Favoring Factors.—Psychic Contagion.—A prominent factor in suicides that must constantly be borne in mind is the influence of example or, as we have come to call it learnedly in recent years, psychic contagion. It is discussed more in detail in the chapter on Psychic Contagion, but its place here must be emphasized. It has often been noted that certain peculiar suicides are followed by others of the same kind. If a special poison has been used, others obtain it and put an end to their lives in that way. Even such horrible modes of death as eroding the jugular vein by drawing the neck backward and forward across a barbed-wire fence have been imitated. If the story of jumping off a high building is told with lurid details, special care has to be taken in permitting unknown people to go up to the same place for some time afterwards. The imitative tendency is evidently a strong factor. Plutarch's story of the young women of Milesia brings this out, and it has been noted all down the centuries.

In any discussion of the prophylaxis of suicide the effect of newspaper descriptions of previous suicides must be looked upon as very important. The influence of suggestion of this kind on people who have been thinking for some time of suicide is very strong. There comes to them the impelling thought that the suicide's miseries are over and they wish they were with him. From the wish to the resolve and then to the deed itself are only successive steps when suggestion is constantly prodding the unfortunate individual. If we are going to reduce the suicide rate materially or, indeed, keep it from increasing beyond all bounds, this question must be squarely faced. Accounts of suicides are not news in the ordinary sense of the word and while they might find a place for legal and other purposes in a few lines of an obituary column, the present exploitation of them by the papers makes them a constantly recurring source of strong suggestion to go and do likewise. These suggestions come to persons already tottering on the edge of disequilibration in this matter, and it is like tempting children to do things that they know are wrong, but that look irresistibly inviting when presented under certain lights. The very fact that their death will produce a sensation and will give them so much space in the newspapers attracts many morbidly sensation-loving people. Physicians must work as much for this prophylaxis as we have for the prevention of infectious diseases.

Child Suicides.—Probably the worst feature of the suicide statistics of recent times in all countries is the great increase of self-murder among children. Arthur MacDonald in discussing the "Statistics of Child Suicide" [Footnote 56] has shown that there is a special increase of young suicides everywhere. In France there are nearly five times as many suicides at the end of the nineteenth century as there were at the beginning of it. In England there is almost as startling an increase. Though the statistics are not as well kept, child suicide has increased not only in proportion to the increase of suicide among adults, but ever so much more. In Prussia the condition is even worse.

[Footnote 56: "Statistics of Child Suicide," Transactions of American Statistical Association, Vol. X., pp. 1906-1907.]

The French child suicide rate is especially interesting and disheartening. In the Paris Thesis for 1906 Dr. Moreau discusses the subject of suicide among young people and shows how rapid has been the growth of the number of such suicides in the last 100 years. The first statistics available for the purpose that, in his opinion, are exact enough to furnish a basis for scientific conclusions, are from 1836 to 1840. Altogether during that period in France there were 92 suicides under the age of seventeen years, 69 of whom were boys and 23 girls. In 1895 this number had increased to such a degree that in a single year there were almost as many suicides (90) as there had been in five years, only fifty years before. In 1895 the proportion of suicides less than ten years of age was a little more than one in twenty of the total number of suicides in France. There are countries in Europe in which the suicide rate among such children is even higher than it is in France. In every country it has gone on increasing and the awful thing is that the suicide rate is increasing more rapidly among children than it is among adults, though among adults it doubles every twenty years.

Causes at Work.—The causes for the increase in suicide among children were pointed out even by Esquirol, the great French psychiatrist, nearly a century ago. They are the same to-day, only emphasized by the conditions of our civilization. He attributed it to a false education which emphasizes all the vicious side of life, makes worldly success the one object of life, does not properly prepare the child for constancy in the midst of hardships, nor make it appreciate that suffering is a precious heritage to the race, that has its reward in forming character and fixing purpose. He thought that there were two very serious factors for the increase of suicide among children not usually realized. They were in his time literature and the theater. He said: "When the theater presents only the triumphs of crime, the misfortunes of virtue, when the books that are in common circulation because of the low price at which they are issued, contain only declarations against religion, against family ties and duties towards our neighbor and society, then they inspire a disdain of life and it is no wonder that suicide rapidly increases even among the very young." He was commenting on the case of a child of thirteen who had hanged himself, leaving this written message: "I bequeath my soul to Rousseau and my body to the earth."

Cowardice of Suicide.—Of course, the strongest motive for dissuasion from suicide is the utter cowardice of the act. As a rule, the man who contemplates suicide is not a sufferer from inevitable natural causes, but one who for some foolish act has put himself into what seems to him an intolerable position out of which escape without disgrace is impossible, and he is afraid to face the consequences of his own acts. It is from the fear of mental worry and of the condemnation of others rather than from any dread of physical suffering and pain that men commit suicide. The suicide leaves those who are nearest and dearest to him to face the battle of life alone, with all the handicaps that have been created by their foolishness. Running away in battle is as nothing compared to the cowardice of the suicide. The deserter is deservedly held in deepest dishonor, and if there is some little pity for the suicide, it is because of the supreme foolishness of his act and the feeling that it only can have been dictated by some defect of mental equilibrium. A frank recognition of these conditions in their real significance probably will do more than anything {722} else to make the prospective suicide realize the true status of his act better than anything else.

Men sometimes seem to persuade themselves that it is a brave thing thus to face death. The shadowy terrors of what may come after death are too little realized to deter a man from his act when compared with the real disgrace that he is so familiar with and that he has often witnessed in actual life. It is the man, as a rule, who has most condemned others when something has gone wrong, who has found no sympathy in his heart for the slips of his fellows, who discovers no courage in himself when he has to face disgrace. He does not realize that for most men there are so many extenuations of any evil that a man may do, that the large-minded man is ready to forgive and eventually to forget almost anything that happens. "To know all is to forgive all," and the more we know of men the readier we are to forgive them. Little men do not forgive and cannot forget the failings of their fellows and they think that everyone else looks upon men's failings in the same way. It is only the small, narrow man who contemplates suicide as a refuge from disgrace, and the fact that he can complacently plan the abandonment of others not only to the disgrace which he himself is not ready to face, but to all the suffering consequent upon it, is the best proof of his littleness of soul. The utter pusillanimity of suicide is the best mental antidote for the temptation to it.

Besides, the thought that deterred Hamlet may well be urged:

It is sometimes said that this is the argument of a coward, but such cowardice is as reasonable as the dread of touching a wire that may be carrying a high charge of electricity. Besides it is only such an argument that will properly suit the man who, in his cowardice, is ready to let others bear the brunt of his disgrace, flying from it himself. [Footnote 57]

[Footnote 57: Is life worth living? How old this argument as to suicide is can perhaps best be appreciated from the fact that it is discussed very suggestively in a papyrus of the Middle Kingdom the date of which is probably not later than 2500 B. C, which is now in the Berlin Museum and is recognized to be the most ancient text of its kind that has been preserved in the Nile Valley. I have referred to this in the initial historical chapter. I think that I have more than once turned men's thoughts from the serious contemplation of suicide—always a dangerous thing—by discussing with them this fact that men have at all times in the world's history argued just the same way on these subjects. Men prefer not to resemble the dead ones, and a motive is all that is needed. ]

There has sometimes been an erroneous tendency to confuse suicide and heroism, but Chesterton, in "Orthodoxy," [Footnote 58] has well expressed the difference:

[Footnote 58: "Orthodoxy" by Gilbert K. Chesterton, New York, John Lane Co., 1909.]

A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for a great cause and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life.

The feature of incidents in life that bring with them disgrace and punishment which needs to be insisted on for those to whom the thought of suicide comes, is that the sensation which the revelation of such acts causes is but a passing phase of present-day publicity, and that after all it is not even a nine-days' wonder, but a two- or three-days' wonder, and then it is forgotten and replaced by something else. The facing of the condemnation for the moment may seem an extremely severe trial. The world's blame, however, is largely a bogey, a dread that is phantom-like and that disappears, or at least diminishes, to a great degree as soon as it is bravely faced. Besides, as practically every man who has been carrying around a guilty secret with him for years is free to confess, there is an immense sense of relief once the worst is known. At last the effort at concealment, the nervous tension, the fear of the moment of exposure are all past and a new set of thoughts can be allowed to come. Those may be unpleasant and yet they are not so bad as the dread of discovery that hung over the unfortunate. If a man can be braced up to meet exposure, usually he will find in a very few days that there are sources of consolation that make it much easier for him to live than he thought possible before.

Real Suffering a Tonic.—Probably the best remedy for a man or a woman who talks of suicide and seems to fear lest the temptation should overcome them is, if possible, to give them an opportunity to see some real suffering. I have on a number of occasions had the opportunity to note the effect on a discouraged man or woman of the sight of a cancer patient suffering severely, yet bearing the suffering patiently, wishing that the end might come, yet ready to wait until it shall come in the appointed order of nature. Suffering, like everything else, becomes much more bearable with inurement to it. The old have learned the lesson of not only not looking for pleasure in life, but of being quite satisfied with their lot if no pain comes to them, and they even grow to consider that they have not much right to murmur if their pain is not too severe. It is not among those who have to suffer severe pain that one finds suicides as a rule. It is true that young, strong, healthy persons who suddenly find that pain is to be their lot for a prolonged period may grow so discouraged and moody over it as to take their lives. The patients that I have seen suffering from incurable diseases have expressed no desire at all that their life should be shortened, except during the paroxysms of their pain, unless they feel that they are a serious burden on others when they may express the wish to be no more.

Euthanasia.—Every now and then there is a discussion in the newspapers {724} of the justifiableness of euthanasia, that is, the giving of a pleasant death to those who are known to be incurably ill and who are doomed to suffer pain for most of what is left of their existence. The question usually discussed is whether patients have the right to shorten their own existence and then, also, whether their physician might have the right or, even as some people say, the duty, to lessen human suffering by abbreviating existence for such incurable cases. The discussion has always seemed to me beside the realities of things, because physicians do not see many patients, I might almost say any patients, who really want to shorten their lives or would want to have them shortened. I have known many physicians die of cancer, but very seldom is it that one tries to shorten his own existence, or that even his best friend in the profession would consider that he was justified in doing this for him. This, it seems to me, should be the test of the problem. It is true that not infrequently, in the midst of their paroxysms of pain, patients wish they were dead, but there come intervals of surcease from discomfort to some degree at least that make life quite livable for a time again and even occasionally there is real happiness in these intervals, deep, human, natural happiness in heroic forbearance and example.

We can recall AEsop's fable of the old man who, gathering wood for the fire in the winter that he needed so much, finds the burden of his labor and the wood too much for him and calls loudly for death to come to him. Promptly Death makes his appearance and asks what the old man wants. "Oh! nothing," is the reply; "only I would like you to help me to carry this bundle of sticks." This is the attitude of mind of practically all who have grown old in suffering. They have learned to bear with patience, and that patience gives even something of satisfaction. After all, it is not so often the pleasant things in life that we look back on and recall with most satisfaction as the difficulties and trials. Virgil said long ago, "Forsan et hoc olim meminisse juvabit"—perhaps at some future time we shall recall these, our trials and pains, with pleasure. It is the conquering of difficulty that means most for men and even the standing of pain is not without an aftermath, if not of pleasure, at least of broad human satisfaction. When we talk about euthanasia, then, it would be well to ask some of these old people whether they want it or not. Seldom will the answer be found to be that which is so often presumed, by those in good health and strength, to be inevitable under such conditions.

Physicians have all seen incurable cancer patients who were approaching their end inevitably and with the fatal termination not far off, have hours and days of alleviation of suffering and even of enjoyment that made up for the prolongation of life almost in the midst of constant agony. The distinguished New York surgeon who had the pleasure a few years ago of listening once more to his favorite singer and fairly seemed to get renewed life from the inspiration of her voice and who for days after had the pleasant consciousness of smooth running life in improvement so characteristic of convalescence, is a typical example of what may happen under such circumstances. I shall not soon forget Dr. Thomas Dunn English, the well-known author of "Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt," saying at an Alumni dinner of the University of Pennsylvania, that, like Bismarck, he used to think that all the joys of life's existence were in the first eighty years of life, but of late years he had found {725} that many of them were also in the second eighty years of life. He was at the time 83. He made the most joyous and happiest speech on that occasion. He was quite blind, was almost deaf, had been reported dying some months before, and had gone through prolonged suffering, yet he was by his cheeriness and whole-hearted gaiety on that occasion a joy and inspiration to all the younger men at the table.

Dread of Suicide.—There are patients who come to the physician worked up because they fear they may commit suicide. Every now and then the thought comes to them that some time or other they will perhaps throw themselves out of a window, or be tempted to drop in front of a passing train, or over the side of a steamboat, or impulsively take poison. Some nervous people become quite disturbed by these thoughts. Every physician is sure to have some patients who must be reassured, every now and then, that they are not likely to commit suicide. Their nervousness over the fear of this may serve to make them supremely miserable and it evidently becomes the doctor's duty to reassure them. It is not difficult to do this, as a rule, provided the physician will be absolutely confident and unhesitating in his declaration that there is no danger that they will commit suicide, since it has almost never been known that patients who dread it very much and, above all, those who dread it so much that they take others into their confidence in the matter, take their own lives. The very fact that the thought produces so much horror and disturbance in them is the best proof that they will not impulsively do anything irretrievable in this way.

Prof. Dubois has discussed this subject in his usual thoroughly practical way and his words serve as an authoritative confirmation of what has been already said, though as a matter of fact the expressions and experience of nearly every nervous specialist thoroughly justify the position here assumed. Besides, it must be realized that this confident assurance is the best possible prop that doubting patients can have with regard to the actions they dread, and by positive declarations the physician will accomplish more than in any other way.

There are patients who are subject to strange obsessions. They are afraid that they will throw themselves out of the door of a car, or climb over the parapet of a bridge. They are afraid that they will throw their relatives out of a window, or will wound somebody with a knife or a gun. There are some with a strong impulse to open their veins. But if there is a certain attraction in such things, it is really a phobia. It tends to make one shrink back and not to act.

Nothing quiets these patients like the frequently repeated statement that they will not do anything. It is necessary to show them the vast distance there is between the impulse toward suicide and murder and the phobia which, however distressing it may be, is a safeguard. One must keep at this education of the mind with imperturbable persistence and use the most forceful and convincing arguments that one can think of to correct the judgment of his patient, in order to make the strings of moral feeling and reason vibrate in unison.

It is through lack of courage and perseverance that we err in the treatment of these psychoneuroses. We wait too long to distinguish the morbid entities that bear on a certain etiology or a different prognosis. We do not see clearly enough the bond which unites these different affections.

It may seem to some physicians as though they would be assuming too much responsibility in giving patients such positive assurance that their dreads {726} will not be fulfilled, but as a matter of fact the experience of physicians is quite sufficient to justify the confident statements here suggested. It is true that occasionally a person who afterwards commits suicide talks the matter over and hints at the possibility of taking his own life. He does not, as a rule, speak of it with dread, however, but as one of the alluring solutions of his difficulties that he sees ahead of him. He is much more likely to write a letter to his physician telling him that all his arrangements are made and that by the time this letter reaches him he will be already dead. The prospective suicide is usually quite secretive about this purpose, not only to friends, lest he should be prevented from accomplishing it, but even with his physician, in whom he has had absolute confidence and to whom he has told practically everything else. The patients who fear the possibility of committing suicide, who tell how much they dread the horror of it, and who rush to consult the physician to help them against themselves, show by the very fact the unlikelihood of action on their part.

The Physician and Suicide.—By mental influence, then, the physician may lessen the tendency to suicide in the individual and in the community. To do this is to save suffering and to help in the solution of one of the most serious social problems in modern times. It can only be accomplished by a sympathetic attitude towards the whole subject and a tactful understanding of each individual case. Every effort in the matter, however, is well worth while, for there is no more hideous blot on our modern civilization than the startling increase of suicide. It is particularly important to bring about improvement in this regard among young suicides, and fortunately it is here that the influence of the physician for good is likely to be most felt. The saving of life is the noblest part of the mission of the physician and nowhere, perhaps, can this be accomplished more successfully than with regard to some of these patients whom a rash resolution, due to a momentary fit of depression and a sense of suffering exaggerated out of all proportion to their actual pain, is hurrying out of life.

CHAPTER IV

GRIEF

Grieving would seem at first glance to be one of the conditions for which the physician, especially if the etymology of the name of his profession be taken strictly, should not be called upon to minister, nor his remedies be expected to relieve. Grief is usually supposed to be due to moral ills and, therefore, at most to come under the care of the alienist, with the feeling that even he can accomplish very little for what is an affective rather than a true mental disorder. There is no doubt at all, however, that grieving, especially in the excess that shows it to be pathological, is always associated with certain physical and mental conditions for which the physician can accomplish much. Indeed more often than not the physical condition of the grief-stricken person is a prominent factor in the production of the state of feeling which causes grief to be exaggerated, while, on the other hand, this state of mind {727} itself reacts upon the physical being so as to make it more sluggish in all its functions, and as a consequence a vicious circle of cause and effect is formed affecting unfavorably both the mental and physical conditions. It is when patients are run down in health that grief becomes extremely difficult or apparently impossible to bear and grief itself still further brings about a deterioration of health that makes the mind's reactionary power against its gloomy feelings still weaker than they were.

Viewed in this way, grief is an ailment that should properly come to the physician for treatment and with regard to which that important principle is eminently true that the physician cannot always cure, but he can nearly always relieve, and he can always console his patients. On the one hand, an improvement in the general health always make grief easier to bear because it increases the resistive vitality of both mind and body. On the other, any diversion of mind that lifts the burden of grief even to some degree, releases new stimuli and physical powers for the restoration of bodily function to the normal and this brings about an immediate lessening of the depressive condition. In a word, for the vicious circle of unfavorable influences ever pushing the victim farther into depression, a virtuous circle, in the Latin sense of the word virtue, meaning courage, favoring strength, must be formed, that brings about an immediate improvement in the patient's mental and physical well-being. This is not a pretty bit of theory but is the result of the experience of every physician who has ever taken seriously the problems of caring for the grief-stricken.

Natural and Pathological Grief.—It is, of course, not easy to distinguish between grief that may be called morbid in the sense of a melancholy, that is, more than natural—a true mental disease—and that which represents only an affective state accompanied by depression from which there will be complete reaction. A mother loses a favorite, it may be an only son, and is plunged into grief. For days, even weeks, she refuses to take any interest in life, she thinks moodily about the awful affliction that has come to her and how blank the future is, and she cannot be aroused to attend either to her own affairs or to the duties of life around her. Such a grief is, in many cases, not more than the normal depression incident to such a loss. If after months, however, the mother still continues to refuse to take interest in life and the things around her, especially if, besides, she now talks of having been visited with this punishment because of some unpardonable sin in her own life, or because the Deity has been offended beyond all hope of propitiation, then the case verges over into one of true melancholy in which the mental depression is not merely a symptom of a passing condition, but partakes of the nature of a mental disease, or is the consequence of a profound neurotic condition.

It must not be forgotten that there is always the danger that exaggerated grief, as it seems for the moment to be, may be only the first symptom of a true melancholic condition. Only too often friends and physicians have been deceived by this. Some of the sad cases of self-destruction and a few cases of homicide and suicide have followed a condition that seemed to be only abnormal grief for the loss of a relative.

Etiology.—The cause of exaggerated, prolonged grief is, in a considerable proportion of the cases, a melancholic tendency, that is, a failure on the {728} part of the mind to react against depression. The weakness of mind that predisposes to this may be inherent or acquired. Sometimes no special loss is needed to produce melancholia in susceptible individuals, while occasionally it is precipitated by some misfortune, inasmuch as this is a mental disease, very little can be done directly, and yet the patient can be helped and diversion of mind may bring a good measure of relief. More often, however, the reason for persistent grieving is that before the disturbing loss came into the life of the individual there had been a serious deterioration in health. This was due to the conditions preceding the unfortunate event. Wives sometimes have worn themselves out physically and mentally while nursing husbands, or mothers their children, and this has produced a lack of physical force which prevents them from reacting with healthy mentality against the subsequent shock of loss.

Prophylaxis.—For the melancholic tendency prophylaxis cannot be special, but must be general. We cannot prevent people from suffering serious losses, but we can foresee the possibility of a loss proving very depressing, and can, therefore, try to keep the individual in reasonably good physical condition. If this is done the subsequent depression will be much less than it otherwise would be. Very often there is little or no recognition of the fact that there is a definite tendency in some patients to too great an inclination toward melancholic thoughts, and it is not until an exaggerated manifestation of it comes that the danger is realized. It is not easy to make patients realize the dangers, but where the physician talks with assurance and points out definite things to do in order to prevent serious developments, patients, or at least their friends, can be made to appreciate the dangers.

The best demonstration that I know of the value of work as a remedy for grief is my experience with members of religious orders. For them, as a rule, there is no interruption in life no matter what the loss may be. Their work goes on the day after the funeral just as before. This is the most precious possible arrangement, time and occupation of mind are the two factors that will dull the edge of grief and while humanly we may resent the consolation that is thus brought by such conventional things as the passage of time and humdrum occupations, they represent nature's resources. Above all, patients must be given something to do and if that something concerns other suffering human beings, there is every reason to expect relief.

Treatment.—The most important element in the treatment of grief cases is to prevent physical running down as far as possible and to build up the physical condition. Depression that comes to patients who have lost considerable weight, even though it may show some of the signs of melancholia, is always hopeful. Where patients are twenty or thirty pounds under weight the recovery of weight up to the normal condition will often mean the relief of their depressed condition. The one hope lies in this physical improvement. Mental treatment by diversion of mind must, of course, be practiced. This does not mean getting the patients interested once more in trivial things, but to be successful it means arousing the deeper feelings of their nature. Above all, the solace of tears will often save depressed and grieving persons from themselves. An interest in the sufferings of other people that awaken their sympathy will do the most to end exaggerated grieving over their own loss. The self-centeredness of their grief is the principal reason for its exaggeration. {729} It is because of overestimation of their own importance and of the importance of their loss that these people suffer severely.

Motives of Consolation.—The main resource of the physician who would employ psychotherapy for the treatment of those who are grieving beyond the limit of what is normal, is to supply motives by which they can understand the real significance of their loss. Very often, especially in young folks, there is no proper estimation of values in life and no recognition of the fact that human life was evidently not meant for happiness since that comes to but few, while suffering and partings are inevitable. They come to all, and apparently will always continue to do so. It is the young or, at least, those under middle age, who are most likely to be affected by exaggerated depression over losses and disappointments. Older folks have grown more accustomed to such incidents. These patients must be made to see how many motives there are to take their grief philosophically and while permitting themselves the luxury of sorrow, not to let this interfere either with their physical condition or their mental state to such a degree as to prevent them from taking the proper interest in their duties in life.

The ethical motives that may be urged to keep people from grieving over-much are many, but there is sometimes the feeling in the physician's mind that it is scarcely his business to emphasize them in any way. It is supposed that to the clergyman must be committed the task of consoling people for losses in life. This has always seemed to me a serious mistake. As physicians we know how much the mind influences the body and since it is our duty to care for the body, we must, above all and first of all, care for the mind as far as we can. Mens sana in corpore sano is a very old motto and is usually taken only in the sense that to have a healthy mind one must have a healthy body. In its Latin form, however, it might very well also be taken to mean that to have a healthy body one must have a healthy mind. Since grief has an untoward influence on the body, physicians are bound to learn what to do for it in any and every possible way and to exercise every faculty they have for its relief. This is all the more true because in recent years many persons have no regular religious attendant who would come to offer them consolation or to whom they would go in their trouble. It is not at all with the idea of infringing on the rights of the clergy or invading his territory that I would insist not only on the right of the medical man, but even his duty, to afford consolation to the mind as well as relief for the body.

The Family Physician.—In older times the family physician was a friend of the family to whom people turned in all troubles where he might possibly be of aid, with just as much confidence and as promptly as they did to their religious attendant. Unfortunately, in the progress of medicine, though still more because of the social vicissitudes that have taken place in recent years, this relationship of the family physician has been largely diminished, but that constitutes only one more reason why every physician, to whose attention the grief of a patient for any loss is presented as a cause of ill-health, should know all the means and be ready to employ them for the amelioration of the condition. As a matter of fact, there is often a feeling on the part of patients that it is more or less the business of the clergyman to afford consolation and that the performance of his duty in this matter is somewhat conventional, not {730} as if he performed it less thoroughly because of this, but as if the feeling of the routine practice detracted from its effectiveness. Some of the motives for consolation advanced by the clergyman, then, lose in significance, in some persons' minds at least, because of this feeling, while motives presented by the physician rather gain in weight because of the impression that he is a thoroughly practical man, deeply interested in life's problems from a common-sense standpoint, and who knows the motives for consolation because he has realized that losses are inevitable, suffering unavoidable, and grief sure to come, though somehow we must learn to bear up bravely under life as we find it.

Physicians have always done this in the past, but in more recent years either they have lost the habit, or have considered it unworthy of their profession, or else, perhaps, only too often they themselves have had no motives to offer that might seem sources of consolation for those in suffering and especially those who are grieved for the loss of friends. If life were a mere chance, if there were not an evident purpose in it, if, as Lord Kelvin insisted, science did not demonstrate (not "suggest" but "demonstrate" is the word he used) the existence of a Creator and a Providence, Who, while caring for the huge concerns of the universe, can just as well employ Himself with the little details of human life, then there would be some reason for physicians thinking that their science kept them from seeking consolation from the ordinary motives. Even if they occupy an advanced agnostic position, however, they may still find sources of consolation that, if not so effective as those attached to the old beliefs, at least will provide something for the forlorn to take hold of, that will mitigate their grief and sense of loss and make the present and the future look not all too blank.

Few men have been so thoroughly agnostic as Prof. Huxley, yet on the death of his wife he found that some of the thoughts of the old beliefs might prove a source of consolation. Huxley had loved his wife very dearly and their separation by death meant very much. The epitaph that he wrote for her sums up his doubts yet plucks out of them something to console, expressed in old Scriptural language:

Attitude Toward Death.—The ordinary attitude of people toward death is a very curious one. Death is the one absolutely certain thing in life after birth, yet most of us live our lives without much regard to it, and whenever it comes and under whatever circumstances, at whatever age, it is always a shock to us. No matter how old people are it always comes a little before it is expected. When death comes it is always a shock and all that can be said of it is what Hamlet resents when the commonplace consolations for the loss of his father, who also lost a father and so on all down the course of history, are offered to him. Perhaps, however, as much the reason for his resentment was the person who offered the consolation as the form of the consolation itself, which, after all, exhausts nearly all that we can say in this matter for grief for near and dear ones:

Death and Pain.—One of the most effective consolations in our day for all classes of people, quite apart from religious affiliations or beliefs, is the sociological import of death and suffering in the world. Life, without suffering and death in it, would be a riot of selfishness. Men, as a rule, would not care for others at all, the weak would go to the wall, the individuals who possess less efficiency than others would simply have to make out as best they could, and bad as social conditions are now, they would be intolerably worse. As it is the young and strong and vigorous have very little of true sympathy. Nothing makes a man feel for others like having gone through some suffering himself. On the other hand, nothing makes him feel the impotence of struggling ceaselessly for vain success and the futile rewards of life than to lose near and dear friends whose share in that success and joy over the rewards would constitute their only real value and justification. As a man grows older and has gone through some of the sufferings and has had to bear the losses of life, he learns more and more to feel for others, he is ready even to make sacrifices that others may not have to suffer as he has suffered, he has charity for them for the sake of his own suffering and that of near and dear ones, and things are much better than they could possibly be without suffering and death.

Therapy by Example.—Many men have taken losses so seriously as to think that life held no more for them, and have foolishly given up their occupations, yet have found that Time, the great healer, could work his marvels in their case as well as in most others and that new interests and, above all, their life work, could arouse them to a sense of duty and bring them back to the old routine of life. Dr. Mumford, in his "Sketch of Sir Astley Cooper," tells the story of how even that veteran surgeon gave up everything at the death of his wife and yet found, after a year of idleness, that he had to come back to the old life again. Dr. Mumford says: "Sir Astley Cooper was an emotional man. In 1827 his wife died, and the event prostrated him with grief. He felt that all the interests of life were over for him. He fell into an acute physical decline, sold his town house, threw up his practice and other professional employments, and retired to his country place to pass his last days. Within a year of the sad event he had returned to town, taken another house, resumed practice with increased vigor, and married again. He was then sixty years old, he lived on until 1841, and died in his seventy-fourth year."

A typical example of how much a strong man whose diplomatic ability had stamped him as one of the large men of his generation may yet be afflicted beyond measure by a loss of this kind is to be found in the life of the second Lord Lytton. I have told it somewhat in detail in the chapter on Periodic Depression. After the death of his boy Lord Lytton, who for more than a week of anguish had watched unceasingly at the death-bed of his dying son, came to the conclusion that God was not in His world or, at least, that the arm of Providence was shortened if such (as it seemed to him) needless suffering was permitted. The boy had probably suffered much less than the bystanders thought and much less than he seemed to, for in these cases nearly always there is a merciful deadening of the senses that to a great extent eliminates suffering, but Lord Lytton could not understand and refused ever to look at life from the same standpoint afterwards. This is, of course, only what happens in many cases, but it represents an exaggeration of grief since death and suffering have always been in the world and sometimes they will come to those near and dear to us, much as we may resent it.

Neither profound intelligence nor the sympathetic genius of the poet or artist is sufficient to safeguard men against the severer forms of griefs for loss. Louis, the distinguished French physician (to whom we in America are indebted so much as the Master of the Boston and Philadelphia schools of diagnosis, and, above all, for his teaching of the differentiation between typhoid and typhus fever), suffered so much from the loss of his son that he could scarcely be consoled. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was so much affected by the death of his wife that he put into her coffin the only manuscript copy of his poems that he possessed. It is interesting to learn that some years later he had the coffin exhumed and took out his manuscript at the urging of friends, and published the poems. Many other examples of this kind might be given, for exaggeration of grief affects all classes and conditions in life. They are practically always pathological, usually on a basis of somewhat disturbed mentality, though often the real underlying and predisposing condition is the physical exhaustion that has preceded the loss and which makes patients unable to bear the strain of it after weeks of care, solicitude, anxiety and neglect of eating and sleep.

CHAPTER V

DOUBTING

In recent years the attention of physicians has been called to the fact that many people are made profoundly miserable by an unconquerable tendency to doubt about nearly everything that has happened to them, or is happening, or is about to happen. This is not a new phenomenon, but introspection has emphasized it, leisure gives more opportunity for it, and so physicians hear more of it now than they did in the past. This doubting tendency sometimes makes serious inroads on the peace of mind of sufferers from it because they cannot make up their minds to do things, even to take exercise, to eat as {733} they should in quantity or quality, and to share the ordinary life around them sufficiently to get such diversion of mind as will keep their physical functions normal. The state used to be described as a neurasthenia (nervous weakness), but in recent years has come better to be designated as in the class of psychasthenias (lack of mental energy). It is always a mental trouble in the sense that it is difficult for these patients to make up their minds about things, yet it is not a mental disease in the ordinary sense of the term, and these people are often eminently sane and thoroughly intellectual when their attention has been once profoundly attracted. They may even, under favorable circumstances, be active and useful helpers in great causes, yet there is always to be observed in them a certain noteworthy difference in mentality from the normal. The physician can do more for an affection of this kind than is usually thought, and he is probably the only one who can thoroughly appreciate and sympathize and, therefore, be helpful in the condition.

Sufferers are often laughed at by their friends and relatives and are likely to be the subjects of at least a little ridicule if they take their troubles to their physician. As a matter of fact, however, doubting is a typical case for psychotherapeutics and not only can much be done for its relief, but it can be kept from disturbing the general health, which it is prone to do if neglected, and by mental discipline and acquired habits of self-control, the doubting habit may be almost completely eradicated.