ss of some great excitement or some intense
desire for pleasures incompatible with invalidism. Many a physician of
reputation owes his success in great part to the discriminating use of
the _placebo_,--a bread pill designed to supplant the patient's fear
with confidence. Hypnotism and "suggestion" have been successfully used
to cure alcoholism and to fill patients' minds with conviction stronger
than the fear that produced the sickness. A well-known writer and
preacher cures insomnia by auto-suggestion, telling himself he is
sleepy, is very sleepy, is going to sleep, is almost asleep, is fast
asleep. Treatment by osteopathy has been followed by disappearance of
diseases that cannot possibly be cured by osteopathy. Christian Science
has restored to health and happy usefulness hundreds of thousands of
chronic invalids. Verily is hygiene of the mind an important factor in
the civics of health.

Fear can originate with mind. Fear produces fear. Fear disarranges
circulation of the blood and the nourishment of muscle and nerve. Fear
can produce many bodily disorders which in turn feed fear. Fear cannot
last unless bodily symptoms exist or arise to justify and feed it. Fear
can be cured and removed in two ways: (1) by driving away fear and
releasing bodily disorders from its thraldom; (2) by removing the
disorders and making fear impossible to the logical mind. An enforced
sea voyage begins with the disorder; a clever, buoyant physician begins
with the fear. Patent-medicine proprietors, quacks, and fakes of every
kind begin by displacing the fear with hope or cheer; the physical
disorders frequently vanish by the same window as fear. For _fear_
write _self-pity_, _morbid self-consciousness_, _hypertrophied
submission_; to _hope_ and _cheer_ add _smile_, _relaxation_, and
_zest_; and we have the chief elements of mental hygiene and the reason
why intelligent as well as unintelligent men like to be swindled by
medical or other quacks.

The social aspects of mental hygiene are particularly important. Once
admitting the power of the mind to decrease vitality, we recognize the
duty of seeming happy, buoyant, cheerful, vital, at least when with
others, for the sake of others' minds and bodies. Secondly, we find the
duty to refrain from commenting on others' appearance in a way that
will start "ingrowing thoughts." A "grouchy" foreman can give blues and
indigestion to a roomful of factory girls. A self-pitying teacher can
check the