64 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



must still depend on its own resources in a successful fight against the 

 marauders. 



Most of the infectious diseases are of short duration, the body 

 triumphing or failing in its fight in from one to five or six weeks; yet 

 some such fights are long drawn out, and, as in tuberculosis, may cover 

 many years, the disease — the fight — varying in success with the re- 

 sources of the body and with the amount of drain of bodily energy in 

 other directions. Whether brief or long drawn out, whether acute or 

 chronic, the bodily antagonists often leave scars in the shape of dam- 

 aged organs — lasting ills which serve to render the body less perfect in 

 its working than before, and also leave their impress on the higher con- 

 sciousness in feelings of weakness and discomfort. 



Besides the bacteria and their poisonous products, other things pro- 

 duce disease more or less insidiously. While the body naturally rids 

 itself through certain organs of the waste matter — the ashes and smoke 

 of its daily activities, continued excesses in eating or drinking throw 

 extra work upon those organs, which in time wear out under added 

 burdens. Exhausting work, excesses of heat or cold, and other unusual 

 conditions also bring about reaction of the inner bodily consciousness 

 to adjust the body to its surroundings. The body makes the best of a 

 bad matter and does its utmost to bring itself into harmony with its 

 outer conditions. 



Disease is, then, a life-saving effort of the body, directed by its inner 

 consciousness, in ridding itself of harmful substances within, or of 

 compensating for injured or overworked organs. It is the next best 

 thing to health in that it is nature's way of attempting to bring the 

 body back to that harmonious working of all parts which we call health, 

 and often also of producing protecting substances which prevent future 

 injury from the same source. 



While the treatment rendered by the earliest healer, the medicine 

 man, must seem to us absurd, so far as any direct alleviation of suffering 

 is concerned, we can not but guess that the hope which his presence and 

 his, to us, useless efforts inspired in the sufferer, helped not a little to 

 stimulate, through the mind, the failing bodily forces. Mind and body 

 are so intimately related that what affects the one affects the other, and 

 throughout the history of the treatment of disease mental influence has 

 always been used directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, to 

 aid in restoring the body to its state of health. 



The higher conscious mind is intimately a part of, or a manifesta- 

 tion of, the body, and is affected by bodily conditions of well or ill being. 

 While it can take little part in directing the defense against foes which 

 have gained an entrance to the body, the mental conditions — the emo- 

 tions of hope or discouragement — indirectly support or depress the 

 whole of the bodily fighting machinery, for the organ through which 



