en to twenty per cent of the illnesses presenting
themselves were without substantial physical basis and largely imaginary
in character, when they came actually to cudgel their memories for
well-marked cases and to consult their records, they discovered that
their memories had been playing the same sort of tricks with them that
the dramatists and novelists had with popular impressions.

Within the past few months one of the leading neurologists of New York,
a man whose practice is confined exclusively to mental and nervous
diseases, stated in a public address that purely or even chiefly
imaginary diseases were among the rarer conditions that the physician
was called upon to treat. Shortly after, two of the leading neurologists
of Philadelphia, one of them a man of international reputation,
practically repeated this statement; and they put themselves on record
to the effect that the vast majority of those who imagined themselves to
be ill were ill, though often not to the degree or in precisely the
manner that they imagined themselves to be.

Obviously, then, this possible realm of suffering in which the mind can
operate is very much more limited than was at one time believed. In
fact, imaginary diseases might be swept out of existence, and humanity
would scarcely know the difference, so little would the total sum of its
suffering be reduced.

Another field in which there has been much general misunderstanding and
looseness of both thought and statement, which has again led to
exaggerated ideas of the direct influence of the mind over the body, is
the well-known effect of emotional states, such as fright or anger, upon
the ordinary processes of the body. Instances of this relation are, of
course, household words,--the man whose "hair turned white in a single
night" from grief or terror; the nursing mother who flew into a furious
fit of passion and whose child was promptly seized with convulsions and
died the next time it was put to the breast; the father who is
prostrated by the death or disgrace of a favorite son, and dies within a
few weeks of a broken heart. The first thing that is revealed by even a
brief study of this subject is that these instances are exceedingly
rare, and owe their familiarity in our minds to their striking and
dramatic character and the excellent "material" which they make for the
dramatist and the gossip. It is even difficult to secure clear and valid
proof of the actual occurrence of that su