On common neuroses, or, The neurotic element in disease and its rational treatment.

  • Goodhart, James F. (James Frederic), Sir, 1845-1916.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On common neuroses, or, The neurotic element in disease and its rational treatment. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    out of an honourable calling into that of speculative finance and Monte Carlo-ism. This man came into my room one day, and treated me to the most extra- ordinary musical performance—his stomach being the bellows, and his mouth the pipe—that I ever remember to have heard. The only advice I deemed it necessary to give him was the very simple com- mand to stop it. And I hope it cured him, for bar his stomach, which was temproarily crazy, he seemed sensible enough. How often it happens that such are treated as cases of indigestion, and drugs are put into their stomachs as the be-all and end-all of treatment, and they are never told about the mechanism of the flatulent distension. The consequence is that, feeling distended, they dispose of their surplus gas by eructation and are easy for a time. But in so doing they become gas factories ; soon more is secreted, and that is passed off, and so on, and the stomach is enticed to produce more each time, the demand, according to the universal rule, creating the supply. If, on the other hand, you tell them that each return of momentary ease is accentuating a habit and really making them worse, and that if they bear with what, after all, is but a slight and passing discomfort, they will soon be better, and then apply such remedies as the case seems to call for, it will take no time to cure the majority. It will not be so easy with a minority. These betoken the