiefly of the power 
of memorizing,—a subconscious attribute, and was not 
a property of the objective or reasoning self. That 
certain sexual aberrations should manifest themselves 
in the above instances was natural, but it was no more 
significant than that many other manifestations of a 
psychopathic nature should have been present; it was 
the equipmental groundwork that was at fault.* 
* A tragic denouement to this citation of an instance of exaggerated 
suggestibility, wherein the control of the reasoning self was in 
abeyance, is furnished in the subsequent career of these two 
individuals. 
Falling victim to a prevailing epidemic and having at an earlier 
period become zealous converts to one of the cults of the times, 
they refused the aid of all medical skill,—theirs proving the only 
two fatalities out of an approximate one hundred members of their 
community who fell ill at the time,—and recovered. CHAPTER XII 
CRUTCHES FOR THE LAME 
Everybody is familiar with the character of fiction 
wherein the long-suffering invalid is portrayed lying 
in bed, turning her emaciated countenance longingly 
to the light, which is charily filtered through the tightly 
closed windows. By the bedside are medicine bottles 
in formidable array and curtains protect the bed from 
all possible danger of draughts. Surrounding the 
patient are sympathetic friends with proper sick-room 
countenances and all the paraphernalia are at hand 
for the indefinite continuance of the desperate state of 
the patient. Into this mausoleum for the living is 
then pictured the entrance of the ruddy-faced doctor, 
who, with one comprehensive glance takes in the entire 
situation and presumably diagnoses the patient’s con- 
dition at the same time. He strides up to the bed and 
pulls aside the curtains, with another step he is at the 
window which he throws open wide, and then the 
entire collection of bottles and pills is lustily ejected, 
whilst a merry breeze causes the solid phalanx of 
microbes lurking within the hangings to disperse; the 
graphically pictured horror of the patient and family 
126 CRUTCHES FOR THE LAME 
127 
completes the picture and the patient, despite such 
terrifying innovations, gets well! 
Neither is this picture out of an old-time story book 
in the least overdrawn, for just such happenings occur 
in the present-day experience of many physicians. 
There are numberless patients today suffering from 
the lack of the like common-sense interpretations of 
their condition, and the physician does not in each 
case happen to be like the one in the story book. We 
have all seen, particularly with patients in easy cir- 
cumstances, that the time-worn phrase of “enjoying 
poor health” may be a literal verity. Here we may 
find the daintiest appointments for the enjoyment of 
invalidism; a complete wardrobe of charming negligees 
and “fetching” boudoir caps meets the physician and 
caller in bewildering succession. There is often a 
special time set apart for the reception of callers and 
various domestic functions are arranged with sole 
reference to their taking place in the invalid’s chamber. 
The writer has known more than one feminine patient 
express keen disappointment when the assured well- 
ness dawning upon the near horizon threatened the 
disqualification of a recently acquired and extensive 
sick-room wardrobe! 
Would we do away then with all the things that 
tend to make the invalid’s sufferings more tolerable? 
Shall she not be surrounded by comforts and friends, 
with willing hands to anticipate her needs, real or 
superfluous, and shall not all noises be hushed and all 
of the necessities of thinking or caring for herself be 128 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
removed before they can occur? By no means would 
we withhold all this solicitude and loving care if, in so 
doing, we are really bringing aid and alleviation, and 
there is no danger of making the patient a pervert from 
the normal desire to become well, and from the ability 
to resume her proper place in the ranks of the efficient. 
There are conditions of invalidism wherein the patient 
can not be injured, even by an excess of attention, and 
in such cases the anxious solicitude of the loving family 
has a right to lavish itself to the utmost satisfaction of 
its own heart-longing; but these are much more likely 
to be instances of acute or fatal illness. Should the 
illness prove to be a chronic one, however, from which 
it is expected that the patient will recover wholly or in 
part, and resume, more or less completely, her rightful 
role of efficiency and happiness, we are confronted 
with the great responsibility of seeing to it that there 
is not engendered such undermining of the invalid’s 
moral tone and weakening of her normal powers of 
tolerance and endurance, as forever after to unfit her 
for contact with ordinary living conditions. 
Environmental conditions are of enormous influence 
upon the patient, for or against his convalescence. But 
we are obliged to consider not alone the problem of his 
convalescence but that of the sort of a man, woman 
or child we shall find after such convalescence from the 
immediate illness has been attained. The after-effects 
of chronic illness may easily be worse though of a 
different character than the original illness and more 
difficult to deal with, since there are likely to be con- CRUTCHES FOR THE LAME 
129 
fusional complexes of a lamed moral resiliency inter- 
woven with the subconscious memories of actual 
invalidism. Here comes in a very legitimate and urgent 
need to be supplied to the convalescent; the re-edu- 
cation of his moral tone and of his healthful outlook 
upon life; the dispersion of the fogs and memories of 
the invalidism of the past by the vigorous substitution 
of suggestions of courage, of efficiency, of the ambition 
to take up anew all of the dropped threads of the 
fabric of life which the patient must and can learn to 
weave even more skillfully than ever before. A person 
who has been ill and discouraged for long periods of 
time has become lamed in the very citadel from which 
power springs—in his soul, and he can not be turned 
out to pasture as we would a horse, in the expectation 
that the young grass and the springing turf will restore 
health to that non-corporeal part of him which re- 
sponds to renewal only when it is touched by another 
vital spark that is akin to itself! 
To no less degree than that environment and re- 
education are of such paramount importance in the 
complete and wholesome recovery from invalidism, so 
equally are environmental conditions subtle but power- 
ful factors in the production of the same. One may 
be conscious of their influences and yet not be able to 
alter them, but more often we are the unthinking and 
therefore helpless victims of conditions wherein en- 
vironment is only in part to blame and our own lack 
of understanding of what is happening to ourselves, 
responsible for the rest. 130 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
Some years ago the author was consulted by a 
gentleman of middle age who came into his consulting- 
room with a manner of great dejection. His look was 
downcast, his voice low and apologetic, and he walked 
upon the toes of his boots as though desiring to make 
as little noise as possible. His story was to the effect 
that he was suffering much unhappiness and depres- 
sion, and that life seemed long since to have lost its 
coloring. He was married and had children and his 
wife was affectionate and companionable, and there 
was nothing in his affairs to cause him undue financial 
anxiety. Neither was he suffering from any recog- 
nizable physical distress. The very noticeable things 
about him were his manner and appearance of utter 
woe, and the almost whispering voice. It was only 
when, during the course of the examination, the ques- 
tion was asked as to the nature of his occupation, did 
light break upon the situation; for his answer was, 
that he was the librarian of a great university. Here 
at last was sufficient reason for the possibility of the 
most subtle form of poisoning, for it was shown that 
for twenty-five years the gentleman had walked upon 
tiptoe, had spoken in low tones, and had at first con- 
sciously and then soon unconsciously practiced the 
complete obliteration of himself! 
To this man was explained that he was obviously 
suffering from the effects of his life-long environmental 
suppression and that his help must come through the 
reopening of the old channels of natural expression. 
He was told that every emotion we experience must CRUTCHES FOR THE LAME 
131 
first be preceded by a “set” of the corresponding 
muscles which then was followed by its proper emotion. 
That the emotion was never primary but always sec- 
ondary. That it would be impossible for any one to 
place himself in front of a mirror and whilst drawing 
the muscles of the face broadwise, making grimaces at 
himself, experience at the same moment the emotion 
of weeping. Such a sequence of emotion would be an 
impossibility. Neither would he be able, while draw- 
ing a long and downcast face, to experience any other 
emotion but one of sorrow and woe. 
To him was explained the psychological principle 
that human emotions are not primary things but that 
they are end-products, ever secondary to some preced- 
ing muscular setting, and that the latter is secondary 
to the primary concept or thought. In most instances 
it is absolutely within one’s own power to determine 
what emotion one would experience, this fact being 
capable of abundant illustration. It is impossible for 
a group of boys, desirous of fighting with the new boy 
who has moved into the neighborhood, to fight with 
him at once, merely to show their own supremacy. 
They must first need to work themselves into the fight- 
ing mood. To do this they begin to ball their fists 
and to make motions with their arms as though they 
were about to deliver a blow. The muscles of their 
faces begin to be set in lines of anger. They scowl and 
sputter and revolve around their victim until, presently 
they are properly worked up to fight, the psychological 
moment being reached. The boy who whistles because 132 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
it is dark goes through the same entire physiological 
and psychological sequence, even though he has done 
it all subconsciously, without in the least knowing that 
he is not afraid merely because he is making a cheerful 
noise! 
If we observe the happy person and then the 
unhappy one, what is the first thing that attracts our 
attention? It is, of course, from his countenance that 
we gather how he feels; we need not ask him about 
himself because we see it so obviously in the set, the 
expression of the muscles of his face. To the natural 
criticism that such person may not have deliberately 
chosen to set his countenance in the lines which we 
observe, and that his emotion of sadness or joy would 
appear to have come of itself, the answer would be 
that thought must have been the first incentive. The 
nature of the thought determined the immediate fol- 
lowing of the set of the facial muscles, and only after 
this had taken place was it possible for the emotion or 
“feeling” to supervene. 
If we look upon the countenance of a group of fellow 
mourners at the bier of a departed loved one, or upon 
those who assemble upon an occasion of rejoicing and 
merry-making, we plainly see how wholly at one are 
thought and appearance and feeling and how impos- 
sible it would be to experience an emotion that would 
be opposed to the expression of our countenance and 
to the sad or happy thought that had created the 
initiative. But the patient under discussion had not 
reflected upon these things, they were too close to him, CRUTCHES FOR THE LAME 
133 
he was under them. It is a rather startling revelation 
to any man who has pointed out to him that he has 
become the victim of his environment in the absence 
of any noticeable physical irregularities or distresses. 
We usually see the approach of the obvious attacks 
upon our peace of body or mind but in this instance 
nothing could have been more subtle, since the aggres- 
sing agent was the sum of all the environmental con- 
ditions surrounding him. 
Being a man of superior intelligence, the patient 
listened attentively to the elucidation of the above 
principles and at once proceeded to carry them out. 
He practiced a definite length of time each day in the 
attempts to dislodge the almost crystallized setting of 
the facial muscles. The best results were obtained by 
standing before a mirror and making grimaces at him- 
self, whereupon he soon declared that it was obvious 
that the corresponding emotion followed immediately. 
This discovery being thus brought to him through his 
own experimentation, he developed courage to try 
further. He was told to go out into the woods and 
fields and practice making a loud noise, such as his 
college yell, which might be further accentuated by 
throwing up his hat! Here again a signal triumph 
and demonstration of a principle were obtained. 
Eventually the friendly cooperation of several bright 
young ladies, who sat at the same table, was obtained, 
to try not only to make him laugh at their own non- 
sense but to induce him to perpetrate jokes of his own. 
All these devices were perfectly successful and of the 134 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
greatest interest to the patient. The principles having 
been thus clearly demonstrated and their application 
begun upon, he returned to his home and later humor- 
ously wrote that upon his return his wife hardly knew, 
in the changed man, the husband who had left her a 
short time before! 
If any reader should doubt the tremendous influence 
of environment upon all natures sooner or later, let 
him attempt to care for a person who is ill in whom his 
affections or interests are sincerely enlisted. Let this 
patient be particularly sensitive to light and noises 
and sudden movements in the sick chamber, so that 
the attendant is under the necessity of constant noise- 
lessness of movement and delicacy of touch around 
the bed and person of the patient. If, further, his own 
bed or room should adjoin that of the patient, so that 
the need of refraining from even the most ordinary 
noises in moving about therein should be continued,— 
it would not be long before such attendant found him- 
self under a considerable nervous tension. He might 
find himself burning with the desire to throw his boots 
upon the floor with exaggerated force and, needlessly, 
and quite contrary to his usual custom, desire to slam 
a door! For such attendant to change into a room 
remote from his patient where he might for a time 
indulge in all the ordinary noises of dressing and un- 
dressing with a somewhat exaggerated freedom of 
movement, would be a sane and justifiable method of 
restoring his equilibrium and continuing his usefulness 
to the patient. CRUTCHES FOR THE LAME 
135 
We do not arrive at the recognition of truths so 
much as the result of abstract reasoning as by the 
intelligent perception and interpretation of the com- 
mon happenings and experiences of our everyday life. 
Almost every mother has learned that if her child cries 
as the result of some mishap it may be possible to 
divert its attention from the possessing grief by the 
instant substitution of a joy. It is only in a vague 
manner that the mother is aware that she is carrying 
out a great psychological principle. Were she to reflect 
upon what far-reaching application this principle 
was susceptible, in the character-training of her child, 
she would be enabled to spare it most of the unhappi- 
ness of its future years. The writer wishes to pay 
tribute to the thoughtfulness of a father who had been 
his patient, who had taught his little girls always to 
say, with the utmost promptness, when they fell down, 
“On we dash!” The clever substitution of a brave 
adventurous idea, before the mishap of a fall had 
opportunity to produce a corresponding emotion of 
grief, was as effective as it was happy. 
In the nursery of today we find practices in vogue 
that go far back into time wherein the nurse, by man- 
ner and tone of voice, plays upon and arouses the 
entire scale of emotions of which the child is capable. 
The ghost-story, related in the darkened room, with 
only the light of the fire upon the hearth to show the 
whites of the eyes of the inspired narrator, together 
with the solemn countenance and bugaboo voice, 
quickly creates the same set of countenance and appre- 136 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
hensive attitude of body in the child, whereupon all 
the feelings of shiver and creeps and horror are at hand. 
A state of emotion may be thus early produced to send 
the child to bed in terror of the dark and of every 
sound it hears; and in such manner the tyranny of the 
habit of fear may be born, to take in future years all 
manner of shapes. The significance of the attitude of 
body as an index of the emotion that is to follow is 
everywhere recognized. The grotesque goose-step of 
the German army is a deliberately thought-out method 
of exhilarating the spirits or suggesting dash to the 
soldier. No one can hear martial music without ex- 
periencing a quickened breath, a step that keeps time 
to the tempo, and a glow of patriotic fervor at the 
sight of the colors, the uniforms and all the bravery 
of military accoutrements. Forlorn hopes dash on to 
their death in glory to the inspiration of their own 
cheering, and doomed passengers on sinking ships are 
sustained to the end by the uplifting strains of “Nearer, 
My God, to Thee,” produced even by those of their 
own number! 
A panic among a flock of sheep, or among a body of 
men, may be created by one individual; and lately we 
have an instance of a soldier who, seized by fear and 
thus running away was supposed by his comrades to 
be leading a charge, upon which impression they fol- 
lowed him—achieving a victory over the enemy by 
reason of their dash and valor! The history of nations, 
as of individuals, is made up of countless illustrations 
wherein the attitude of the body determined the atti- CRUTCHES FOR THE LAME 
137 
tude of the spirit, and there would be written today- 
far less history of disease did we better understand 
the wide-reaching significance of what may be done 
for both body and spirit by a more enlightened ap- 
proach to the duplex problem through the channels 
of a more perceptive intelligence. Always does the 
too complete absorption of the patient or physician in 
the mere material manifestations of disorder—in the 
bald symptoms of pain and mental distress—tend to 
draw us away from the perception of the larger horizon, 
and the Art of Medicine, the no less noble twin-sister 
of the Science of Medicine, fails of her just recognition. CHAPTER XIII 
PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE 
Assuming the existence of a large number of indi- 
viduals whose normal deviates considerably from the 
usual, the urgent problem is before us as to what is to 
be done for these Variants that they may be reason- 
ably comfortable, that they may fulfill their responsi- 
bilities, and that they may be saved from lapsing 
into a sort of despairing semi-invalidism. This lat- 
ter deplorable end is all too frequent, towards the re- 
lief of which the prevalent apathy and lack of com- 
prehension often existing among medical men is a 
humiliation and reproach. 
Individuals of this class usually live as long as 
their more robust friends, they accomplish as much 
work though often under more difficult and distressing 
conditions, and they often unquestionably develop 
more of the higher qualities of character and the 
Christian graces in consequence of the more trying 
nature of the demand upon them. But they too 
rarely do this with the aid of the doctor to whom 
they are justified in looking for relief; more often it 
is despite the physician from whom they may get 
medicine or surgery, or at times the dictum that 
138 YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE 
139 
since he can find neither fever nor tumor nor broken 
bones there can be nothing the matter. At the same 
time their very soul may be crying out for some sort 
of perceptive recognition of the fact that they are 
really suffering and in need of having such suffering 
interpreted along the lines that will appeal alike to 
their understanding and the needs of their higher 
spiritual nature. 
The simplest principles of human psychology teach 
us of the disastrous effects of pain and the imperative 
need of enabling the consciousness to forget it, so that 
its cumulative effect may not act as an upsetting 
factor to other functions, near or remote. The con- 
ception that pain is nature’s way of remonstrating 
and of calling attention of both the lower and higher 
nerve centres to the existence of trouble is true and 
helpful—as far as it goes. It is in no sense helpful, 
however, unless we carry the thought to its logical 
conclusion which is that pain, much or little, of long 
or short duration, is a disassociating force of greatest 
potency. 
Pain may interfere with or quite inhibit function 
not only locally and directly, but also indirectly or 
reflexly, often of the entire organism. The acute re- 
actions following acute pain, with the attending 
reflexes, are familiar enough. The subtler reactions 
which follow chronic discomfort, and their under- 
mining effects upon the psychology of the individual, 
are but vaguely recognized. Yet their devitalizing 
effects produced upon the minds of countless suf- 140 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
ferers, constitute probably the bulk of the causes that 
contribute to human inefficiency among the class of 
the chronic semi-invalids. Whatever wears upon or 
depletes a person, be it pain, anxiety or unhappiness, 
is a drain of unknown degree and one needing to be 
reckoned with unceasingly. 
It may be conceded that could pain, together with 
whatever disturbances it engenders, be confined 
wholly to the domain of the subconscious, the reme- 
dial processes would then take place in the shortest 
possible period of time. If we look abroad in the 
animal world we see that the domestic dog or cat 
when ill, will betake itself to its lair and fall into a 
state of sleep or torpor which is simply an act of 
complete submergence into the subconscious,—an in- 
stinctive impulse or provision wherein the least pos- 
sible obstruction to the most perfect physiological 
readjusting and reconstructive processes prevail. 
“Sleep, nature’s sweet restorer,” is with man the near- 
est approach to the subconscious, the state farthest 
removed from the inevitable disturbing effects of the 
consciousness upon the peace of the body. Indeed 
individuals are not rare, who, when suffering pain or 
indisposition, betake themselves instinctively to pro- 
longed hours of sleep, thereby hastening their con- 
valescence. It may even be allowed, in the sleepy or 
semi-delirous conditions attending certain acute ill- 
nesses, such as in the fevers, that the dulling of the 
consciousness may be an instinctive provision which 
permits the more prompt readjusting of the physio- YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE 
141 
logical balance. The “turning point” of an illness, a 
matter of common folk-lore, and popular in fiction 
as being indicated by a prolonged sleep, is none the 
less a verifiable clinical phenomenon. 
To alleviate suffering, subjective as well as ob- 
jective, would appear to mark the highest type of 
professional ministry and calls into play, in connec- 
tion with the most liberal knowledge of remedial 
measures, medical and clinical, the use of broad and 
fundamental principles of human psychology with- 
out which latter the office of physician is but frag- 
mentarily filled. To understand how most helpfully 
to bridge this chasm of pain for the sick man, that 
the hiatus of more or less complete oblivion thereof 
may be his, is not so difficult where the pain is of the 
body and merely concerns irritated nerve termina- 
tions. We have here great resources in the domain 
of medicine, whose art and science may do wonder- 
ful things. But alleviations may be caused to pene- 
trate much more deeply into the psycho-physical com- 
plex than can be produced merely by medicines and 
the direct relief thus obtained. They may be of such 
subtle, ethereal and immaterial character as to prove 
important factors in releasing that mysterious in- 
hibition which rests upon the patient’s psyche, re- 
storing thereby the inestimable cooperation of hope 
and courage. 
It is thus that we may do such far-reaching good 
through the ministry and use of our human sympathy 
and perceptions. Often the patient craves and needs 142 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
such comprehending sympathy most of all. He may 
easily fall into line and cooperate much more hap- 
pily if he feels, first of all, that he is understood. 
Something lets go within him, some intangible re- 
sistance or opposition, if we have the skill or the 
grace to be able to set free within that indescribable 
feeling that he is going to be helped. He at once 
ceases to fret or to be tense or apprehensive, to con- 
tinue that strange sort of blind resistance to the 
kindly healing forces nature is ever striving to press 
upon him. It is here that the soul-side of the suf- 
ferer may receive recognition for which there is in so 
many instances such a mighty hunger! 
One of the most distinguished of our American 
surgeons and a man of international renown, once 
observed to the writer, with a manner of great con- 
viction, that what we needed in our medical schools 
was “A chair devoted to teaching how to get sick peo- 
ple well!” He spoke this very feelingly because he 
himself had been ill and trying to get the above-men- 
tioned much-needed help from his colleagues; and 
had discovered the to him startling fact that they 
did not seem able to put themselves into the sick 
man’s place. To be sure he had received every 
courtesy at their hands; but somehow the laboring 
oar had invariably been thrown back upon himself. 
His point was that in applying for relief he had been 
counselled with, taken into consultation over his own 
case and his own judgment asked; but because he 
was the superior of every one of his professional YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE 
143 
friends consulted, in some manner he seemed to have 
intimidated them so that they failed to enter into 
the proper relation of physician to patient—they lost 
sight of the primal human relation which must prevail 
before the sick soul permits the body to respond to 
the proffered help. 
It was this physician’s lot to come under the care 
of a much younger professional brother, who like- 
wise felt at first intimidated at the thought of taking 
charge of a man so distinguished and experienced, and 
one who had for so many years occupied a position of 
undisputed authority at the very pinnacle of his pro- 
fession. But the younger man thought that the famous 
surgeon was, after all, only a sick fellow-being and very 
much in need of doctoring and nursing. Indeed it 
seemed, as a part of this thought, that perhaps the 
nursing was no inconsiderable portion of the need. 
Thereupon he gathered together all his courage and 
keeping firmly before him the primal need of the sick 
man, i.e., that he was in a condition quite unable to 
judge and care for himself and needed some one to 
assume authority, he spoke to him as follows: “Dr. 
Blank, I hope you will agree with me in the wisdom 
of concerning yourself not at all with the nature of 
the medicines I am about to give you. That you will 
let me treat you simply as I would any other patient, 
following my instructions without discussion, and 
throwing the entire responsibility of yourself upon 
my shoulders.” A look of great relief came over the 
distinguished patient’s face and he quickly said, with 144 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
a note of deep feeling, “Why, doctor, I have a broken 
and a contrite spirit and I hold up both my hands!” 
The surgeon proved to be as good as his word in every 
detail and conducted himself as an ideal patient. 
He never manifested the slightest desire to interfere 
or to be taken into consultation over himself. There 
was no least wish to discuss or debate the therapeutic 
scheme, but he realized with the contentment of a 
child the luxury of being cared and thought for. Inci- 
dentally, it should be added, it was the younger doc- 
tor’s great privilege to see his distinguished colleague 
become well. 
Out of such experiences, so touching in their 
exposition of fundamental human needs, a mighty 
truth stands revealed. May we be helped to remem- 
ber that a sick human being is sailing under bare 
poles, with his primitive desires and needs pathetically 
crying for help! With the loss of his strength and 
self-confidence, unless there be present a broad and 
well-established foundation of spiritual development, 
and even under such circumstances at times, the erst- 
while self-sufficient man may become as a child. 
Everyone’s moral courage is closely linked to his phys- 
ical, and the child-craving for help and care comes 
quickly to the surface in our hours of helplessness. 
The physician, when first sitting in judgment upon 
his patient, is being watched with every sharpened 
sense of the sufferer. He should be keenly alive to 
this scrutiny and bear himself towards the patient as 
he, in turn, would like to feel the doctor’s presence YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE 
145 
react upon himself. Strength wherewith to get well 
may be inhibited or released within the patient, accord- 
ing to the impression he receives. Very rarely does the 
sick man desire to be treated as a consultant,—this is 
not the reason he summons the physician. The com- 
ing of the physician should bring to the patient the 
stimulation of new hope and courage and the feeling 
that now he may lean back upon a strong and wise 
resourcefulness. This fact alone will immediately 
begin its work of helpfulness, for the paralyzing effects 
of anxiety and the sense of lonely responsibility are 
allayed. 
In the writer’s earlier days of practice he had the 
privilege of being associated with a man of this char- 
acter whose mere presence in the sick room was like 
unto a quickening glow of light and warmth in the 
hearts of his patients. It was of him that an unfor- 
tunate and almost speechless Irish railroad man with 
a badly crushed leg, lying upon the wooden platform 
of the station near the site of the wreck, said, in a loud 
and jubilant voice as though thereby galvanized into 
speech, as the doctor’s heavy horse and carriage were 
heard thundering over the pavement, “Be Hivins, 
byes, I hear Dr. W , ’tis already as though me leg 
was growin’ on again!” 
The writer well remembers the shiver of disgust 
which came over him, when, many years ago, he sat 
for the first time in the amphitheatre of a great Ger- 
man hospital. It was a surgical clinic and the pre- 
siding professor was attended by a bodyguard of 146 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
assistants, white-robed and thoroughly sterilized. In- 
deed it seemed from the countenances of some of these 
men that the process of sterilization had been wholly 
effective and had penetrated deeper than any mere 
microbic emergency should require. The tiered seats 
were filled with intent faces, there was an expectant 
hush, for the great teacher was about to demonstrate 
upon the body of a young woman of the poorer classes 
an operation involving a new technique. 
The patient had not been anaesthetized since it 
was desired first to demonstrate the surgical condition 
as it appeared when the muscles were in their ordi- 
nary state of tonicity, the subsequent demonstration 
to take place under the relaxation of the anaesthetic. 
The examination and discussion which then took place 
could only be likened in its effects, as it was reflected 
upon the countenance of the tortured and frightened 
girl, to the thumb-screws and rack-and-pinion of the 
Inquisition! Alternations of hope and utter despair 
followed each other over her sensitive face, and though 
her trouble did not involve a fatal issue, she yet was 
permitted to pass many times over the threshold of a 
succession of deaths. The subsequent anaesthesia was 
a merciful relief but she had already suffered all tor- 
tures that the knife could have inflicted—and all these 
were wholly needless. 
The professor was not at all necessarily an unfeel- 
ing man and doubtless was kind to his family—and 
may even at times have given to charity—but he as- 
suredly was a thoughtless man and had forgotten that YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE 
147 
true greatness in his profession never detaches itself 
from the humane. His own attitude of scientific 
abstraction only too quickly reflected itself upon his 
staff of assistants and they were obviously not in need 
of that kind of reinforcement. 
At another time, in another lecture room in his 
own country, the writer, still a young man, shared 
with some of his fellow students in a feeling of 
righteous resentment at the ill-timed levity per- 
petrated by the professor to his assistants at the ex- 
pense of the shrinkingly sensitive patient. The high 
calling of the profession of medicine seemed singu- 
larly profaned and desecrated by such exponents. 
Not for one moment is it intended to imply that 
in either instance were these men unfeeling and heart- 
less. Doubtless none might be more ready to respond 
to the call of charity and self-sacrifice upon their time 
and skill. They had merely dealt so much with the 
mechanics and material technique of their profession 
that they had forgotten the existence of the spiritual 
element resident in human beings. They needed the 
one essential experience,—that fellow feeling which 
makes us wondrous kind; they needed the power to 
put themselves into the patient’s place and this they 
could not do because, doubtless, they had not them- 
selves suffered in like manner to their patient and 
were therefore devoid of the much-needed delicacy of 
perception and consideration. 
In connection with the subject of the operating 
room, the observed clinical phenomena resulting from 148 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
the effect of stimulating or depressing emotions upon 
the ultimate recovery of the patient, have caused a 
general recognition to begin to prevail in some hos- 
pitals and clinics, of the importance of giving psychic 
treatment as a preparation for surgical operations. 
Such patients are said to become calm and non-appre- 
hensive, and to go under and emerge from anaesthesia 
more easily, and often to experience a much better 
post-operative reaction. This is quite in keeping with 
the experience of some obstetricians who have recog- 
nized that much may be done by psychic treatment, 
and in this connection the writer would venture to 
quote from the experiences of women who have ex- 
pressed their grateful wonder that men could act so 
tenderly in their behalf, when no personal experience 
can possibly aid them in the knowledge of their minis- 
tration; assuredly here is a field for our finest efforts! 
It is true that the modern obstetricians find sug- 
gestion capable of reaching women all along the 
dreary road of pregnancy, sustaining them in their 
hour of trial and more quickly restoring them to the 
normal of efficient motherhood. A sympathetic imag- 
ination, directed into practical channels, is a tre- 
mendously beneficent power, helping us intuitively to 
understand conditions from which we are mercifully 
spared. 
We know that an organism may continue to go 
with apparent smoothness, although all the time car- 
rying nearly or all the strain of which it is capable. 
It may be subject to a variety of strains, physical YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE 
149 
and emotional, and may be likened to a vessel carry- 
ing a full load before a high wind with all sails draw- 
ing to their utmost. So long as the sails hold and the 
wind remains constant she staggers on, though strained 
in all her parts and doing the utmost of which she is 
capable. A shift of the wind, a stronger blow than 
usual, or one faulty move of the helm, and the strain, 
already perilously close to the breaking point, has 
reached its limit and the ship may founder. 
There are many people who carry about with them 
conditions of a similar over-strain. They are worried 
daily in their business or in their social or domestic 
life. Their impaired digestions supply a steady stream 
of toxines, saturating the tissues and organs, and their 
emotional system is kept tense and keyed to the point 
of saturation. They are truly carrying all possible 
sail and they can tolerate any farther demand upon 
them but at their peril. Here is all preparation at 
hand for a breakdown. It may cause resort to alcohol 
or drug habituation; it may result in disease of the 
heart, arteries or kidneys; in neurasthenia, psychas- 
thenia, insanity or suicide. 
We must conclude that too much emphasis can not 
be laid upon the importance of a better study of that 
intricate relationship which exists between the deli- 
cate and complex mechanism of the mind and the 
functions of the body. A host of minor impressions, 
whether they be physical or coming through the mind 
or the emotions, may become cumulative. Such ac- 
cumulations, if continued, can eventually produce but 150 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
one result. They will either overflow upon other 
nerve centres and produce explosions at some remote 
point, or they will cause some other connected organ 
to become involved which, having a lesser degree of 
resistance, may go to the wall. 
Here, by close observation of an attention to 
symptoms that may not always seem pertinent to the 
immediate subject at issue, we may find ourselves 
able to reduce the sum total of the system strain and 
prevent what might prove to be the last straw, from 
breaking the long-tried endurance of the organism. CHAPTER XIV 
THE SIDE ISSUES 
There is current a rather natural feeling among 
chronic sufferers and variants that, in order to get well, 
some very particular kind of specialized treatment 
must be undergone. Such specialization as regards 
diet is frequently necessary, particularly for short 
periods of time, although the day of exclusive feeding 
is largely in the past. There are times when it is 
indeed quite necessary to restrict oneself closely and 
rarer occasions when it may be necessary to do so all 
one’s life. But eventually, in most instances, the diet 
may become speedily enlarged, reversions to the more 
limited being made from time to time, in order to give 
the needed intervals of rest to the not yet recovered 
digestive power. 
The day of all beefsteak and hot water, as practiced 
some forty years ago with considerable vogue is behind 
us. It was by no means wholly a fad since it con- 
tained some elements of truth which in the light of 
modern knowledge of digestive disorders becomes inter- 
pretable, but the modicum of truth therein unques- 
tionably was put to a severe strain. Likewise is there 
an end to concentrated food and food extracts, since 
151 152 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
these were greatly over-estimated. They, too, 
were backed by a fragmentary truth which has now 
assumed more nearly its proper value. Today, in the 
minds of most physicians, digestive ferments as aids 
to digestion come well within the debatable territory 
and such extreme views as no meat at all in the dietary 
are not well sustained, particularly if we take a broad 
view of the anatomical peculiarities of the animal, 
man. 
If Louis Agassiz had found in the glacial drift the 
jaw-bone of an animal with such teeth as ours and 
no other traces of the animal existed, he could have 
come to but one conclusion. His inference would have 
been that an animal that had cutting, tearing and 
grinding teeth could have been nothing else but 
omnivorous. If subsequently he could then have come 
upon great numbers of these creatures, living in all 
parts of the world from the equator to the poles, his 
conclusion based upon the single jaw-bone would have 
been justified. He would have found men living en- 
tirely upon meat and blubber in the Arctic regions, 
where nothing but animal food occurred; entirely upon 
cereals and vegetable matter where nothing but these 
were to be had; and as readily upon all in such regions 
where all were abundant. Should man be obliged for 
a time to practice exclusiveness and have to confine 
himself to any one of these forms of food, he could do 
so for a variable period of time. 
Such grotesque fads as the exclusive eating of un- 
cooked vegetables, a barbarism practiced within less THE SIDE ISSUES 
153 
than a thousand miles from any large centre of popu- 
lation in our own country, occur in a state of nature 
only with the most primitive savages, and rarely with 
them, since man has discovered the use of fire. Only 
one other illustration of the reversional possibilities 
existing in civilized man need be mentioned here. This 
is the doctrine that a certain amount of sand, taken 
every day, is conducive to health and good digestion. 
This cult, headed, one must regretfully state by a 
clergyman, a few years ago had its centre in the middle 
West. It fortified itself by the analogy that chickens 
ate sand! The conclusions of a broader experience, 
wherein the illuminating tendencies of a more accurate 
knowledge of human chemistry are balanced up with 
a more comprehensive view of man, are reassuring. 
That he is a creature capable of great adaptations does 
not argue specialization in diet for any length of time. 
It may be even whispered that there are no analogies 
in nature which would justify the consciously pro- 
longed mastication of our food. That this is a procedure 
which might be cultivated to advantage by some indi- 
viduals, the writer readily concedes. There is a vast 
difference between bolting the food and masticating it. 
It is only carnivorous animals who legitimately may 
bolt their food and one may see his dog do this any 
day. But the dog is living quite within his anatomical 
rights since he has no grinding teeth of any conse- 
quence and it so happens that meat and even bones 
will dissolve themselves in his stomach. That the 
cow should chew her food a very long time is again 154 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
quite clearly outlined by nature, as witness the superb 
grinding equipment with which she is furnished. 
No new truth has come to us in the doctrine of 
thorough mastication, for it is an old one reflected 
from a fresh angle. A broad scanning of the horizon 
shows us no royal road to health save by a sane, con- 
servative course. Thereby only do we avoid extremes. 
These latter but take away the attention from things 
of which we should not lose sight. With regard to the 
regulation of the diet in cases of feeble digestion, or in 
those in whom digestive disturbances are at the root 
of their psychic or nervous troubles, the object in such 
regulation or selection is but to make the processes of 
solution and absorption easier. It is less a matter of 
the nutritive value of what we eat, as of the power of 
any individual digestive apparatus to utilize it. 
In our country most people have an excess of nutri- 
tive material placed before them. All food may be 
said to be nutritive, although it may differ greatly in 
relative values. We may be able to extract and absorb 
the nutritive content of one article more easily than 
of another, even though it may represent a lesser de- 
gree of nutritive equivalent. The old adage that “what 
is one man’s meat, etc.,” is based upon the recognition 
of different capacities in different individuals. 
When we then restrict ourselves in the quantity or 
nature of our food, we do it merely that there may be 
less tax upon the digestive powers for the time being. 
In the case of exhaustive illness we may give more 
highly concentrated or soluble foods in order that the THE SIDE ISSUES 
155 
organism may get the greatest value for the minimum 
amount of expenditure. But such feeding is only for 
emergencies and not adapted to the chronic invalid. 
In the latter case the object must be to raise the level 
of the digestive capacity, and it will be found that this 
can be done in an amazing manner. But this is not 
accomplished by contenting oneself with getting along 
upon as little food as one can live upon. It would be 
found that the gradual increase of the amount of food 
ingested is not accompanied by an increase of dis- 
comfort, the latter remaining much the same, but there 
will ensue a noticeable increase of strength. 
With the increase of nutrition, and therefore of 
strength, the digestive capacity also grows greater and 
there will follow a lessening of discomfort from this 
source. It is a natural impulse to shrink from dis- 
comfort and in consequence we find large numbers of 
invalids who remain such, because they have not been 
taught that the way to escape from their enfeebled 
digestions is not to run away from them, but coura- 
geously to face and overcome them. The educative 
helps of the physician are in such cases very much 
needed, for the patient is in a condition of more or less 
panic and is inclined to yield to the dominant instinct 
of fear. More chronic invalids may be helped out of 
their distresses through the educative ministrations of 
the physician than by many other measures which are 
too often temporizing. 
As regards the conduct and activities of the Variant, 
there is here also no one specific thing that he can do 156 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
which will in itself lead to the betterment of his con- 
dition. A larger skill and judgment is required than 
that which merely says to him to sleep out of doors, 
or to have his chamber window open in winter as in 
summer, or to play golf or saw or chop wood. All or 
any of these things, if they should prove to be adapted 
to his needs, may be helpful, but none of them are in 
themselves specific. 
The object of all exercise is to stimulate the circu- 
lation through the use of the muscles and this, for 
various reasons, can not be brought about in every 
person in the same way. There are individuals in 
whom the use of certain groups of muscles is always 
followed by an increased strain or irritation of the 
nervous system, the continuance of which would only 
do harm. With such the muscles in question are prob- 
ably already overstrained and need to be relieved and 
rested by the intelligent use and development of other 
sets of muscles which may be under-used. Again the 
individual may be fond of walking, which he does 
easily, but because of the already sufficient develop- 
ment of the walking muscles little good may come to 
him through their continued use. He may in such case 
be much benefited were he to use the muscles of the 
thorax and abdomen and would thereby increase his 
breathing capacity and develop the power of the 
diaphragm. 
Many are greatly benefited for this reason, who re- 
sort to the picturesque exercise of sawing or chopping 
wood. It is very interesting to observe what this may THE SIDE ISSUES 
157 
do for one in whom the abdominal muscles are flabby 
or whose respiratory capacity is limited. Sawing wood 
is unusually well adapted to the needs of all grades of 
muscular and respiratory insufficiency since it can be 
so admirably graduated to the patient’s powers and 
requirements. Few other forms of exercise, whether 
work or sport, yield so much deep breathing and 
increased circulation in so short a time and m such 
controllable dosage. 
Golf is rightly considered a most exhilarating form 
of out-of-door exercise and its popularity is the best 
index of its value. Tennis is distinctly a violent exer- 
cise and not suited to the middle aged unless they have 
always continued the play from youth. The wood lot 
and the chopping of trees is perhaps the grandest out- 
let for the expenditure of a man’s energies since it 
brings with it the consciousness of something of real 
value achieved. There would appear to be something 
peculiarly primal in the instinct that leads so many 
men in middle or advanced life to the felling of trees! 
But this is an exercise that is almost prohibitory for 
women because of the non-development of their arm 
and wrist muscles, making the risk of accident too 
great. 
It is not intended to enumerate the many varied 
ways in which a man or woman may use his muscles 
in work or play,—they may all serve a helpful purpose, 
needing only to be rationally used and in a manner 
adapted to the peculiar needs of the individual. But 
just here there is need of caution that the remedy be 158 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
not made the means of harm. A college professor once 
said to the writer that he found one hour of golf to be 
good for him, but could not understand why two 
hours of it did him harm! Having only a limited 
amount of muscular strength he merely had reached 
and gone beyond that point wherein he could normally 
react from the fatigue. The over-fatigue had super- 
saturated the system with waste matter—the result of 
combustion—and it took a disproportionately long 
time for the normal balance to become re-established. 
This patient in addition had been spending the 
larger part of each day in a very taxing kind of work, 
that of teaching, and he was not able to make much 
further outlay of force of any kind. Here it is appro- 
priate to voice the caution that people who are making 
a considerable daily drain upon themselves in the ex- 
penditure of nervous energy, be it what it may, have 
very little left to expend in muscular effort. If they 
would do the latter they must do less of the former. 
The man who has worked hard with his muscles all day 
has little energy left for brain-work at night. Con- 
versely, the brain worker may need the physical exer- 
cise but he will need to abate somewhat upon his 
mental work, in order that he shall not burn his candle 
at both ends. 
The “fresh air” factor in the process of well-getting 
seems almost to have become a cult. One meets 
with people who have made living in the outdoor 
air the primary object of their lives. They live in it 
by day and sleep in it by night, expecting that in some THE SIDE ISSUES 
159 
mysterious manner their ills will be relieved or possible 
prospective ones averted. With the exception of the 
unquestioned great benefit of this treatment, with the 
adjunct of rest and high-feeding, obtained in tuber- 
culosis, it is difficult to see what is accomplished for 
the ordinary patient, unless he happens to be the 
victim of obvious unsanitary environmental conditions 
in the home or shop or factory. If we observe the peo- 
ple whose waking day is spent entirely in the open, 
like day laborers or field hands, or farmers, we must 
recognize that there is no special immunity which they 
enjoy over the average person whose waking hours are 
spent indoors. It may truthfully be argued that such 
people furnish no standard for comparison, since their 
lives may be unhygienic as regards food and their 
indoor habits. The farmer who lives in the open all 
day, but eats imperfectly prepared food and sleeps in 
close or contaminated bed-chambers may very easily 
counteract all the good the open air gives him. But 
on the other hand the writer has failed to observe, and 
he believes the concurrence of medical men to be with 
him, that anything is gained by the faddish devotion 
to so-called fresh air, practiced rather objectionably 
by many semi-invalids of the intelligent and well-to-do 
classes. 
There have come to his notice numerous cases 
wherein nothing would satisfy the patient short of a 
polar temperature in chamber or house, to the degree 
of securing for himself undisputed immunity from 
the company of friends or family! Assuredly it can 160 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
not be shown other than that the average man or 
woman, well or ill, remains well or makes as good a 
recovery under the ordinary and reasonable accepted 
standards of fresh air and ventilation, as the person 
who is obtrusively bathed in an excess of out-of-doors. 
In the summer time the quest for fresh air is unde- 
niably justified, but the thing oftenest sought is cooler 
air. Our cities give neither, but in the country, where 
the air is undoubtedly pure, we still find the quest for 
fresh air to be really one for a cooler temperature or a 
breeze that will displace the blanket of vitiated air 
hanging around us. During all the cooler months our 
houses may be abundantly supplied with fresh air 
simply through the rational use of such ordinary means 
of ventilation as are provided. If the air outside is 
fairly cold, a window, partly opened, will effectively 
displace enough of the air in the room in a few mo- 
ments to give its occupant a great sense of relief, the 
rate of speed being merely proportioned to the relative 
temperature of the air within the room and of that 
without. No draft or cross-current is needed, as in the 
summer, when the difference between the indoor and 
outdoor temperature is nil. Cold air from without, if 
the window be raised but a few inches, will flow in as 
would a stream of water and by reason of its greater 
heaviness cause the warmer air within to give way 
before it in all directions. 
But an excess of cold air in a chamber is not neces- 
sarily an excess of fresh air, “freshness” being that 
property of the air wherein it is sufficiently supplied THE SIDE ISSUES 
161 
with oxygen and is devoid of humidity and of the 
waste products thrown off from our lungs and our 
skins. It is easily demonstrable that a body of warm 
air that is uncontaminated by the exhalations from 
our bodies may be much more desirable than one of 
cold air vitiated by the presence of people. The good 
effects of cold air, observed in certain cases of serious 
or acute illness, are due more to the special tonic effect 
of the cold than to the possible increased amount of 
oxygen thereby obtained. 
Much practical help has recently been given us to- 
wards the solution of the fresh-air problem and the 
bugaboo of what constitutes bad air has been happily 
cleared up. We now know that a person may live for 
a long time in a very small space with an exceedingly 
limited amount of air, without suffering the least dis- 
tress, provided only that he keeps this small amount of 
air repeatedly in motion. We have been shown that, 
unless the air is agitated, i.e., repeatedly “stirred” 
much as one would stir up several different fluids in a 
tumbler with a spoon, a number of different grades of 
pure and impure air may lie side by side for an in- 
definite time without the least admixture taking place! 
Herein lies the explanation of the distress we experi- 
ence when one or more people find themselves sitting, 
for any length of time, in a closed room. It matters 
not at all whether the room be large or small; it 
matters only that they remain stationary! In a very 
short time our bodies become surrounded by an 
atmosphere of exhalation from our lungs and skin 162 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
which is full of excrementitious matter and moisture. 
The presence of moisture in this aura of our own 
emanations serves speedily as a non-conducting blan- 
ket, preventing further evaporation from the skin, and 
we thus soon become supercharged with that waste 
material we need to constantly discharge. The result 
soon follows in headache, restlessness and malaise. 
Our distresses, however, in the above circumstances 
have been induced because we did not know that the 
bad air from our bodies clings closely about us; we 
used to suppose that the vitiated air was continually 
and busily mixing itself with the purer air in remoter 
parts of the room. We supposed that a dipper-full of 
the air of a space thus occupied by few or many peo- 
ple, taken from different parts of the room, would 
show a gradually increasing and an equal degree of 
deterioration. But we now know that this is quite 
erroneous; we know that the air a yard or two away 
from us may be very much better than that which so 
closely hugs our bodies, and that the air in the remoter 
corners of the room may be as fresh as it was before 
the room was occupied. We have learned that if one 
or more electric fans were to be introduced into this 
room, and the air thoroughly agitated, all discomfort 
would immediately leave us until such time as our 
“emanation-blanket” had established itself again, 
whereupon suitable mixing of the air would again 
bring relief. This might be done many times before 
it became really necessary to exchange the volume of 
air in the room for a new one, THE SIDE ISSUES 
163 
With regard to climate, there is again no specific for 
any of us. The longing within the human heart for 
some favored spot upon the earth where the conditions 
are such that all our ills fall from us, is universal. 
Ponce de Leon had it when he sought in Florida the 
Fountain of Youth. But, as with food or exercise or 
medicine, all climates will be good or otherwise, de- 
pending upon the particular need of any given indi- 
vidual. Man can be well and happy under many 
diverse and seemingly contradictory conditions. We 
need not go far from our homes to find health since 
it is chiefly to be found by practising healthful ways, 
wherever we may be. 
Another important matter for consideration with the 
chronic invalid is the matter of medicine. Herein we 
are met with an almost universal belief, deeply rooted, 
that there must exist somewhere and somehow, some 
particular medicine which will prove a specific for our 
disorder. It is difficult to account for the origin of this 
belief since it does not appear to exist among primitive 
races but rather with the civilized. Doubtless from the 
fact that so many cures and reliefs are actually ob- 
tained by means of medicine, it is not so strange that 
the generality of people should develop the feeling 
that there must be a cure for all disorders. Nor do we 
know that this may not eventually prove true to at 
least a much larger degree than at present, though it 
is quite obvious how pernicious an effect such blind 
faith in the potential and automatic curative power of 
a “remedy” might have, in undermining the first and 164 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
infinitely greater condition of remaining or getting 
well, namely, an intelligent conception of the laws of 
health. 
As it is, with such aids to the restoration to health 
as diet, fresh air, exercise and other well-known thera- 
peutic measures, medicine in its rightful place is an 
invaluable adjunct. There are countless times when 
without the aid of medicine disease would prove fatal 
or recovery be imperfect or retarded, when no such 
issue need result. Medicine is the only agent we can 
employ in many cases where by no other known means 
would we be able happily to influence the functions of 
the various organs of the body. Without the aid of 
modern medicine man would again sit by, helplessly, 
as in bygone ages, and see his fellow-man suffer count- 
less distresses and deaths from which today he can be 
saved. But were we to look upon medicine as a specific 
against any and all disorders, as a remedy which in 
some mysterious way is to ferret out the pain and dis- 
ease and overcome it, much as a powerful magnet 
would draw unto itself a piece of steel, the real help- 
fulness of medicine in disease would be abolished and 
our attitude would again be that of primitive man 
towards his fetich. 
Medicine, and all other agents which experience has 
shown to be capable of influencing the functions of 
the body, represent a part of the sum of human knowl- 
edge in the interpretation of such functions. They 
are to be wisely employed in assisting, but never in 
replacing them. The thoughtless man continues to THE SIDE ISSUES 
165 
eat his indigestible dinner, following it with a dose of 
medicine, assuming that the wrong which he is doing 
to nature will be righted by the drug. Should nature 
resent this he will take more of it, change his doctor 
or, the worst crime of all against his intelligence, resort 
to some nostrum which is publicly announced as being 
“good for” his supposed disorder! It is upon this ele- 
ment of credulity in human nature that the unprin- 
cipled drug fakir maintains his prosperity. If the 
magnitude of such prosperity be admitted as an index 
to the degree of human gullibility, the latter is humili- 
atingly great! 
The aim of the physician should be to point out to 
his patient, provided the latter will use his intelligence 
and submit his obedience, how invaluable all these dif- 
ferent aids may be as adjuncts to his own physiological 
powers, in getting well. The problem of sane liv- 
ing is in itself difficult enough, even with all the aids 
we have, to justify the warning that we cannot afford 
to mistake the shadow for the substance and lean 
upon supports that should be merely crutches and 
bridges. CHAPTER XV 
SURVIVING, THE REWARD OF STRIVING 
To the class of people termed the Variants belong 
many individuals who represent the best that we have 
in music, art, literature and science. They often- 
times appear peculiarly gifted as though the regula- 
tion equipment which nature denied them in one 
direction, were compensated for in another. It would 
appear that a certain degree of physiological stability 
needed to be lacking, in order to bring into prom- 
inence the presence of other faculties and permit them 
to expand. The writer has spoken elsewhere of the 
deviation of the variant as the swinging of the pen- 
dulum away from the perpendicular, this being but 
an expression of the tendency to sport. By such op- 
portunity faculties are released which might other- 
wise remain passive. 
Those personally acquainted, professionally or inti- 
mately with this class of people well know that the 
heights to which they soar have corresponding valleys. 
But it is quite possible that too much allowance may 
be made for such fluctuations to be really helpful to 
them. We are apt to wink at the so-called eccentrici- 
ties of genius, and the genius, unfortunately, knows 
166 REWARD OF STRIVING 
167 
it! It does not appear that, because an individual is 
capable of superior attainments in music or art, he 
need feel justified in permitting his fences in other 
directions to go out of repair. A certain defiance of 
the conventionalities is an affectation frequently seen 
in the artistic temperament, which might be amusing 
in itself, did it not occasionally go along with the in- 
fringement of the rights of others. 
It is likely that in an individual in whom certain 
talents have become noticeably specialized or devel- 
oped, an already existing leaning thereto was pres- 
ent at the beginning; that he found it quite easy and 
natural to do some things well, without needing to 
bring to them any unusual effort. In such case it 
would be natural for him to follow the lines of least 
resistance and continue to exert his energy in a man- 
ner that gave him the most reward for the least ex- 
penditure. But in consequence of such increasing 
specialization the collateral development of other 
faculties, or other traits of character, is likely to suf- 
fer a neglect that soon makes apparent a one-sided- 
ness which may be akin to unbalance. Mathematical 
prodigies and musical blind Toms might come under 
the above extremes. The itinerant ready-reckoner 
who astonishes the ordinary mind with his bewilder- 
ing celerity in the midst of formidable ranks of figures, 
is not by any means straining his powers of thought 
or concentration. He merely dips into his subcon- 
sciousness and there sees the answer; the figures have 
arranged themselves and the deductive process done 168 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
itself, automatically, without his conscious assistance. 
Setting aside, however, such instances, wherein the 
pathological appears to obtrude itself so obviously, we 
must admit that many gifted people are one-sided, 
where it would appear they might be more evenly 
developed. If care and devotion could be given to 
these neglected sides of their character or mentality, 
it is quite within the bounds of the reasonable to sup- 
pose that the world would be the gainer. Genius 
really has time enough to devote some to the con- 
sideration of its needs in other directions and the in- 
herent soundness of the special talent would in no 
wise suffer. Do we not at such times instinctively 
hesitate at the ultimatum of genius, when we know 
it to be accompanied by hazy perceptions through the 
practical or moral atmosphere? 
Departing from the consideration of individuals who 
are conspicuous for their specialized development, we 
know many people, or even belong to them ourselves, 
who have a considerable degree of burden-bearing to 
do. From these we must always exclude those who 
are organically or specifically handicapped. Such in- 
dividuals of the type variant find life to be real and 
earnest and need to remember, for the reinforcement 
of the spirit, that the “Grave is not its Goal.” Such 
need to make effort to be serene, brave and persistent. 
It is not so easy for them as they could wish, or as 
they see it to be in the other person. They are often 
tempted to sink under the ever-present burden of 
conscious effort. REWARD OF STRIVING 
169 
Yet it is to this class that is given the choicest gift 
to man, the opportunity to strive, masked under the 
cloak of stern necessity. Through all Nature runs 
the principle of the need of striving, that there may he 
surviving! Why do we not more ap- 
ply the law to our own case? The man who is at his 
ease is content therewith, and continues to keep his 
seat. Only he seeks and finds a better one, who is 
not wholly at his ease. The Divine Discontent is by 
no means to be solely interpreted in a spiritual sense; 
it has a rather broad application. There are millions 
of men and women living wholesome lives because 
they are driven by the necessity of work for them- 
selves or their own. This is their blessing and not 
their curse. The curse would become evident to many 
were the need removed. 
A wealthy and indulgent husband whose wife, suf- 
fering with a slight melancholia, was under the care 
of the writer, was his companion on a railway journey. 
Pointing through the window at a modest farm house 
which appeared and vanished as the train whisked 
by, he asked, “Would my wife have escaped her ill- 
ness had she lived there and been obliged to do her 
own work?” “She undoubtedly would,” was the 
writer’s conviction. Hers was an instance wherein 
the absence of incentive created the “damping off” 
of the spirit. 
The existence of handicaps is often truly enough a 
demonstrable fact. But if the handicap is not in its 
nature a fatal one; if it is an infirmity of function, an 170 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
undevelopment of character, an expression merely of 
a more or less deviation of the plummet from a state 
of ease, or well-being, or contentment, the faint heart 
may have courage anew, for to it belongs the privilege 
to conquer. To these sufferers, who constitute the 
great majority, the physician may come with a 
message of life. There lingers in the minds of most 
people the subconscious conviction that there exists a 
remedy for every disease or disorder, could it but be 
found. Many there are, more the pity, who think the 
nostrum and patent medicine man has found the 
particular thing they need because he tells them so 
himself in the newspaper. Suffering and ignorant 
humanity reaches out blindly and grasps at the prom- 
ise which, sold so cheaply, is upon so broad and gen- 
erous a scale. But the physician should be first of 
all a teacher, and it is his teacher’s privilege to incul- 
cate something far better into the minds and souls 
of his people than the practice of this primitive delu- 
sion. 
Since there does not as yet seem to exist a specific 
and material remedy for every disorder, is it not of 
the utmost importance that our patient should know 
it? He must not be permitted to neglect his char- 
acter-traits by thinking all ailments he suffers from 
to be of the body, to be somehow mysteriously re- 
lieved by introducing therein a specific remedy. That 
there would seem to be no specific remedy for every 
disease, whether of mind or body, has opened the door 
to the “Christian Scientist” who could not have risen REWARD OF STRIVING 
171 
up were not humanity ceaselessly seeking, and his 
arrival upon the scene of human suffering is opportune 
with these times of vague mental and spiritual unrest. 
But the “Scientist” is equally tainted with the same 
kind of blind mysticism in another direction, because 
he permits himself to believe that, since it is true that 
some ailments are not of the body, but of the mind 
or soul, therefore none are of the body, and all specific 
remedies are vain things! The broad outlook, the 
thoughtful perspective, the evidence of the relentless- 
ness of the laws of physiology and the violations 
thereof, the willingness to receive testimony—in short, 
the understanding mind and heart are employed in 
neither case. 
Help is that which all men seek who are suffering in 
either body or spirit, and the remedy must be adapted 
to the need; but such adaptation cannot be unless 
the nature of the need be broadly interpreted and we 
become convinced that in so many of the disorders 
of our human brethren we can not truly help unless 
we enlist the cooperation of the man’s emotional and 
spiritual forces,—until we consciously set about re- 
leasing that wonderful lifting power which comes 
through the stimulation of the psychic resources. 
A sane and broad interpretation of the condition 
of the Variant is only possible when we remember that 
his needs are both of mind and body. He suffers all 
over, both in the consciousness of physical discomfort 
and in the lack of mental and spiritual harmony. 
We cannot expect to arrive at a concrete estimate of 172 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
his condition from one examination in the consulting 
room, since this would argue an almost superhuman 
penetration on the physician’s part and an impossible 
power of self-analysis in the patient. When such 
patients present themselves to the physician they 
usually have already consulted others and they often 
come with the fear of further failure in their hearts. 
The patient is likely to be apprehensive lest he be 
again but imperfectly understood, and often dis- 
heartened at the need of telling his story all over again. 
This fear should by all means be neutralized by the 
physician and he should be given every encourage- 
ment to express himself and be listened to with sym- 
pathy and understanding. 
It is the practice of some physicians, now happily 
growing rarer, to maintain towards their patients a 
sphinx-like solemnity and an oracular manner, a relic 
of the medicine-man of savage races and the priest- 
craft of ancient ones. With savage and primitive peo- 
ple medicine was but a rudimentary craft, associated 
with superstition. What cures took place were chiefly 
due to the influence of the mind upon the body, for 
there was no knowledge of the latter. The medicine- 
man learned that fear, intimidation and claims to 
supernatural powers were forceful levers, which would 
produce results upon human ignorance and credulity. 
Today the practice of medicine is for the enlighten- 
ment of the people, it is for man’s better understanding 
of himself. It is a department of human knowl- 
edge which seeks to bring man into a better under- REWARD OF STRIVING 
173 
standing of the physiological laws of his being and 
their close relation with those of his spiritual and 
mental self. It seeks to teach him that he is not a 
mere animated mechanism, to be dealt with by scales 
and measurements and chemical formulae, but that 
there is also a soul side, intricately interwoven with 
his body cells, which cannot be ignored. The patient, 
therefore, should be encouraged in every way to un- 
burden his mind and heart and get into the way of 
crystallizing his thought. If “Confession is good for 
the soul” it is no less good that his haunting fears, 
his doubts and also his feeble self-assurances should 
be freely ventilated. Half-voiced fears dwindle in 
size the moment they are frankly discussed. Noth- 
ing is so surely corrosive as a fear a long time nursed. 
If one wishes to become convinced of this let him go 
to a sympathetic and understanding friend and talk 
freely of his own secret troubles, and observe what a 
strange lightness of spirit will ensue! 
The writer has often had occasion to marvel over 
the relief that would come to a patient who has for 
the first time been permitted wholly to talk himself 
out: One illustration will serve as a type of many 
instances, occurring with a scholarly woman in the 
prime of her years. Her first consultation with the 
doctor lasted several hours, the patient doing all of 
the talking. She talked in a manner as though ap- 
prehensive lest there might not be time enough given 
her. During this talk she repeatedly stated that she 
would need to talk several hours for a number of days, 174 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
in order to explain herself properly. Concerning this 
she was cordially reassured and the next day’s con- 
sultation was opened with the same eager narration 
of symptoms. At the close of the first hour, however, 
the patient’s reminiscences and recitals began to flag, 
whereupon she was encouraged by suggestions and 
questions to tell more. This was done in fullest sym- 
pathy, since there were many points not touched upon, 
which the doctor desired to have cleared up. But 
upon the third day the patient, much to her own sur- 
prise and very obvious relief, found she had no more 
to say and seemed happily elated that she had actually 
gone through with the whole narration and had sur- 
vived! This woman had doubtless never been helped 
to condense the vapor of vague distress and fear, 
which hung around her consciousness like a fog, into 
a few drops or crystals of concrete thought,—but the 
relief experienced was marked. She never thereafter 
felt that she had very much to explain, but permitted 
the doctor to interpret her to herself. 
The American patient of average intelligence in- 
stinctively demands that his intelligence shall be 
respected and he should be instructed and appealed 
to that his cooperation may become enlisted. If it 
is the physician’s office to teach, and to help his 
patient to become his own master ultimately, then 
the chronic sufferer must be enabled to understand 
and should be labored with unto that end. An 
acute illness is self-limited and the patient may be 
guided and carried through it even if unconscious, but REWARD OF STRIVING 
175 
not so with a chronic one. Here the patient must be 
the doctor’s coadjutor and taught to observe and 
think for himself. 
He will need to be taught that though his diges- 
tion may be disordered, and may need rational atten- 
tion through the channels of diet, this course alone 
will hardly be likely to accomplish everything. That 
though he may need to have the nature of his exercise 
determined, this may or may not be a matter of great 
importance. That though there will undoubtedly be 
the need of some medicine, yet medicine alone will 
not serve to neutralize his troubles. That though his 
psychic or emotional balance be disturbed, attention 
to this alone will not make him well. To all of these 
things it will be necessary to call his attention, to 
enlist his understanding, and secure his willing and 
thoughtful cooperation. 
The patient may listen to all of these explanations 
willingly but it will be found that most of them will 
appear to him meaningless at first. He has his own 
ideas of his condition and needs and he cannot be 
expected to have these displaced at once. In such a 
case the perceptive physician has the opportunity of 
gradually displacing the patient’s preconceived ideas 
by the objective demonstration of more correct ones. 
If the patient insists that his troubles are all “ner- 
vous” it should not take long to demonstrate to him 
that skillful attention to his stomach or bowels is 
capable of materially influencing his “nervousness” 
for the better. (Sometimes one wishes that the word 170 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
“nervous” had never been coined since it so effectively 
misinterprets and mystifies the patient.) If he argues 
that a reasonable and desirable article of food has 
always disagreed with him ,it can usually be demon- 
strated that it is far less likely to be the food than the 
digestive function that is at fault and that this can 
be remedied. 
The self-interpretations of the patient are nearly 
always the greatest obstacles—often far greater than 
the illness itself. The instinctive impulse to shrink 
from pain or discomfort—the lack of understanding 
that many discomforts cannot possibly be escaped 
from until they are first philosophically tolerated— 
constitutes one of the greatest obstacles in chronic 
invalidism. The skill rightly to distinguish the value 
of the relative factors in the patient’s symptom- 
complex demands cultivated perceptive faculties, 
sound knowledge of disease, and a broad sympathy 
with human nature. With this equipment many a 
mountain may be caused to resolve itself into a modest 
rise of ground which lends agreeable variety to the 
plain of life. CHAPTER XVI 
CRYSTALLIZATION 
In the re-education of the Variant we need to apply 
the same principles above mentioned to practically 
every case of chronic invalidism. We are to treat the 
particular bodily needs of the patient in whatever 
manner may be required, but we shall always find 
him involved in a residuum of psychological snares as 
well. The unraveling of these requires constant asso- 
ciation with him, since he is ever presenting new 
phases of his state of mind which, if perceived, give 
the physician the immediate opportunity to meet 
them in a manner best suited to their needs. 
There is a general need, which chronic invalids who 
suffer with psychic and so-called nervous disturbances 
have in common, of being helped towards intelligent 
and concrete expression and interpretation. It would 
hardly seem credible that a person, unhappy and 
hampered in his efficiency by reason of an undue con- 
sciousness of his discomforts, could be thus promptly 
relieved for the time being! Yet this, oftentimes, is 
not only possible as the result of a first talk with a 
patient, but may become a practice which he himself 
177 178 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
is enabled to follow to ultimate overcoming of his 
abnormal state of mind. 
This does not apply in all senses to the hypochon- 
driac, however, who finds a morbid pleasure in the 
narration of his symptoms. In such case only infre- 
quent recitals should be allowed and these as concrete 
as possible. But even here it is helpful to give the 
patient every opportunity in the beginning to un- 
burden himself and even he will discover, to his sur- 
prise, that his well of misery is not as deep as he 
thought, and may be betrayed into a reluctant smile 
at the discovery. 
In entering upon the discussion of a patient’s men- 
tal state—attempting to formulate his psychic symp- 
toms and arriving at their relative significance and 
values—even though the physician feels assured that 
nothing vital is at fault, it would be neither a true or 
tactful statement promptly to say that nothing is the 
matter. In the absence of all objective signs of actual 
disease, and in the presence of a patient whose recital 
of symptoms is profuse, the temptation to reassure 
him may easily lead to the overlooking of his real 
subjective distress. 
Something is the matter since the patient obviously 
suffers, even though it be not in any of his vital organs, 
and the kind of distress he endures may be infinitely 
keener than though his life were endangered. Disease, 
pain, mental or emotional distress are all confusing 
things in the consciousness of the one who suffers— 
depending upon the degree, manner and nature of CRYSTALLIZATION 
179 
what is involved—and it is his right to have the doctor 
deal with them sympathetically and respectfully. 
It is easier to get the patient to take the cheerful 
viewpoint when the doctor can get him to laugh with 
him, rather than that he should feel himself being 
laughed at. Many a patient feels a diffidence in nar- 
rating symptoms some of which appear even to him- 
self almost fantastic, and such a person, conscious 
of the unusual and irregular character of his feelings, 
may not unnaturally feel afraid to put them into 
words, lest his own fears of mental abnormality be- 
come justified in the mind of his hearer. In such 
case whatever means will lead to the freest confidence 
and expression on his part will most surely help 
towards the speedier relief of his distress. 
It is a matter of the greatest helpfulness to enable 
the patient suffering with obsessive ideas and per- 
sistent fears to talk out his feelings, yet this is often 
a difficult thing to do and calls for the utmost patience. 
There would appear to be a spell of inhibition resting 
upon the power of the invalid to detach himself from 
his feelings, to which he appears to cling as though 
they were his most precious possessions. Indeed, as 
some one has said, he would appear to “argue for” 
his illness, rather than against it! But this tenacious 
clinging to our fears is merely an inversion of our 
desire to be relieved of them, since by so doing we 
hope to elicit ever stronger and more convincing argu- 
ments to the contrary. Fear also takes a subtle part 
in our oft-time reluctance to admit improvement— 180 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
lest there follow again a disappointment—and it is 
this which probably lay at the root of the cautious 
reply given the writer by the Scottish lady who, after 
making a noticeable convalescence and in answer to 
his assertion that she was now much better, with 
seeming reluctance admitted that she was “na worrse!” 
Even persons suffering with certain forms of mental 
depression allied to the psychoses, who ordinarily are 
able to talk and to follow conversation, are immensely 
relieved for a time by being helped to express their 
worst fears regarding themselves. The distress of such 
a patient lies in the fact that he cannot rid himself of 
the obsessive character of his moods and any break 
in their continuity is a positive relief, though it be 
but fleeting. The writer has known patients who, 
after being induced to put into words the fearsome 
character of their thoughts, have experienced hours of 
happy relief, the precursor of more permanent results. 
The writer has elsewhere likened the attitude of a 
patient suffering in this manner to one who is sur- 
rounded by a dense fog, or a cloud of smoke—his feel- 
ing having produced an atmosphere which envelops 
him so effectively that for all practical purposes it 
might embrace the entire landscape. The attitude of 
such persons is characteristic inasmuch as they appear 
preoccupied and oblivious to what is going on about 
them and are only imperfectly aroused to giving atten- 
tion to conversation or occurrences. 
But many patients of this class can be taught to 
tell how they feel, though it may at first prove diffi- CRYSTALLIZATION 
181 
cult, and the telling to an understanding and sym- 
pathetic listener seems to collect the vapor of their 
emotional fog and condense it into a few rain drops— 
with a resultant clearing of the atmosphere. This 
process of clarification, however, needs to become for 
a time a continuous practice with the patient since the 
old mood has, by virtue of possession and habit the 
right of way, and this, too, must be taught him, lest he 
become disappointed and discouraged. 
An interesting instance of the benefit of such 
method of “condensation” in a case of kleptomanic 
impulse was that of a lady patient. She was told that, 
each time the desire came into her consciousness to 
secrete in her trunk a book which did not belong to 
her, she was to sit down at her desk and write out 
just exactly what was passing in her thoughts. It 
should be explained that such obsessions do not arise 
in the mind of the victim as a clearly defined thought, 
but as a vague feeling or impulse only. When she 
thereupon sat down to try to formulate into more 
concrete form, and therefore into words, what had 
existed only in the form of a compelling impulse or 
feeling, such attempt at crystallization resolved itself 
into the words “I am about to secrete a book which 
does not belong to me—to steal it ” and became 
in her case at once an impossibility and an absurdity. 
In another instance, that of a man, there was pres- 
ent a strikingly marked doubting phobia, a phobia of 
indecision. He had the most painful feeling of uncer- 
tainty as to whether he had turned off the water 182 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
faucets upon leaving the house. He had known him- 
self to unlock and re-enter his house twenty times and 
examine the faucets before being finally willing to 
leave the premises. This man, proving upon experi- 
ment to be an excellent subject for hypnotic sugges- 
tion, was in this state given positive suggestion that 
he would no longer be troubled in this absurd manner 
but would shut off the faucet the first time and never 
think of it thereafter. In this case matters were 
greatly simplified since it was possible to reach so 
directly the patient’s subconsciousness with a positive 
suggestion of a normal character—which promptly 
prevailed. But in a much larger number of instances 
mental and emotional distresses are more vague, yet 
producing disability and inefficiency enough sadly to 
impair the happiness of the sufferer. Mere patient 
explanation in such cases, of just how easily one’s own 
psychology may trip him, and how relatively simple 
the remedy may be, the following case may demon- 
strate. 
A lady given to literary pursuits found herself quite 
inhibited from writing for a period of a year, having 
accomplished no more during that time than she had 
formerly been able to do in a month. She would sit 
down at her table to begin to write, feeling her mind 
full of material, but no sooner had she begun than 
there would come over her an inability to express her- 
self, quickly followed by impatience and finally by CRYSTALLIZATION 
183 
intense anger. The latter feelings came upon her as a 
surprise, though never failing to be present as a se- 
quence, whereupon no more work was possible. When 
first questioned the above sequence of events had not 
been brought out and she was unable to explain what 
took place, save that she seemed to become hopelessly- 
involved in her mind and feelings and simply could 
obtain no further results. It was only after further 
questioning and attempts to get her to think and ex- 
plain, that she was enabled to crystallize into words 
what had been a mere haze of distressing feeling. 
It was thus shown that she really was unable to 
write because a foreign emotion, one of anger, was per- 
mitted to steal in and take possession of the front of 
her consciousness, thus effectively displacing the matter 
in hand, namely the intention to write. It was ex- 
plained to her that sluggishness of brain might be 
easily excusable and that this could not always be 
expected to yield to force of will, but that the super- 
vention of the emotion of impatience or anger was a 
matter made possible purely through the passive and 
unguarded assent of the individual and was never de- 
fensible. Few occurrences in our daily life are so 
stupid or so unpardonable as that of permitting the 
emotion of anger to arise and no emotion, save that of 
fear, is so completely obstructive and destructive to 
our efficiency and sanity. 
She was instructed to sit down at her table prepared 
to write and if the ideas would not come and the 
thought not flow, she was merely to continue to sit. It 184 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
was not to matter if she did not deliver herself of a 
sentence during the hour, but under no circumstances 
was she to yield to any other feeling but one of perfect 
serenity. She was to meet all of the requirements for 
writing—pen, paper and seclusion—and was to feel 
herself responsible only for the maintenance of the 
proper attitude of mind. When thus the simple 
conditions were established she found herself sorely 
tempted to yield to the impulse of impatience, upon 
the heels of which the absurd emotion of anger would 
have surely followed. Being a person of character, 
however, and having grasped the significance of the 
explanation of the manner in which the door being 
slightly pried open to admit of one emotion, the suc- 
ceeding one would find easier entrance, she took pains 
to maintain her serene attitude and within ten days 
was able to do her usual average of work! To the 
question why an intelligent person should so easily 
have permitted herself to be handicapped, the answer 
would be that we are all doing, to some degree, similar 
things all the time unless it is our good fortune to be 
jarred, or have our attention sharpened to a recog- 
nition of the fatal ease with which we are capable of 
obstructing our own gait. 
The frequent feeling of inadequacy experienced by 
brain workers is usually capable of solution along 
similar lines. It is hardly supposable that a man 
called upon to teach in a college, or to preach to a 
critical audience, or to transact business in the midst 
of keen competition should not be subject to a strenu- CRYSTALLIZATION 
185 
ous demand upon his highest efficiency. So long as 
his digestive functions are good, and he is leading a 
rational life as regards exercise and recreation and is 
happy in his family relations and there is no undue 
strain upon him, he holds his own and is happy. 
Should, however, his digestive processes not continue 
to function happily, or some other condition arise likely 
to upset his carefully adjusted balance, he is in a fair 
way to develop a psychic disequilibrium. 
Once his consciousness awakened to the perception 
of himself, whether the symptoms pertain to his body, 
his emotions or to any flaw in mental efficiency, there 
may become released a host of possible fears and dis- 
trusts and resultant incapacities. “Brain fag,” “neu- 
rasthenia” and other spectres rise up before him and 
he is likely to cease to be the reasonable and uncon- 
scious-of-self being that he had been, and to yield to 
the slavery of fear. His efficiency is then likely to drop 
many degrees more than is justified by his actual con- 
dition and he becomes greatly in need of being helped 
to analyze and understand himself. 
It is noticeable that in many—probably most—of 
such cases the resultant disability is far greater than 
is justifiable. The element of the unknown, even 
though it have nothing formidable in its nature, admits 
fear, and then panic is never far away. In such con- 
ditions the re-educational resources at our command 
are many and in the degree to which the patient is 
intellectually able to be made to understand himself, 186 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
his restoration to his former and often a greater degree 
of efficiency is proportionate. 
Here, too, there may be need of much patience, for 
the man to whom high finance or abstruse chemical 
problems are as child’s play, is not necessarily keen in 
the matter of understanding that he may have been 
the victim of his own emotions. Or that, with the cor- 
rection of his digestion, or of some heedlessness in the 
matter of his daily habits of living, he should and may 
become able to recognize how to become master of his 
subconscious sensations. But such instruction may 
not be likely to interest the mathematician or the man 
with a “big deal” on his hands—and he may at times 
need to be brought quite close to actual shipwreck 
before he can be induced to call a halt, and devote 
some of his time and thought to the still more vital 
subject of a knowledge of himself. CHAPTER XVII 
APPLICATION OF SUGGESTION 
The foregoing chapters have been an attempt to 
point out the dual factors that exist in the distresses 
of the chronic invalid and in the Variant, who are 
victims of functional disorders. It has been shown 
that such patients are hampered in their bodily func- 
tions and that such interference with the smooth work- 
ing of the body mechanism must inevitably give rise 
to secondary disturbances, manifesting themselves in 
emotional and mental irregularities. 
We have seen how invariably the patient becomes 
confused and unable to differentiate between the 
symptoms of cause and effect, and how easily the latter 
may, in his mind, assume a casual significance. It has 
been explained that, in the presence of such confusion 
as to the nature of his troubles, the first need lies in 
helping the patient to lay hold upon the various 
tangled threads that comprise the symptom-complex 
and follow them to their source. Such elucidation can 
not fail gradually to appeal to the understanding and 
clear the mind, so that a saner and happier horizon 
prevails. The reason has been appealed to and en- 
listed, and this is naturally man’s most potent adjunct 
187 188 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
in living his life in a way that is to his greatest 
advantage. 
The writer has striven to show that there is a con- 
tinuous interaction between mind and body and that 
any attempt at self-interpretation would fail that did 
not take this fundamental law constantly into account. 
Stress has been laid upon the dependence of the organ- 
ism; first upon its physical self—since that is what a 
human being is before he is anything else—but that on 
top of this physical there is engrafted a consciousness; 
and whereas either may suffer alone for a time, even- 
tually both must become involved. Further, that the 
consciousness has attached to it a spiritual factor, the 
soul side, and that unless this, too, is reckoned with, no 
human being is living a complete life, enjoying a per- 
fect equipoise, or coming into the fulness of the possi- 
bilities of his existence. 
The road leading to the amelioration of our dis- 
tresses through the channel of our reasoning powers is 
naturally the one pursued by all seekers after truth 
and should be open to us all. But this broad avenue 
of knowledge has many byways converging upon it 
and one of these has only been slightly alluded to. 
This deals with that other resource nature has placed 
at our disposal in giving us the ability to approach the 
subconsciousness of an individual more directly than 
through the usual roundabout methods of his con- 
sciousness, and to make direct modifications upon it. 
“Suggestion,” “Hypnoidal Suggestion” and “Hypnotic 
Suggestion,” are various terms appearing often in SUGGESTION 
189 
therapeutic literature, and are best interpreted under 
the term first mentioned, which may be dealt with as 
Therapeutic Suggestion. The subject has been abun- 
dantly written upon and has passed through many 
phases of discussion, use, over-use, and disuse. Like 
all other subjects belonging to the department of 
medical science it has passed through the period of 
dawn, excessive exploitation and partial eclipse, and 
again, as is the destiny of all truth we happen to lay 
hold upon fragmentarily, whatever is really true there- 
in will settle into its rightful place and permanently 
form a part of the structure of the knowledge of our 
kind. 
Much literature is extant upon the phenomena of 
suggestion and a large part of it relates to abstract 
psychology. Much also, one must admit, infringes 
upon the domain of the mystical and the speculative, 
with which we need have nothing to do. But with the 
remainder, which we can practically apply in our en- 
deavors to relieve human suffering and to lift up the 
spirit and courage of man, we should have much to do. 
It should be as inexcusable in the real physician of 
today to ignore the phenomena and possibilities of 
suggestion in the treatment of the sick, as it would be 
were the surgeon of today to ignore the plain but 
momentous teaching of the principle of antisepsis. 
The latter is but of yesterday but the phenomena of 
suggestion are recognizable as going far back into 
human history and have always formed a part— 
though elusive and ill-understood—of the relation man 190 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
has held to man. Because the manifestations of this 
principle have been subtle and elusive it has been 
approached and retreated from, but since a great truth 
is involved it can no more be ignored than any other 
natural law. 
It is not purposed to enter into any lengthy discus- 
sion of the principles of suggestion, this having been 
ably and exhaustively done long since, but rather to 
comply with what would be an unfulfilled duty 
towards one’s profession, were not this all-important 
subject given the recognition it deserves. Stated in 
simplest terms the application of suggestion in the 
treatment of the sick is based upon the principle that 
all people are capable of receiving it. The subcon- 
sciousness, that instinctive self to which frequent 
reference has been made, is the self into which the 
infant is born. It is the self which remains through- 
out life, acts for us whether we wake or sleep, carries 
us through illness or delirium, attends to all of the 
innumerable functions of nutrition, reproduction and 
elimination and, no matter how we may otherwise be 
engaged with our consciousness, is always at its task 
from beginning to end. 
If we cut our finger so that it bleeds, it is the pro- 
vision resident within the subconsciousness which 
causes the blood to coagulate and the wound to heal. 
If we have eaten, not wisely but too well, it is the 
provision resident within the domain of the subcon- 
scious that may cause the stomach to rid itself of its 
contents. If the body has become invaded with the SUGGESTION 
191 
hosts of an offending and deadly bacillus, it is the pro- 
vision resident within our subconscious or vegetative 
self which summons all its resources for the develop- 
ment of an anti-substance wherewith to overcome the 
intruders. Over all these and many other functions of 
the body man has no control with his consciousness; 
they are providentially and for his safety, quite beyond 
his powers of interference. 
The consciousness, the objective self or mind, is our 
reasoning self. It is that part of us which has been 
developed upon the subconscious and to a certain 
degree is capable of directing and influencing it. 
Through the will, the consciousness governs all our 
voluntary actions, from taking a simple walk across 
the room to diving to the bottom of a lake to rescue a 
drowning person, or going into the cannon’s mouth for 
a principle, even though the knees tremble and there 
is great fear. The powers of reflection and inductive 
reasoning lie with the objective mind. Deduction, 
however, the subconsciousness can do perfectly, even 
though the objective self be asleep. Though each has 
its special functions in carrying on the business of the 
whole, yet normally they act in perfect harmony and 
coordination. 
It is owing to our knowledge of the peculiar func- 
tions of the subconsciousness, wherein it shows itself 
singularly sensitive to receiving impression from with- 
out, that the science of Suggestive Therapeutics has 
come into existence. The subconsciousness is capable 
of receiving and carrying out impressions without their 192 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
needing always to go through the portals of the con- 
scious mind. Indeed if we carefully observe our own 
actions and experiences during any one day, we will 
find it filled with interesting illustrations of the 
workings of the two consciousnesses, separately and in 
co-ordination. We can not fail to be impressed with 
the duality of the whole, or to see how certain actions 
are purely of the mind and others as purely of the 
instinctive and subconscious self, in which the mind 
has no part. The entire symptomatology of functional 
disorders is a mixture of physical and psychical phe- 
nomena, the one or the other being alternately in 
evidence. 
We are all ready to admit, even the laity, that one 
is rarely ill in his body alone but that the mind is 
likely to participate. The recently developed branch 
of psycho-therapeutics known as psycho-analysis, de- 
votes itself to unraveling as one would a tangled skein 
of yarn, by a process of careful searching and analysis, 
the snarl of symptoms and causes, the experiences and 
impressions stowed away in the patient’s subconscious 
mind. 
Ordinarily, full of the feeling that we can help the 
patient greatly by explaining him to himself, and 
pointing out the relations between his physical and 
his mental, we labor earnestly at trying to convince 
him by explanation and argument; but in order that 
such measures shall succeed, they must sink in upon 
the subconsciousness and that is often a slow and try- 
ing process since the consciousness intervenes and SUGGESTION 
193 
must first be appeased. Doubtless, often when we have 
succeeded, it will be because we have effected a direct 
subconscious entrance without our knowing it. But 
whether we deliberately intend it or not, there are no 
instances whatever wherein there are not always im- 
pinging upon the patient, from the physician, sug- 
gestion after suggestion. Indeed it is inconceivable 
how it can be otherwise. 
Since this fact is incontrovertible, in consequence 
there have developed a variety of well-recognized 
methods whereby suggestion is deliberately employed, 
with the patient’s full understanding and consent. 
One of these methods is known as Hypnotic Sugges- 
tion, wherein the patient succeeds in becoming lulled 
into a state in many respects resembling sleep, wherein 
his subconsciousness is always perfectly conscious of 
what is being said to him. The hypnotic state is an 
exceedingly varied one, and ranges from a deep uncon- 
scious sleep through a number of stages and phases up 
to an apparent entire consciousness. It is a condition, 
in its deeper phases, to which only certain individuals 
are susceptible, though capable of being further 
developed through practice in any one. Its interest 
and usefulness lies in the fact that, whenever this state 
can be successfully induced and the patient’s needs 
are of such nature as to be responsive to suggestion, 
we have the ideal conditions established for a direct 
and immediate access to his subconsciousness, with the 
expectation of the most brilliant therapeutic results. 
This condition, still generally misunderstood by the 194 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
laity, is a perfectly natural and harmless one and is 
purely physiological. In everyday life many instances 
occur, as in sleep-walking and sleep-talking so fre- 
quent in children, and oftentimes persisting in the 
adult. It is a condition into which certain individuals 
with a peculiarly sensitive make-up, fall easily, and 
there are those who can cultivate it successfully in 
themselves. A child, when asleep, can easily be half 
aroused so that it is in a state of great hypnotic recep- 
tivity and in such cases may be given suggestion with 
the greatest success. In a typical state of hypnosis 
the patient’s consciousness is entirely suspended and 
the suggestions made to him are not remembered, save 
that they are more or less successfully carried out be- 
cause they are impressed upon the subconsciousness. 
All sorts of intermediary stages occur which have re- 
ceived various classifications, although such must 
remain in large measure arbitrary. Anyone, familiar 
through experience, with the practice of hypnosis, will 
be obliged to recognize the various stages to be almost 
as varied as are the subjects. 
Hypnoidal Suggestion is a term recently employed 
in this country, to designate suggestion given to a per- 
son when he is in the hypnoidal state, i.e., a state re- 
sembling in a measure, that of hypnosis. It is probable 
that this latter state is one formerly frequently mis- 
taken for hypnosis and it is the state most people enter 
into when subjected to attempted hypnosis. It is 
simply a condition of calmness and serenity wherein 
the individual is largely aware of everything going on SUGGESTION 
195 
around him and wherein his consciousness remains 
awake. During the process of suggestion in this state, 
the individual may frequently dip lower down into his 
subconsciousness, emerging from one direction and dip- 
ping into another, but the entire condition resembling 
a state of pleasant lethargy, from which the patient 
at any moment can arouse himself into complete wake- 
fulness. 
Into this hypnoidal state practically every person 
can easily be helped, as he can also help himself, and 
many forms of suggestion may be given to him with 
great success. Such phenomena as occur with actual 
hypnosis do not occur nor does this matter, since the 
majority of patients can be most effectively benefited 
by this simple procedure. Many patients can be 
taught to lie down and by auto-suggestion induce first 
a state of tranquillity and lethargy, whereupon they 
can make to themselves many helpful other sugges- 
tions enabling them to obtain poise, courage and 
comfort. 
Direct Suggestion is that employed by every physi- 
cian when he gives a patient a positive assurance that 
he will get well. No attempt is made to induce any 
specially receptive condition in the patient. Any form 
of positive encouragement, based upon knowledge and 
good judgment, is a direct suggestion. A patient may 
be seated in a chair and told by the physician that he 
is about to give him a suggestion. Such suggestion 
consists merely of positive statements directed to him, 
that he will get well or do this or the other more com- 196 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
fortably and happily. It is truly astonishing how often 
such methods are helpful. But upon closer analysis 
the results thus obtained are simple enough, since man 
is first and last a suggestible being and there are 
a thousand ways wherein his subconsciousness will 
greedily absorb what is directed towards it. 
Since then we have in suggestion a great ever-pres- 
ent force, working all the time with us all, penetrating 
upon our subconsciousness through all the channels of 
our various senses, whether we know it or not, is it 
not strange that we do not always bear its continuous 
modifying influence in mind? The temptation is great 
to illustrate some of the momentary and hourly ways 
wherein we are always being influenced by suggestion. 
Every thoughtful person, his attention once aroused, 
will become able to observe that he himself is the con- 
stant subject of suggestion. It may come to him 
through outward causes such as his contact with other 
people. It may come to him from reading the printed 
thoughts of others and through any of his daily acts. 
It may come through the impulses originating within 
his own organism, impelling him to take a drink of 
water, partake of food, to go to sleep or to awake from 
sleep. So many of these suggestive impulses take 
place quite beneath the plane of his consciousness—he 
does them automatically. Indeed these unconscious 
automatisms constitute the great bulk of all his actions. 
Only now and then is a man moved to act through the 
impulse of pure reason—this latter being the unusual 
with him SUGGESTION 
197 
But he can deliberately reason with himself and 
then apply to himself the suggestion suggested as the 
result of his reasoning, and this with a success beyond 
the expectation of those not specially familiar with the 
application of the principle. The author’s experience 
in this direction is extensive and he can recall hundreds 
of patients, suffering with various ills of a functional 
character who had also acquired a liberal admixture 
of psychical distresses, whose lives have been made 
happy and useful through the fearless use of sugges- 
tion, given in whatever form the patient’s condition 
would accept. Many of these have been taught self 
or auto-suggestion and some of them continue to the 
present time regularly to take themselves in hand and 
successfully treat themselves for hope and courage and 
freedom from discomfort. 
When we have employed all ways wherein help may 
be brought to the man or woman suffering with physi- 
cal ills and the worldly backache, when all the re- 
sources of medicine and hygiene have been enlisted as 
aids, the greatest resource, reinforcing all the rest, lies 
in that universally applicable and broadly educative 
one, embodied in the wise application of the principle 
of Suggestion. CHAPTER XVIII 
APPLICATION OF SUGGESTION 
(Continued) 
It is a question which may legitimately be raised, 
whether we always need to lead every patient through 
the mazes of a psychological analysis of his disorder, 
though the close scrutiny and dissection of such prob- 
lems is of the keenest scientific satisfaction and is an 
absolute essential to the acquisition of exact knowl- 
edge. But to the general practitioner, to whom this 
little book is particularly addressed, intricate analyses 
of any kind must be relegated to the laboratory, since 
those are necessarily only possible to those who have 
devoted themselves to exclusive specialization. The 
results of such specialized labors, reduced to certain 
more or less definite propositions, become then the 
property of all. 
It is a desirable thing, so far as practicable, to give 
our patients all the analytic psychology we can that is 
involved with their disorder, to treat them with medi- 
cine and hygiene and ceaselessly to point out the 
further need of not permitting their subjective sensa- 
tions to distort their moral poise and balance. These 
processes often require much time but they are the 
198 SUGGESTION 
199 
bulwarks of the process of getting well. But there is 
resident within human beings a force so powerful, so 
wonderful, so infinitely old, as to antedate everything 
but the existence of the race itself—and this is its 
susceptibility for taking Suggestion,—conveyed to the 
patient in any way in which we may be able to make 
it find entrance upon the subconsciousness. 
One look of assurance or distrust will convey more 
meaning than a thousand words, and may be capable 
of putting them all to naught. There is a quick teleg- 
raphy impinging upon the human consciousness, that 
will flash from one human being to another with a 
speed that sets aside all the circuitous bypaths of 
cumbersome words and detail. There is, in short, a 
direct road to the subconsciousness, reached through 
the channel of suggestion, which may be likened td 
the cutting of the Gordian knot as compared with 
unraveling it. 
Before going further, however, upon this subject, 
the writer would stop to observe, even though he feels 
that it should be quite unnecessary, that he is in no 
sense to be understood as implying the existence of any 
so-called “occult” or other mysterious force as enter- 
ing into the phenomena of suggestion in any form! 
All seekers after truth are busily engaged in dealing 
with the elucidation of natural laws, there being no 
others, which are all mysterious until we understand 
them, and this applies in like manner to the phenom- 
ena of Suggestion, hypnotic or otherwise. Dealing 
with the principles of suggestion and applying them, is 200 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
as possible and practicable as dealing with the prin- 
ciples of chemistry or astronomy, given that the indi- 
vidual has the bent of mind, the natural equipment, 
the zeal and love for the subject, which must be pres- 
ent to qualify for success in any study. These qualifi- 
cations being assumed, all doors are open. 
In order successfully to use suggestion in the physi- 
cian’s equipment against human suffering, he should 
first acquaint himself with the existence of suggesti- 
bility within himself, as in all other people. He needs 
to have used his power of observation in the recogni- 
tion of the singular ease with which we all fall under 
the spell of this subtle force. He will quickly recall the 
blanched face at the suggestion of fear, the flushed 
countenance of shame, the turgid or swollen features 
of anger. He will remember the paralysis of hunger 
and digestion upon the receipt of evil tidings, the 
wonderful uplift and expansion of the spirit upon the 
influx of joy and hope, whereas “hope deferred maketh 
the heart sick!” His hopeful manner and tones lift 
his patient to the level whereon his medicines may 
prevail, while his solemn face and gravely shaken head 
may pull the props out from beneath him who might 
otherwise get well. 
Everyone knows all these things and many more. 
Everyone will admit them in the abstract; everyone 
who has to do with the sick body or sicker soul, should 
also apply them, from the doctor down through all 
others who minister to its need. The secret of the 
influence of the unscrupulous quack and charlatan SUGGESTION 
201 
upon the ignorant and suffering, is his knowledge of 
human nature and though he knows nothing about 
medicine or disease and his unscrupulousness is after 
all only bounded by his love of gain, if he be not 
wholly criminal, his words of encouragement may 
carry further than his drugs do harm. 
A straight road leads to the citadel of the centre of 
our being, and along this it is our privilege to travel 
to the aid of many a needy soul. What it is that then 
takes place the writer does not presume to know. Here 
we get upon ground that is not yet explored by the 
analysis of the laboratory. Since the psychologist is 
able to show by means of cleverly devised instruments, 
that such subtle forces as the emotions can be made to 
register themselves in strongly characterized tracings; 
that joy or fear presented to the subject can write their 
own autograph in black and white, sending the blood 
bounding through the vessels or sinking in paralyzed 
retreat to the deeper cavities of the body, surely there 
is enough indisputable evidence to justify a thoughtful 
halt and the recognition that the mind does act upon 
the body. If the mind is admitted as acting upon the 
body in the control of the circulation, then we have a 
starting point for many other possible phenomena. 
To put into words what appears to take place, when 
sometimes a few positive suggestions permit a patient 
who has been lame to walk, it may be said that some 
sort of an inhibition has been lifted, and that the 
power to use the muscles has thus been released. It 
is not meant to say that the muscles, thus released, 202 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
could have had any organic lesion. That implies 
destruction or impairment of tissue in nerve or muscle, 
or both, and we are not discussing organic involve- 
ments. We are discussing impaired courage and 
depressed or despondent spirits, impaired secretory 
functioning, impaired innervation. To this category 
belong not only the neurasthenics, the psychasthenics, 
the neurotics and hysterics but also everybody else, 
since whether we be well or ill, always are we subject 
to the influence of the mind upon the body. 
In the writer’s experience of some thirty years with 
the disorders of the neurotic and the neurasthenic, he 
feels that the entire subject of treatment would be 
minus its most important adjunct could he not avail 
himself of the resources of suggestion in whatever 
form it might prove applicable. The immense impres- 
sionability of the subconsciousness should occupy the 
first place in the mind of the physician. The patient 
brings with him a subconsciousness which may be 
likened unto a photographic plate which is bound to 
become light-struck always and it depends upon us as 
to what the nature of such light shall be—what shall 
have its image reflected upon the plate. 
We are too prone to handle the patient without 
regard to his extreme sensitiveness to impressions, 
increased many fold over the ordinary because the man 
is sick. When the patient with phobias or exaggerated 
consciousness of his vegetative processes consults the 
doctor, his predispositions are all in the direction of an 
eager hypersensitiveness towards impressions of one SUGGESTION 
203 
kind only—and these helpful and encouraging ones. 
Even though the patient is pessimistic, depressed or 
hypochondriacal, even though he meets every encour- 
aging advance of the physician with a score of discour- 
aging expressions of doubt or disbelief, he nevertheless 
cherishes in his heart an eagerness for reassurance. 
The hypochondriac, full of disclaimers of any further 
vestiges of virtue within him, perceives out of the cor- 
ners of his subconscious eye every shade of manner 
and expression and hoards them for future rumination. 
Here is where the manner of the physician counts 
for so much and the writer is convinced, from his own 
experiences, that the first consultation over a fright- 
ened, discouraged and hopeless patient is of more 
importance than any subsequent ones. Though it may 
seem that after such first interview no actual steps had 
yet been taken for the amelioration of the patient’s 
distresses, the most important process in the well- 
getting of the future has really been begun, if in the 
mind and heart of the despondent there shall have 
been awakened hope! 
The perceptive doctor can put himself in the 
patient’s place to some degree—can interpret his 
symptoms for him infinitely better than he can him- 
self, can put them into concrete words, and the patient 
is caused to feel that the obscure trouble is understood. 
To this end it goes without saying that the physician 
shall have an imagination and trained perceptive 
faculties and, better still, have been himself not wholly 204 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
without personal experience in a general manner like 
unto those who come to him for help. 
The doctor may have confined himself only to dis- 
cussing the hopeful outlook of the disorder and pointed 
out that in human experience such disorders usually 
tend to get well—to become corrected—if proper meas- 
ures are taken. But something else will also have 
taken place in the man’s mind,—and the complex 
processes wherein the spirit is uplifted should have 
been released in lifting the embargo of fear and help- 
lessness. 
The late distinguished Dr. Pepper well recognized 
this principle when he said that no physician was 
justified in telling his patient that his case was hope- 
less, unless the just rights and interests of others were 
involved. It might appear to all human judgment 
that there was not more than one chance in a thousand 
for the patient, but that no human being could tell 
with absolute positiveness that the patient would die, 
and that if there should happen to be present one lin- 
gering chance for recovery, this forlorn hope would 
inevitably be lost! Here was a recognition of a great 
principle—that of the influence of the mind, of the 
emotions, upon life and death. 
In the use of suggestion of any kind, if it be intended 
that it shall be given with the conscious cooperation of 
the patient, the latter needs to be given an understand- 
ing, in as simple terms as may be, of the general prin- 
ciples involved. There should be explained to him the 
fact that the subconsciousness is somehow at fault in SUGGESTION 
205 
the development and perpetuation of some of his dis- 
tresses and that it can often be reached by direct 
impressions being made upon it. That such impres- 
sions may be in the form of direct statements addressed 
thereto and that if the patient can be caused to become 
to some degree tranquillized and even more or less 
hypnotized, the entrance to the subconsciousness will 
be greatly facilitated. 
Should the patient fail to understand how state- 
ments declaring him to be free from pain or distress 
of mind or aggravated fears can be true, when he is 
obviously suffering from any or all of these things, it 
should be painstakingly explained that there is no 
question whatever as to the genuineness of his dis- 
tresses, but that, by virtue of the very principles 
involved in the psychology of suggestion, an undesir- 
able sensation, particularly a morbid or pathological 
one, can be displaced by the normal, which always has 
the right of way. 
Successful results follow in an exceedingly large 
number of instances wherein the physician, after care- 
ful elimination and selection, feels certain of the suit- 
ability of the case. The results in such instances never 
cease to be startling, alike to physician and patient. 
A lady recently in the care of the author will illus- 
trate an instance. For three months she had been 
unable to walk save with a staggering gait and after 
a few moments would be likely to collapse and sink to 
the floor. She had clearly defined digestive disorders 
and was likewise suffering with marked emotional 206 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
instability. For fifty years she had been a perfectly 
strong and well woman and had been equal to many 
miles a day across hill and dale. There were no indi- 
cations of hysteria and she was a woman of sound 
intelligence. Naturally a state of terrorism had been 
evolved and her actual ability was not indexed by her 
symptoms since these latter had taken possession of 
the field and were paramount. The first suggestion, 
given in a moderate hypnoidal state, gave her con- 
fidence that she could walk, which she promptly tried 
with noticeable improvement. After three or four 
suggestions distributed over a period of a week she 
could walk a mile without undue fatigue and after a 
month, with the suggestions continued, she was rid of 
her troubles and had developed a normal degree of 
emotional stability. 
In this instance the writer can say only, that as the 
result of the reassuring and encouraging suggestion 
the inhibition was lifted. Just how this took place 
we may not be able to explain—but it did take place! 
Inhibitions upon our courage, our confidence, our 
hope and our abilities occur in millions of instances 
and multitudinous forms. The writer feels justified in 
asserting that these can always be lifted if they are 
functional. The instances wherein men of intellectual 
occupations lose their courage and confidence, and 
become frightened and full of distrust and often 
despair—these conditions being usually attended by 
disturbances of sleep, digestion, and elimination,—are 
innumerable. Most of such patients can readily grasp SUGGESTION 
207 
the simple principles of therapeutic suggestion and 
easily lend a willing ear and cooperation to an intelli- 
gently presented method of relief. They can invari- 
ably get such relief, sometimes speedily and at others 
after a longer interval and they can be taught to help 
themselves much more successfully in the future. The 
less intelligent patient may not and need not be 
expected to enter into an understanding of the prin- 
ciples of the technique of suggestion, but if he has 
confidence in his doctor will gladly yield himself 
unquestioningly, and with such patients the results 
are wonderfully frequent and satisfactory. 
A visit made by the writer to the communal hos- 
pital of Bernheim at Nancy a few years ago, revealed 
the results that could be obtained with the peasantry 
and common people. These patients entered the hos- 
pital for treatment with the expectation of being 
helped and the atmosphere of the institution was in 
itself charged with suggestion. The sight by a num- 
ber of waiting patients, of another being relieved of his 
trouble, was in itself a suggestive force of unparalleled 
helpfulness. It was the author’s privilege to accom- 
pany this Father of Therapeutic Suggestion upon his 
rounds through the wards of the hospital and to wit- 
ness the results of suggestion upon some scores of 
patients who, through his assistants, had been selected 
as suitable cases. Some patients were in bed, suffering 
with long-standing illnesses, to whom suggestion was 
given for the release of their inhibited courage and 
recuperative powers. Others were walking about and 208 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
recovering assurance, waiting for the occasional ap- 
proving word or further suggestion from the master, 
and new ones were brought in and submitted to Dr. 
Bernheim for the first time. 
Here were cases of neuralgia; of rheumatic affec- 
tions; of various neuroses such as somnambulism, 
chorea, writer’s cramp, incontinence; of motor pareses; 
of gastro-intestinal affections; of menstrual troubles; 
of aphonia, insomnia, muscle pains of various kinds 
and other neurotic and neuropathic affections; a choice 
collection of hysterical disorders; and also of ner- 
vous sequelae that were the accompaniments of such 
organic diseases as paresis, sclerosis and hemiplegia. 
In these varied conditions relief, frequently cure, 
was being obtained for the majority. Nor is it to be 
understood that the writer means to imply that the 
common people or the uneducated furnish any better 
material for suggestive therapeutics than is found 
amongst the educated. It is only the half-educated 
who are the tardy ones in responding to therapeu- 
tic suggestion. The uneducated are easily reached 
because they have not developed that “little knowl- 
edge which is a dangerous thing,” and they lend them- 
selves easily and trustingly, while the trained and 
educated mind is a joy with which to work since it can 
lend itself so wholly and cooperate so perfectly. 
The recent work of Emile Coue is but a verification 
and accentuation of what the writer has sought to 
make clear in this book. Coue brings to us the experi- 
ences of a mind acutely trained in certain channels of SUGGESTION 
209 
psychological perception and the writer would wholly 
agree with him that auto-suggestion—the conveying 
of a suggestion to himself by the individual himself— 
is the necessary, the final act whereby the suggestion 
is carried home—and all of the preliminary things said 
and done by the outside individual are but stages of 
preparation to make the end sought more possible. 
Spectacular results such as the abandonment of 
crutches—or the lifting of pseudo-paralyses—do hap- 
pen—and the author has still a vivid recollection of 
one of his earlier cases wherein a noted naturalist who 
had been upon crutches altogether for a number of 
years, walked half a mile after his first suggestion and 
after the third left them permanently behind, and 
within two weeks was walking ten miles a day in the 
woods in pursuit of his interests. 
In exposition of Coue it seems desirable to repeat 
that such immediate results do not always obtain—* 
they are the infrequent ones though the most objec- 
tive—and the great majority of patients who are 
helped or cured by suggestion obtain their relief only 
as the result of a persistent training, and such training 
must have the factor of time. It may not reasonably 
be expected that chronic disorders which often have 
been present for years or the larger part of a life- 
time—which often become an established and auto- 
matic routine with the organism—should be replaced 
by normal functioning as the result of a few sugges- 
tions only. Here again it is but rational to assume 
the necessity of re-training,—the excavation of new 210 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
grooves of normal habit, of the gradual replacement 
of the abnormal by the normal. 
The writer wholly agrees with Baudouin that Coue 
has given the psychologist the best practical solution 
of the hitherto but obscurely understood problem of 
the conflict between the will and the imagination, and 
furnished a working basis that seems capable of 
obtaining definite practical results,—of arriving at the 
end sought,—namely, the relief of the patient’s dis- 
tresses. CHAPTER XIX 
THE RELEASE OF INHIBITIONS 
So many disorders confront the physician wherein 
he does not feel clear as to the relative role played by 
actual organic or mere functional impairment of tis- 
sue, gland or nerve cells, and the equally uncertain 
and more unknown factor represented by an impaired 
cerebral spontaneity! No one can always honestly 
presume to draw the line between the physical that 
may be obvious, that which is still physical though 
not obvious, and the ever-present psychical which is 
a quantity quite without known dimensions. For this 
reason we should always take the possibility of the 
presence of the latter into consideration and give the 
patient the benefit of its recognition and treatment. 
In the same manner that we expect to bring relief 
with the administration of medicine, electricity, mas- 
sage, water, heat or light-therapy—and other familiar 
measures, namely, by influencing functioning activity, 
so also are we at times capable of influencing function 
through the channels of the higher cerebral centres by 
the use of suggestion. The latter may be capable of 
reinforcing all of the above-mentioned measures and, 
at times, supplanting them entirely. 
211 212 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
In organic disease we have a nucleus of permanently 
impaired function because of permanently destroyed 
tissue. But attending such permanent impairment we 
also have a varying zone of impairment that is not the 
result of destruction but of inhibition—an inhibition 
which, if not released, may easily pass, in its turn, to 
degeneracy. Noticeably has the writer seen this in 
some cases of hemiplegia and tabes wherein, in the 
former, a considerable degree of the paralysis has been 
promptly lifted by suggestion, and in the latter all 
pain become effaced and the patient enabled to resume 
in consequence a larger degree of activity. 
There are many instances in which, after the cause 
of a disease or disorder has disappeared, the effects or 
secondary disturbances may remain wholly or in part 
behind, and these may persist indefinitely owing to 
conditions we do not understand. Yet suggestion is 
capable of dispersing such laming, stunning or be- 
numbing residua in a most remarkable manner. We 
have striking instances in the case of men who break 
down as the result of over-strain and neglect, in the 
arduous conditions of business or the professions, or 
after severe illness. Here the individual seems to 
react to a degree from the first severe effects of his 
illness, and then may linger on for months and years 
with only a partial recovery, never again wholly able 
to reinstate himself in his former degree of usefulness 
and happiness. 
The so-called “nervous prostrations” furnish thou- 
sands of illustrations of such instances. There would RELEASE OF INHIBITIONS 
213 
appear to linger upon the mind the memory of defeat, 
and so long as this persists the individual can not 
again occupy the centre of his consciousness with his 
proper business of life. It is imperative that an 
attempt should be made to efface from the sub- 
consciousness this memory of disaster, since other- 
wise life may never resume the fulness of its 
possibilities, which will always remain latent. Such 
instances occur constantly in daily life and may fre- 
quently be seen in some cases of business failure. 
There are men to whom one defeat will be final, and 
others, who experience it any number of times, and as 
many times succeed in rallying themselves and again 
making good. We say of such individuals who con- 
tinue to rise to the surface and swim, no matter how 
many times they may have been submerged, that “he 
does not know defeat!” Such men are fortunate indeed 
because they are so constituted that they are able to 
forget—there remains with them no psychical inhibi- 
tion and they rebound and renew the attack indefi- 
nitely, and consequently eventually overcome all 
obstacles tc final success. 
The owner of a young dog is careful that at too early 
an age he does not suffer a too great punishment 
through the superior strength and prowess of another 
dog, lest his spirit be broken and his courage destroyed. 
Here it is merely that the puppy, having no store of 
other memories wherein he has at times been victor- 
ious, succumbs simply to the one overpowering im- 
pression produced by his defeat and cannot forget it. 214 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
With a boy who has for the first time experienced a 
great disaster with a boat, or any other sport wherein 
his judgment and experience were immature, it is quite 
imperative that he should try again speedily, lest the 
memory of his signal defeat assume greater and greater 
proportions, to the subsequent exclusion and suppres- 
sion of any further spirit of venturesomeness and 
courage. 
A lady, for seven years bereaved of her husband, had 
during all this time remained in a condition of mental 
shock. She had no interest in her children, none in 
any of the ordinary interests of life, she lived in a 
state of mental and spiritual stasis as though all human 
interests had gone from her with the loss of her hus- 
band. Her appearance was that of a person who had 
been stunned as though from a physical blow and her 
interest in the life about her was that of a person only 
half awake and half alive. Within one month this 
lady, as the result of suggestion directed forcefully 
towards the liberation of all her old interests in life— 
towards the renewing of her relations with her children, 
her family, her friends and home,—became absolutely 
restored, as one would be when aroused to waking life 
after a profound trance. All other things but sugges- 
tion had been tried. 
A business man, suffering with profound gastro- 
intestinal autointoxication, had been ill for six months 
with symptoms of agitated excitement and severe 
depression. The splendid mind, capable of broad ad- 
ministrative responsibilities, seemed to crumble down RELEASE OF INHIBITIONS 
215 
into a feeble mockery of itself. The physical symptoms 
of the illness had disappeared but the patient remained 
in a shattered state, had lost all confidence in himself 
and talked, at times, of self-destruction. The field of 
medicine had been exhausted, the patient apparently 
had reached the end of his resources. Suggestion, 
given over a period of several months, insistently pour- 
ing into his mind the idea of recovery and courage and 
usefulness, lifted from him the pall of cerebral or 
psychic inertia and gave him back to himself and his 
friends, a splendidly well man. This man was to a 
most obvious degree suffering with the stunning or 
paralyzing effects produced by his illness upon the 
brain. There was no knowing how long this might 
have continued. The disease had passed, the digestion, 
with its various functions, had been restored as evi- 
denced by all physiological tests, yet the patient was 
more of a sufferer than during the first active stages 
of his illness. His mental suffering was augmented by 
very reason of his restored physical powers which, 
though so obviously present, made the contrast with 
his lame will and courage the keener. 
By means of this agency we come in close relation 
with that elusive and unknown quantity, resident in 
the human being which, for want of a better term, 
we may call the vital factor. It is that something 
which the biologist encounters when, beginning with 
the gelatinous ooze at the bottom of the seas and trac- 
ing from it ever ascending forms of structure, he arrives 
at its supreme expression in man, yet finds himself 216 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
mystified in the presence of the thing we call Life. 
By acting upon this mysterious quantity through word 
and manner, or by means of whatever method we may 
have the skill or the gift or the inspiration to employ, 
through the medium of the consciousness, we are living 
up to the greatest light that shines within us upon the 
mazes of the devious paths of human knowledge. 
It would appear that suggestion releases a dynamo- 
genic force within the nervous system, enabling the 
inhibition or stasis of function to become displaced. 
In the case of a swollen rheumatic joint, rendered 
immobile by pain, suggestion may give immediate 
relief from the latter. We well know that pain is a 
sovereign disturber of function. Through its inflow 
upon the brain and the consciousness, disturbing effer- 
ent impulses flow forth to the part involved and func- 
tion becomes at once impaired. The moment that pain 
is no longer perceived by the consciousness, that 
moment the outflowing impulses to the part involved 
cease to disturb, and physiology will take the place of 
pathology to that degree that the remaining integrity 
of the cells makes possible. The writer has seen a 
swollen rheumatic knee go down several inches in cir- 
cumference within a few hours after the use of sug- 
gestion, and locomotion become instantly easier. It 
is in the higher field of the psychic neuroses, however, 
that its use would appear to be of the utmost impor- 
tance. It is a veritable dynamic force for widespread 
application, reinforcing all other agencies and occupy- 
ing also a place peculiarly its own. RELEASE OF INHIBITIONS 
217 
Let us consider for a moment the phenomena attend- 
ing a case wherein the patient is given to walking in 
his sleep. Have we any drugs which we would ration- 
ally employ in the cure of this disorder? Or would 
any amount of argument enable the patient, who is 
already distressed and unhappy with his infirmity, to 
desist? Some faulty relation prevails within his con- 
sciousness, wherein the automatic side of it is set into 
action, without the control of his higher self, and the 
individual commits acts of which he has no knowledge. 
If we can succeed in getting into direct relation with 
the subconsciousness, either through some degree of 
induced hypnosis or by approaching his whilst in ordi- 
nary sleep, we can administer a complete remedy by 
word of mouth. One suggestive treatment, consisting 
of any one of innumerable forms of speech that we 
may elect to employ, may be capable of completely 
reestablishing a condition of perfect order and the 
sleep walking ceases. 
Sometimes suggestion does not meet with imme- 
diate response and will need longer repetition, but 
this is as true of all other known measures which we 
employ for relief. The matter of moment for our con- 
sideration is that suggestion will do this thing at all! 
Have we not then in this simple illustration the mani- 
festation of a very wonderful principle? If only one 
such instance were on record, that would be a matter 
of much interest and probably remain as an isolated 
and puzzling phenomenon. But such instances occur 218 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
by the thousands and furthermore seem to extend as 
far back as we have any history. 
In the case of incontinence in a child we may ap- 
proach it in its sleep and, without awakening it say, 
in suitably chosen words of positive character, that it 
will no longer wet the bed at night, and in all instances 
where there is no local trouble, the incontinence will 
cease! In a case of the doubting-folly in a woman of 
middle life, who was unceasingly undecided as to 
whether she should or should not go to dinner or to 
church or down town or do any one of a hundred 
normal and ordinary things, medicine would hardly 
appear to be a remedy and much less so would be any 
attempt at discussion. The latter would only serve to 
emphasize the indecision by bringing it still more 
prominently before the consciousness. Suggestion, 
given this lady in a light degree of hypnosis, to the 
effect that she would always be able to decide instantly, 
that the state of indecision was no longer present, that 
all the haze of apparent paralysis of will was gone, 
that she would be enabled to act freely and sponta- 
neously and rationally always from now on—was after 
a month followed by complete restitution to a happy 
and normal state of mind. 
Moral perversions in children furnish a most fruit- 
ful field, likewise. A child becomes disobedient, runs 
away from school, is quarrelsome with other children 
and irritable with the parents; it becomes estranged 
from its former happy and obedient self and becomes 
moody and solitary or develops strange cruelties RELEASE OF INHIBITIONS 
219 
towards others and towards animals. Numberless 
illustrations of such perversions might be given. A 
few suggestions given such a child, in hypnosis, are 
capable of quite subverting the existing disorder and 
restoring perfect obedience and happiness. The dis- 
orders may recur and will need to be treated again— 
but they become cured. Giving the child indirect 
suggestion by merely letting it alone and talking to 
the mother in the former’s presence to the effect that 
it will no longer do this or that undesirable thing, but 
will love to obey and get its lessons and no longer 
practice cruelty to the cat or dogs, may also prove 
equally efficacious and is merely the employment of 
the same agent in an indirect manner. 
A word more should be said here regarding the mean- 
ing of the term “hypnosis.” It should not be under- 
stood as being a condition in itself, or implying the 
absence of the normal. Hypnosis is merely a state of 
body which is in itself the result of suggestion, and is 
desirable as a paver of the way for further suggestions 
to follow. In itself the condition means nothing since 
it is in all respects allied to sleep, though usually only 
a partial sleep, and may be so light that the individual 
is in no sense aware of sensations that differ from 
being fully awake, and wherein he perfectly follows 
the words of the speaker. 
A state of hypnosis may be quite as effectively 
induced by the individual himself as by an outsider, 
and is merely a state of greater receptivity wherein 
the psychic centres are become more susceptible and 220 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
accessible to the curative suggestions that follow. In 
his own case one may suggest to himself sleepiness and 
repose and, if the surrounding conditions are favor- 
able as regards freedom from disturbance, he will, 
sooner or later, experience a sense of calm and bodily 
lethargy which is exactly the same condition prevail- 
ing before he falls asleep at night. If in this state of 
mental and physical calm he will hold in his thought, 
insistently, one definite idea,—for instance the cessa- 
tion of the pain in a tooth or neuralgic nerve, it is 
quite within the bounds of the usual that such pain 
will cease. If one desires to lift his spirit with hope 
and courage, to remove worry, anxiety or fear, to give 
himself a clean psychical “slate,” so to speak, he has 
but to make the appropriate suggestion and the result 
will often follow. 
The marvellous nature and potency of the phenom- 
ena of suggestion are so close to us that, as with the 
air and the sunshine, we are mostly oblivious of their 
presence. We carry about with us in our own persons, 
as a part of our very life, the greatest potentials that 
exist toward mental and spiritual equilibrium and 
physical well-being. We do not even need to go out 
of our own chamber to have set free within us a very 
fountain of vitality and happiness. 
It is quite true that when we happen to be lame we 
cannot walk or run, and when we are under a cloud we 
may not be able even to think of or remember the 
sunshine, and that then we assuredly should lay hold 
of the help that may come to us from without. But RELEASE OF INHIBITIONS 
221 
is it necessary that we should forever go on neglecting 
the mending of our roofs until it rains and we are 
reminded again that they leak, when, because it 
is then raining we cannot mend them? May we not 
learn that we can develop these resources within our- 
selves during fair weather, so that when the area of 
depression comes, we shall have developed something 
in the way of clarity of mental and spiritual horizon 
to which we may hold fast? In his many years of 
experience with suggestion the writer still continues 
to be surprised at the extraordinary range and sim- 
plicity of the way in which curative or helpful results 
are obtained. 
When it is continually being demonstrated that we 
need only to approach a patient who is suffering with 
insomnia and, after having established a few condi- 
tions in the way of explanation and confidence, state 
to him emphatically that he shall sleep—and find that 
in many instances he will—surely that approaches 
near to being a phenomenon of great moment. Neither 
the above nor any other of the therapeutic results 
obtained by suggestion always follow. Sometimes 
results are most baffiingly deferred—or even not forth- 
coming at all—but so are they likewise in consequence 
of all other means within our knowledge. The 
writer, in the use of suggestive therapeutics, has had 
his share of failures, as he has likewise had them to- 
gether with other physicians, in the use of all other 
therapeutic measures. But by all means has he found 
that suggestion, intelligently employed, either alone 222 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
or, as is more often the case, as an adjunct to whatever 
other measures might be employed, is of an importance 
overlapping everything else. 
Somehow the straight and direct approach to the 
receptive consciousness of a man, with the positive 
statement of health, of normal functioning, of the 
restitution of his integrity of mind and body, and the 
almost inevitable helpful result, is a surpassing phe- 
nomenon and one that never ceases to be awe-inspiring. 
It does not appear that we need to dissect our patient’s 
morbid psychology down to its histological elements 
in order to be of help. We may do so if it interests 
us, and, of course, we do need to know our histology. 
But before we had a cellular pathology we had the 
human mind to work with and upon, and the human 
soul to reckon with as a factor that would not be 
ignored—even while the psychological microscope was 
being prepared. 
The human consciousness is a development upon 
man’s physical and animal self and the more it develops 
the more does it appear as though it meant to be 
included in all that concerns the soil in which it grows. 
Let us consider for a moment the following phenomena, 
often occurring in various forms and quite easily repro- 
duced. An elderly man, living under somewhat primi- 
tive and meager conditions, in a mountain camp in a 
southwestern territory, was given at night three pills 
containing each two and one-half grains of Dovers 
powder, for an annoying bronchial cough. It had 
not occurred to the writer to mention the seemingly RELEASE OF INHIBITIONS 
223 
obvious reason for administering the drug. The fol- 
lowing morning the patient announced that “the pills 
had physicked him severely!” In his limited experi- 
ence “pills” had only one significance and therefore 
the result corresponded with the expectant set of the 
subconsciousness. Another man, living under more 
favorable environment and conversant with the ex- 
pectant effect of what he was about to take, proceeded 
to take three compound cathartic pills at bedtime, for 
which purpose he went into a dark pantry, taking them 
in a spoonful of apple sauce. The following morning 
the desired result was obtained but the pills were found 
at breakfast time reposing in the dish of apple sauce! 
It is not necessary to refer to the once familiar 
placebo, affected by an earlier generation of medical 
men and in disrepute with later ones. The old-time 
placebo may have been justifiable if the clinical results 
obtained were satisfactory, but today we have the 
psychology of its administration better in hand and 
we may approach our patient and treat him fearlessly 
through its interpretation, and that often with more 
intellectual and scientific justification than with which 
we still administer some medicines. CHAPTER XX 
THE RIGHT OF ALLEVIATION 
Even in the administration of drugs we have abun- 
dant illustrations of the manner in which the subcon- 
sciousness of the individual is enlisted and therapeutic 
results obtained. Not by reason of what the drug may 
do directly at the seat of the disorder, but because of 
what it often does in restoring the normal activity of 
the subconscious switchboard, thereby permitting order 
and comfort once more to prevail in the remoter 
departments of the organism that were disturbed. 
There has been abroad in the medical profession a 
strong wave of therapeutic nihilism, wherein much 
skepticism has been manifested towards the adminis- 
tration of drugs for the relief of bodily ailments, 
functional or organic. The inclination is strong to 
recognize as carefully as possible the character of the 
ailment, and in this respect our diagnostic training has 
made a marvelous growth, but the readiness to furnish 
relief along the more conventional lines of the pre- 
scribing of remedies has materially fallen off. 
The physician, by reason of his more accurate under- 
standing of the nature of many diseases, his greater 
grasp of the fact that the body, when disturbed by 
224 RIGHT OF ALLEVIATION 
225 
inflammation, by the invasion of bacteria, by the pres- 
ence of undue quantities of irritating or poisonous 
substances, ordinarily will rise to the occasion of the 
greater demand upon its recuperative and protective 
energies and make greater efforts towards resistance, 
feels confidence loom up much more reassuringly upon 
his mental horizon. 
He knows now that many diseases are in their nature 
self-limited and that no sooner is the body invaded by 
the bacilli of diphtheria, pneumonia, or many other 
specific diseases, than it begins to rouse all its protec- 
tive energies and manufacture as speedily as it can 
substances that eventually destroy the disease-produc- 
ing organisms and prevent their further multiplication. 
There is even produced in some instances an excess of 
these protective substances in the blood which for 
varying periods of time will quite prevent the indi- 
vidual from falling prey to such particular diseases 
again. Indeed other individuals may be inoculated 
with such anti-toxines, taken from the blood of ani- 
mals that have had one of these specific diseases, and 
they in their turn become immune against that special 
contagion. 
It is because of our greater understanding of these 
facts that no attempt is now made to treat medicinally 
diseases that are known to be self-limited and wherein 
we recognize that nature must do the work herself. 
We are enabled to do more for the greater comfort of 
those who suffer with specific or contagious disorders. 
In some cases they are better fed in order that the 226 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
organisms may be aided to offer more resistance, and 
in others the great value of pure and cold air in unlim- 
ited quantities is recognized as a remedial agent of 
sovereign power. 
It is not strange that, in the presence of these 
recently discovered facts, a certain revulsion of feeling 
concerning the efficiency of drugs should have arisen. 
Nor is it strange that this revulsion should have flowed 
over the margin, so to speak, and become excessive, 
since the tendency in therapeutics towards too great 
oscillation of the pendulum seems to be well recog- 
nized. It is unquestionably true that the innate ten- 
dency in nature is to recover from a disorder. It is 
also true that in many instances we do not know at all 
in what manner drugs act upon the organism, and the 
fact that in certain disorders so many different kinds 
of drugs seem at times efficacious, and that at other 
times none of them seem to produce any helpful effect 
whatever,—naturally casts a very justifiable uncer- 
tainty upon their administration and may incline to 
cause one to stay his hand, even upon the side of erring 
in doing too little. 
The fact that such a disorder as hiccough, which 
though often so simple and transient a thing may yet 
at times assume graver aspects, has had no less than 
seventy different remedies prescribed for its relief, is 
a patent argument in favor of our helplessness regard- 
ing the administration of drugs under certain condi- 
tions. But this is one of the instances wherein we do 
not always know what is at fault—wherein the nature RIGHT OF ALLEVIATION 
227 
of the disorder lies, and the same is true of many other 
functional disturbances. Doubtless in many instances, 
could we but know just what secretions or nerve- 
impulses were at fault, we might succeed in going 
much more directly to their aid. 
Modern chemistry, however, is gradually working 
towards the production of what promise to be very 
fundamental bases from which we have the right to 
hope for most wonderful things. The uncertainties 
attending the administration of drugs, wherewith 
oftentimes such conflicting results have been obtained, 
promise to be scientifically accounted for, and the occa- 
sions wherein the physician has felt his use of remedies 
to be all too near empiricism promise eventually to 
grow far less frequent. 
It has been due to these uncertainties, the unques- 
tioned failures,—all because of the too frequent ab- 
sence of accurate knowledge,—that the various so- 
called “Schools” of Medicine have arisen. There exist 
no schisms or factions in any department of actual 
knowledge; these are merely the advance guard, the 
fluctuations due to what at one time or another may 
seem to be true, all of which shall inevitably be suc- 
ceeded by the same unanimity that prevails in such 
branches of knowledge as have become more nearly 
exact sciences. 
It is not within the author’s domain to enter into a 
discussion of the action of drugs, other than as their 
use appears to have a significance that would often 
seem to be apart from that ordinarily attributed to 228 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
them. There are many instances wherein we do not 
treat the primary disorder from which the patient may 
be suffering. Sometimes, even when we know the 
causal disturbance, we find ourselves unable to reach 
it and are obliged to content ourselves by treating the 
resultant symptoms. 
We know, for instance, that in the case of an acute 
inflammatory trouble of the intestines, attended by 
much pain, a very singular effect is obtained by the 
use of opium. It may be highly desirable to evacuate 
the bowels and rid them of the source of irritation, 
and yet the attending pain easily may be a symptom 
of such great significance as to demand first attention. 
We recognize that the effect of surgical shock produced 
by the perception of pain is a matter of the first 
moment, and that all efforts must be directed towards 
the curtailing of such perception. In administering 
opium we are therefore not treating the primary dis- 
order, which is a local and inflammatory one, but the 
results of that disorder, which are the cumulative 
effects of pain upon the perceptive centers. After we 
have succeeded in breaking the circuit through which 
the pain perception is transmitted, and thus rested the 
central nervous system, we feel ourselves free to direct 
our attention towards the alleviation of the irritated 
condition of the bowels and to deplete the local con- 
gestion by evacuants. We have here a classical illus- 
tration wherein is recognized what would appear to be 
a most important thing, namely: the annulling of the 
perception of pain by the consciousness, in order that RIGHT OF ALLEVIATION 
229 
the subconsciousness may be permitted in an unim- 
peded manner to attend to the processes of readjust- 
ment and restoration. 
It is a common experience of the country physician, 
who of necessity sees his outlying patients only at long 
intervals, that he is often called upon to treat condi- 
tions that in their nature are complex, which would 
require a prolonged analysis and frequent attendance, 
before the exact character of the disorder and the 
necessary treatment could be clearly determined. One 
of the commonest attending symptoms, of course, is 
pain, and the physician is obliged to recognize that 
whatever be the disorder, the first demand upon him 
is likely to be the relief of pain. 
The use of opiates in some of these cases might be 
justly questioned as not being therapeutically indi- 
cated. Nevertheless it often happens that following 
the administration of this drug the patient, even 
though other and more specific drugs be withheld or 
only imperfectly administered, much more speedily 
convalesces from a disorder which in itself may in no 
sense have indicated the administration of the opiate. 
We have here an unquestionable illustration of the 
fact that the consciousness, aroused and startled by 
the perception of pain, becomes a disturbing factor of 
great importance and materially interferes with the 
carrying on of those inherent physiological processes 
that are normally set free to meet what the emergency 
calls for. If the consciousness be thus lulled, we can 
readily see how much more easily the routine com- 230 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
pensatory and readjusting work done by the sub- 
consciousness, may be permitted to go on more freely. 
In the large class of chronic disorders grouped under 
the head of neurasthenia we have many forms of pain, 
mostly sub-acute, but which have acquired a promi- 
nence making them a factor of no mean proportions 
in the consideration of the problem presented. The 
long continued perception of pain, be it even of a low 
type, produces a very positive cumulative effect upon 
the patient’s consciousness. By its action the sense of 
proportion becomes impaired to a considerable degree 
since he is immersed in an actual atmosphere of dis- 
comfort which prevents his consciousness from holding 
itself aloof, thus inhibiting the sub-consciousness from 
acting normally. He is no longer able to distinguish 
boundary lines and is in a state of confusion, being 
himself often quite unable to give definite outlines to 
his trouble. It is extremely desirable in such cases to 
produce a marked impression of relief upon the con- 
sciousness of the sufferer, in other words to bring to 
bear such means as our experience has taught us will 
minimize or even cut off entirely the transmission of 
pain impulses to the sensorium. It amounts to a 
diversion of the attention of the consciousness, by 
throwing off the switch over which the perception of 
discomfort travels. Such switching off would appear 
to enable the sub-conscious or vegetative processes to 
resume their normal activities, and under such condi- 
tions we have the ideal state wherein physiological 
impulses can most effectively and promptly fulfill their RIGHT OF ALLEVIATION 
231 
function in the readjustment of the circulatory and 
glandular disequilibrium. 
We are familiar with the marvellous readjusting and 
recuperative changes which take place during the 
oblivion of sleep. Often a patient suffering from some 
minor disorder will say: “Let me once have a good 
night’s sleep and I shall be all right again!” What 
have we here but a complete suspension of the inter- 
fering powers of the consciousness? A suspended 
consciousness permits the most ideal functioning of 
the organisms to take place. Interference is then at a 
minimum. Indeed could sleep but be prolonged into 
days instead of hours, there is no doubt that many a 
protracted convalescence would be promptly and 
favorably concluded! 
In the administration of the bromides we are well 
aware of the resultant depletion of vascular fullness 
which takes place. Attending such depletion of the 
vessels we get a lessened pressure upon the surround- 
ing tissues with their nerve terminations and therefore 
a lessened impression of pain upon the perceptive 
centres. In this resultant diminution of perception we 
have at least a partial forgetting, i.e., a dulling of the 
perceptive consciousness, permitting thereby again the 
more perfect functioning of the sub-consciousness, to 
the end that readjusting processes the more easily 
go on. 
The relief attending the application of a mustard 
paste may not be wholly as the result of the deter- 
mination of blood to the immediate site of the irritant, 232 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
at the expense of the pathological assembling of blood 
in the deeper tissues, but may in part be due to the 
distraction of the too-attentive consciousness, thereby 
permitting an easier, because non-interfered-with, 
functioning of the sub-consciousness towards physio- 
logical balance. CHAPTER XXI 
THE CLAMOR OF A NEED 
Throughout the world today there are moving some 
wonderful psychological forces that are well worthy 
the grave consideration of those whose profession it is 
to heal. Great movements are abroad that appear to 
be establishing a foothold among all classes of people, 
wherein the underlying factor would seem to be one 
that concerns the recognition of certain forces within 
the human makeup that are other than physical. By 
the aid of these forces their disciples aspire to lift 
themselves to higher levels of bodily and spiritual 
health, to become more oblivious to suffering and to 
experience higher levels of mental and spiritual calm. 
The different cults, for such they have become, 
fluctuate somewhat widely in their interpretations and 
beliefs, by no means drawing clear lines between the 
real and the unreal, and are often sadly confused as 
to any intelligent understanding of the nature of the 
things they profess and are dealing with. They appear 
at times to be ready to set at naught all the hard facts 
which human experience has so painfully accumulated 
throughout its long centuries, and to refute the actual 
existence of things that we have come to know as 
233 234 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
natural laws. If in the course of the pursuit of these, 
their recently acquired beliefs, they happen to run 
counter to these laws, and the penalty of such viola- 
tion is exacted, they often remain undaunted, merely 
assuming tnat in some way owing to their own imper- 
fect understanding of their beliefs, they have failed in 
correctly carrying out the proper conditions and con- 
tinue in their faith in the serene expectation of ulti- 
mate success. 
If we have cursorily observed what befalls the dis- 
ciples of these cults, we cannot fail to have noticed 
the occurrence of failures in consequence of the vio- 
lations above mentioned, and may be led to turn away 
in impatience from any further attempt at understand- 
ing other and greater things involved, which always 
form the nucleus of world-wide movements of the 
people. Some of us may not have seen that by far 
the larger number of such disciples have become rather 
exceptionally happy and contented people and that 
many of them, who have been suffering from various 
chronic ailments, some of them being what we would 
call “real” and others “fancied,” have succeeded either 
in getting well or forgetting them, or in living above 
them! 
Nevertheless there is a growing number of our pro- 
fession who are seeing with more prophetic vision and 
who are earnest, aye, reverent students of their sig- 
nificance. To such keen observers the lines that sepa- 
rate the margins of the stream of truth from the slack 
and muddy waters of these great movements are quite THE CLAMOR OF A NEED 
235 
clearly defined, and they are enabled to recognize that 
there is a very real and virile life abroad therein. 
As the result of further inquiry we shall find that 
with all of these movements, they owe their life 
basically to the presence of a psychological factor. 
But in the contemplation of this newly recognized psy- 
chological law, with the oft-times wonderful flashes 
of new truths it may reveal they may easily be blinded 
to the existence of other factors that are certainly 
quite as real, such as organic and specific disease! 
In the zealous pursuit of these, to them, new revela- 
tions of what is really everyday human psychology, 
and which unquestionably contains some of the most 
wonderful truths we know, it is quite astonishing 
through how many unexpected ways practical applica- 
tions may be made which seem to redound in additions 
to their happiness. 
It does not suffice that we permit the vast signifi- 
cance of such popular movements, whether they ad- 
vance or retard the happiness of their followers, to pass 
us by without seriously trying to grasp their import, 
since whatever happens with the multitude happens 
with the individual; and because the individual, with 
all his complexities, physiological and phychological, 
comes to us for aid in the solution of his problems. 
We see that a fundamental note of great power 
must have been struck, and one that comes very close 
to the heart of man, when we recognize, as we must, 
that the majority of these people are certainly much 
the happier for their beliefs! It may be urged that in 236 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
all likelihood the ailments of these people are probably 
only beliefs and that in consequence merely a belief of 
a different kind has been substituted. But we have 
instances wherein the attention of our profession has 
been called to individuals, suffering with actual organic 
or specific disease, who eventually succumbed thereto, 
who were actually buoyed up by the strength of their 
belief to the degree that they believed themselves well, 
and who attended to their affairs, almost up to the last 
hours preceding their, to them, unexpected demise! 
It is at this juncture that our profession, as guar- 
dians of the public health, very justly takes notice of 
the jeopardy to human life that a misplaced belief 
may involve, and insists that such individuals shall be 
obliged, for their own protection and that of society, 
to yield themselves to the care of all the positive 
knowledge upon the subject that the experience of 
the medical profession has evolved. Such instances 
were formerly and are even now not rare among the 
followers of some of these cults, for when does any new 
light or new enthusiasm ever content itself with bal- 
ance and moderation; and, indeed, does not much of 
our understanding come as the result of the mistakes 
made and the penalties paid for zeal without knowl- 
edge? 
But looking behind all such obvious misapplica- 
tions of whatever truth and principle may be the 
nucleus of these movements, there remains a large 
residuum of what appears to be an abiding good done, 
an actual increase in the happiness and welfare of a THE CLAMOR OF A NEED 
237 
great number of individuals. Some of these people 
have been in the care of the family physician for years, 
have faithfully submitted themselves to his instruc- 
tion, have taken his medicines, pursued their occu- 
pations or remained in bed, traveled or resigned 
themselves to nurse or sanitarium, who have had 
everything from him in fact save the one thing they 
most needed—and this he apparently could not give, 
because he did not himself know what it was above 
all things else that they needed! 
The answer to this, their one great need, has in some 
of the above instances come to the rescue of the suf- 
ferers from out of a sort of hostile camp—a following 
of enthusiasts, who took small notice of many adaman- 
tine facts on the painfully cultivated field of human 
experience, who rushed on like a resistless wave, carry- 
ing many hitherto obstinate things by storm, but also 
leaving not a few of their number behind. The patient, 
thus lifted above his distresses by methods that seemed 
unorthodox, particularly in those cases in which he 
had most earnestly sought for help and submitted to 
all that his physician’s resources could suggest, may 
quite naturally become a proselyte from his old faith 
and a fanatic for the new. 
Here is surely the physician’s opportunity, for is 
it not his duty and his privilege to discover wherein 
lies the help that came to his patient and what was 
the character of the need he could not supply? It is 
the ancient soul-hunger of the race, that has mani- 
fested itself through all its records and far back into 238 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
the vast periods of time before history began, which 
ever clamors for recognition. 
That such recognition is not given as freely as it 
should, may be defended by the fact that we are ever 
inclined to lose sight of the horizon in the pursuit of 
the particular and the investigation of so many sub- 
jects of absorbing interest, multiplying every succeed- 
ing year, most naturally lures us into the hope that 
more and more shall we be able to deal with all dis- 
orders of humanity specifically. That we shall eventu- 
ally be able to do so with specific disorders, there is 
little doubt, but the great source of error lies in the 
incontrovertible fact that man is always something 
more than his body—he has in addition to his body 
an incorporeal part which we call his soul! 
And here our profession is too often dodging the 
issue, not wilfully by any means, but confused by the 
pressure of so many things that are material and 
tangible and objective, that the wonder is not so great 
that we should too fondly believe the solution of 
human ills to be wholly a material one. 
This then is the rock upon which we founder in all 
such cases wherein the spiritual needs of the patient 
are not recognized and met, either without or in con- 
junction with all the material aids our art and science 
is now so richly bringing to bear. CHAPTER XXII 
THE HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
Man is endowed with something within him which 
has lifted him above the beast and given him a 
consciousness. In the measure wherein he knows 
that he possesses this consciousness is he the more 
nearly allied to that unknown source of his being 
which, among many other names, is called God or the 
Creative Power. In the degree to which he has a 
consciousness, an objective self, to that degree does 
he become responsible. Only that creature which 
dwells in the lower consciousness, the subjective, is 
excused from this responsibility. The moment that a 
being has developed far enough along the scale to be 
aware of itself, that moment does this awareness, this 
consciousness, become a factor in its welfare that insists 
upon being reckoned with. To neglect it is futile and 
always disastrous. 
Man is man as the result of a progressive growth 
away from the lowest organism, and with the slow bud- 
ding of his higher nature he enters into the realm 
of a higher world wherein the expanding consciousness, 
the understanding, causes him gradually to recognize 
the existence of a psychic self. The recognition of this 
239 240 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
psychic self becomes eventually his salvation and the 
means by which he becomes enabled to release this, 
to him, hitherto unknown resource and, for the first 
time in his life, really to enter into a larger life,—into 
the use and the expansion of the potentials of his 
spiritual being. 
The author has had years of experience with that 
large class of sufferers whose ailments are chronic; 
who cannot be relieved by the skill of the surgeon, to 
whom medicine and regime have become things tried 
and cast aside, and who have traveled to the world’s 
end and back again in the vain attempt to escape 
from themselves. Their kind suffer and will continue 
to suffer until the profession awakens to the recog- 
nition of the truth that man is more than a mere 
mechanism, composed of a framework of bone and 
muscle, with organs to nourish and keep it alive. 
Therein he is no more than the dog or the ox—who do 
not suffer as man does because he is so much more 
than they—but in addition to all that he has in com- 
mon with other animals he is a conscious being, pos- 
sessed of a spiritual faculty which insists upon being 
recognized as much as does Newton’s Law of Gravity! 
We must, of course, acknowledge untold indebted- 
ness to all the marvellous aids we have derived from 
surgery, from bacteriology, from chemistry and medi- 
cine and hygiene and dietetics; more exact knowledge 
is becoming ours with every year of this marvellous 
age, wherein the profession is having born unto it 
truths more pregnant with good to the race, than any HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
241 
possible knowledge pertaining to material things, and 
we should be poor indeed did we not accord their 
rightful place to all these inestimably valuable aids 
toward the alleviation of human suffering. 
All this growing knowledge we need, and shall con- 
tinue to need to the utmost degree. But when we have 
applied all these things do we always arrive at our 
goal? Are there not thousands of sufferers who need 
something more—something they have not yet had— 
something without which they continue to pass before 
our eyes as unhappy and suffering fellow creatures, 
misunderstood by ourselves who should know better, 
by their friends who too often look at them askance 
and think them queer, and, most of all, not under- 
stood by themselves! 
The writer believes that he would be adjudged by 
his profession as being far removed from any taint of 
the therapeutic nihilism prevalent in this generation. 
Surely we need all the aids we have for the alleviation 
of human suffering, and can afford to scorn no known 
means of relief. But then, after all these things have 
been done, it remains that we shall recognize that the 
patient may be as ill in his mind, in his character and 
in his soul as ever he might be in his body, and that 
such suffering needs the larger help—the development 
of and the recognition of his spiritual resources. 
What are these resources? They proceed from the 
recognition of the truth that a man may suffer because 
he has become too conscious of himself—because his 
consciousness has become diverted from its legitimate 242 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
occupation with people and things and principles 
towards the excessive perception of pain, of discom- 
fort, of unhappiness, of sleeplessness, of something of 
which he is aware of which he should not be aware. 
His coordination has become incoordination, he is per- 
ceptive of that which properly belongs to the domain 
of the subconscious. But he can be taught just what 
this means. He need have only ordinary intelligence 
to this end. He already has more than what we call 
intelligence—he is in himself the repository of an in- 
herent impulse towards wellness which may be taught 
to respond to wholesome suggestion and re-education 
and to answer to the proper aids like a released spring. 
Let us be quite clear upon this point because it is 
not the physician alone who gets the patient well. It 
is the physician who may be able to apply the aids— 
that pressure which follows the release of the spring— 
but it is always the fact that it is a pressure from 
within of the instinctive tendency to save itself—that 
saves. 
It would appear that our profession,—the art and 
science which is devoted to the relief of suffering 
humanity,—is in the same danger that all other 
branches of human knowledge at times encounter in 
the course of their development; the danger of an 
eclipse of the wider horizon in the intentness of the 
pursuit of the microscopic; the danger of forgetting 
that there is a psychic or spiritual, in the investigation 
of the material. 
Surely we need to pursue all investigations in the HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
243 
laboratory to their ultimate manifestations, and to 
ignore no least new ray of light that brings its tribute 
to making the sum total of any given line of research 
of ever increasing value. We should be poor indeed 
today were we to be deprived of the blessings that 
modern exact and aseptic surgery bestows upon us. 
The triumphs of the bacteriological laboratory have 
opened up the world of the infinitely little, and con- 
stitute one of the greatest monuments to human prog- 
ress the world has ever known, saving today literally 
millions of lives that would otherwise merely have 
succumbed to human ignorance. 
Of these things thus learned—and they are learned 
at times even at the price of the martyrdom of its 
devotees, we avail ourselves gratefully and reverently, 
but do we feel today that we have enough—that our 
equipment is complete? What can we do with the 
so-called neurasthenic; with the psychasthenic; with 
the chronic sufferer who is out of harmony with self 
and with humanity and with the universe? We have 
tried with him many things and with some of these 
we may have been enabled to do him good. We may 
possibly do much for the correction of his digestion 
which in most instances will be found at fault. There 
may be many things to do for the relief of his body- 
habit, since faulty anatomical poise is one of the most 
frequent handicaps. We should correct his habit of 
living and working and playing and resting. But then, 
if he is still far from happy or comfortable or useful or 
contented; if he continues to be depressed, or despond- 244 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
ent, or only half alive; if he still is a source of concern 
(and often discomfort) to his family and his friends; 
if in consequence of his despair and discouragement his 
life has become a negative thing and he is at times 
even led to throw it away, what shall we do? 
There are occasions when, because of the disease 
and destruction of his tissues, we are powerless. There 
are other times when, with the limited understanding 
we yet have, we may not know whether there is actual 
organic disintegration or an unsolvable symptom and 
function complex, where we are again powerless to 
help, though we take such defeats most unwillingly. 
Thanks to all the great light that has been shed by 
the inspired work of the present and past generations 
of patient, devoted searchers after truth, these occa- 
sions of defeat are growing steadily less. 
But of all these men and women who are unhappy 
and who suffer, who have no acute disease and who will 
not and need not die, and to whom often the physician 
himself, or his wife and so many of his friends belong,— 
have they no right to have their peculiar needs con- 
sidered? Since they do not suffer from surgical or 
insuperable anatomical defects and are often even well 
nourished and actually earning their daily bread or 
doing their duty by their family and society (hard as 
it may be for them)—are not these entitled to such 
special relief as their peculiar case may claim? 
How much are we really doing for this great major- 
ity, how much of the same kind of earnest investiga- 
tion and concentrated analysis are we giving them HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
245 
that we would give to the anxious consideration of 
the number of grains of proteids or carbohydrates 
a man happens to be able to live upon? Our race has 
lived for countless ages, up to the present time, and 
has maintained itself in times of largesse and famine 
upon all kinds of food. It has had excess of proteids 
and it has lived wholly upon grains or coarser vege- 
table substances, and what the individual took into 
his economy over his needs was disposed of and what 
he didn’t get that he should have had he got along 
without for the time being—all these things being 
taken care of by a wiser chemistry than any he him- 
self could devise. 
We have all been fascinated by the lure of the 
promises held out to us by painstaking laboratory in- 
vestigations into the chemical and biological phe- 
nomena of health and disease. We have often felt that 
doors might soon be opened by whose greater light we 
might at last be enabled to proceed with rule and scales 
and unswerving chemical tests, towards the relief and 
simplification of all our sufferings. Immeasurable 
knowledge we have already gained and hope burns 
brightly in justification. Many diseases, hitherto 
merely blindly acknowledged as pathological states, 
which were as blindly and helplessly treated, have been 
reduced in consequence of the laboratory to exact 
and definite causes for which already in many cases 
exact and definite remedial measures have been found. 
Tuberculosis, tetanus, rabies, anthrax, the sleeping 
sickness, diphtheria, small pox, bubonic plague, the 246 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
hookworm disease, typhoid and others, have already 
lost many of their terrors, and become classed among 
the enemies of man as those that are specific,—and 
against which specific measures may be, almost wholly, 
successfully taken. 
We all live in the fervent hope that as great triumphs 
are still awaiting us; and in innumerable laboratories 
throughout the world, patient pioneers of medical 
science are devoting their lives to the relentless 
search for the cause of cancer, one of the few remain- 
ing and baffling citadels of our enemy against which 
we still appear to be helpless. Doubtless this, too, will 
be overcome and many other things besides. But 
shall we then have overcome human suffering; will 
there be no longer that great army of chronically 
unwell and unhappy people who are unfit for the 
reasonable enjoyment of life and duty? 
Are we possibly led into the error, not so unnatu- 
rally it is true in view of the many mysteries exact 
medical science has cleared up, of thinking that for 
them, too, there will come an emancipation through 
the miracle-working solvent of the laboratory? 
It is possible, indeed probable, that there will still 
come to us more triumphs, further simplifications, 
greater reductions to more exact recognition of the 
nature of “chronic” suffering,—always in so far as 
they may be due to specific causes pertaining to the 
body—but never, so long as man is a being that is more 
than mere body—can there come relief to a “mind 
diseased,” unless we treat it in a manner adapted to HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
247 
its own peculiar needs—in a manner that is adapted 
to its own nature. 
Do we not know how many disturbances of mind 
and body may come to us in an instant through the 
gateway of an emotion! It need have been none other 
than a perfectly well man whose face may become sud- 
denly blanched with fear, whose heart will sink within 
him, and who will turn with repugnance from his food, 
at the receipt of evil tidings. Does not anxiety over a 
loved one’s life often paralyze all effort and act as 
a poisonous drug upon every spring of energy? 
Let new hope and courage come to him who is 
prostrated with despair, and how well we know the 
quickening power, the lighted countenance, the sudden 
release of energy, the opening of what would appear 
to be the very floodgates of renewed vitality! How 
marvellously does energy return to the shipwrecked 
sailor in the life-boat, exhausted by fatigue and de- 
spair, at the sight of the rescuing sail! 
What is it that happens at such crisis-times that can 
produce such extremes of despair and exaltation, 
between a powerlessness that would soon end in death 
and an influx of vigor that becomes almost invincible? 
It is but the miracle of the marvellous force of the lift- 
ing spirit of the man, exerting its mysterious influence 
upon his body. It is the liberation of this force, which 
we may call the “faith factor,” that may lift him out 
of the pit from which our material resources may not 
avail to raise him, and it is the inhibition of it, which 248 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
we may not be able to lift, that may cause him to 
become submerged. 
What has sustained man in war and famine but his 
Ideal, the devotion to the cause for which he was 
striving! It was the thought of his family, of his 
tribe, of his God that lifted him out of the conscious- 
ness of himself and enabled him to be sustained. The 
Pilgrim Fathers, the Crusaders, the fanatical follow- 
ers of Islam, holy wars, the uprising of tribes and 
nations to the defense of their faith or their country; 
what are all these things but the manifestation of a 
force that moves more powerfully than all the obstacles 
that mere suffering of body may interpose,—the sign 
of the presence within of a power that dominates all 
else,—the mighty moving within of the Spirit in man! 
When we enter the presence of the sick we must 
bring with us first of all, another presence,—the pres- 
ence of the well. We must have ever a thought to the 
vital importance of displacing despair and discourage- 
ment with hope and confidence. The embers of fear 
are always smouldering;—we must have in our con- 
stant possession, at our instantaneous service, the 
instant perception of the need that such smouldering 
fire needs quick extinction,—long before we feel of the 
sick man’s pulse! 
Do we not know that blessed type of doctor, 
whose mere coming into the sick-room often lifts the 
spirits and the courage of the patient more than all his 
medicines? Alas! perhaps we also know him who 
leaves the patient just a little worse for his presence, HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
249 
because he did not know that his patient had also a 
spiritual factor in his make-up that was entitled to 
recognition,—as well as the fever in his body! What 
is it that lifts? What does the physician strive to 
awaken in his patient in his battle with what are so 
often unknown quantities? It is faith, and in faith 
lies the greatest lever wherewith to release the myster- 
ious action of that unknown quantity, the “vital fac- 
tor,upon the functions of the body. 
With all that science can do with its magnificent 
attainments in the care of the body, and all the 
light that psychology has thrown upon the work- 
ing of the mind,—with all this grand equipment 
for the welfare of the human race,—man asks for still 
more. What is it that lifts? A dominant need has 
existed since the history of mankind has been a writ- 
ten record,—a demand which has made a golden 
thread in the whole world’s web,—revealing itself 
under manifold conditions, hidden by human limita- 
tions, by superstitions, by fanatical puerilities,—has 
never been destroyed; the one great universal faculty 
which has refused to be ignored; the most universally 
dominant of all the faculties given to the keeping of 
man by his Creator. 
It is the crowning conviction of the author’s life 
that the resolute use of the faith faculty by the human 
soul, regarding whatever may appeal to it as the high- 
est and best ideals of life, will cause it to become more 
like unto what it values. From this vantage ground 
of a higher state of consciousness, the soul may view 250 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
the stress of earthly life with undaunted courage and 
also see a new horizon, before unrecognized, and by 
what it has seen learn to trust the unseen. 
No man is able to live up to the fulness of the 
measure that is possible, unless he strives to set free 
the potentials that lie in the Spirit within. Every 
man is only more or less well; every man has the right, 
and every man can learn, to release unto himself an 
infinitely more abundant measure of usefulness and 
happiness. It is futile to attempt to reduce human 
life to mathematical or chemical equivalents. All 
systems of measurement fail unless we take into 
account the vital or spiritual factor, call it what we 
will,—that something which the laboratory has never 
yet succeeded in making tangible to our ordinary 
senses—but which we all know to be in the world, 
moving, indeed, within our own hearts and souls! 
What then is the Hope of the Variant? It lies in a 
bending of all his deflections towards the straight line 
of wiser living, employing all of the faculties that go 
to make up the tripod of his equipment. And who 
must be his helper? He must be that physician who 
knows and admits that there is a plane of suffering 
beyond the helps of mere medicinal or textbook aids 
and who, merely because he happens to be at the end 
of such resources, shall not give to a sufferer the hope- 
lessness due to his own inadequacy by saying “There 
is nothing the matter with you” or, “Forget yourself 
and go to work!” 
He should let a suffering human being appear before HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
251 
his consciousness as a task to be reverently met, as a 
direct and insistent claim upon all that is fine and 
noble and divine within himself. If he himself is 
possessed of a constant recognition of the value of the 
momentous truths that have touched the soul of man, 
—ever since in the dim dawn of history he began to 
recognize the need of “Something outside ourselves 
which maketh for righteousness,”—he will be seeking 
to impart to his patient, along with all that his medi- 
cal science may give, the recognition of a vast, living, 
cooperative Force whose source lies in the Creative 
Energy itself. The constant, immanent presence of 
this subtle energy should be taught to every ailing 
soul; it should be interwoven in every direction and 
with every hour of effort for health. 
What physician of experience, who bends every 
faculty to the single purpose of bringing help to the 
sufferer, has not felt the sudden flash of intuition that 
shone out of darkness, that enabled him to see the 
way? What strange illumination, what sudden crys- 
tallization of thought, what marvelous perceptive 
insight has come, which in less earnest moments would 
seem miraculous! “Not of the clod” are the flashes 
of wisdom we revere,—and every sick soul and body 
needs to be helped to release this more rarefied spiritual 
atmosphere; he deserves the guidance which will help 
him to make the recognition of a resourceful God an 
inspiration and a sustaining power, which will surely 
bridge many a stormy flood of misery. He needs to 
use the Faith Faculty! 252 
HOPE OF THE VARIANT 
The physician for those who suffer in mind, spirit 
and body must be a recognizer and an acknowledger. 
He must always be one who stands upon the plane of 
original research. He must forge out for himself 
unborrowed and clearly defined convictions, and then 
fearlessly make adaptation and application; his results 
often will exceed his greatest expectations. 
Indeed it will be given him to feel at times, with 
great humility of soul, that, haltingly and stumblingly 
it is true, he has nevertheless succeeded in invoking 
and liberating a mighty power which shall seem to 
him a veritable Presence—a Spirit, moving, before his 
awed perceptions. 
Though the variations of the Variant are infinite, 
still more infinite is the Provision given for the needs 
of the creature, and this short summary of interpreta- 
tions, methods and results is offered to all those whose 
interests and sympathies are concerned, with the firm 
and ever-increasing assurance that there is a joyous 
HOPE FOR THE VARIANT. 
“Crooked and warped am I, and I would fain 
Straighten myself by Thy right line again/’ 
Trench,