etimes tend to develop insanity. Sick
thoughts and discordant moods are the natural atmosphere of disease,
and crime is engendered and thrives in the miasma of the mind."

From all this we get the great fact we are scientifically demonstrating
today,--that the various mental states, emotions, and passions have
their various peculiar effects upon the body, and each induces in turn,
if indulged in to any great extent, its own peculiar forms of disease,
and these in time become chronic.

Just a word or two in regard to their mode of operation. If a person
is dominated for a moment by, say a passion of anger, there is set up
in the physical organism what we might justly term a bodily
thunder-storm, which has the effect of souring, or rather of corroding,
the normal, healthy, and life-giving secretions of the body, so that
instead of performing their natural functions they become poisonous and
destructive. And if this goes on to any great extent, by virtue of
their cumulative influences, they give rise to a particular form of
disease, which in turn becomes chronic. So the emotion opposite to
this, that of kindliness, love, benevolence, good-will, tends to
stimulate a healthy, purifying, and life-giving flow of all the bodily
secretions. All the channels of the body seem free and open; the life
forces go bounding through them. And these very forces, set into a
bounding activity, will in time counteract the poisonous and
disease-giving effects of their opposites.

A physician goes to see a patient. He gives no medicine this morning.
Yet the very fact of his going makes the patient better. He has
carried with him the spirit of health; he has carried brightness of
tone and disposition; he has carried hope into the sick chamber; he has
left it there. In fact, the very hope and good cheer he has carried
with him has taken hold of and has had a subtle but powerful influence
upon the mind of the patient; and this mental condition imparted by the
physician has in turn its effects upon the patient's body, and so
through the instrumentality of this mental suggestion the healing goes
on.

"Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene
Supports the mind, supports the body, too.
Hence the most vital movement mortals feel
Is _hope_; the balm and life-blood of the soul."

We sometimes hear a person in weak health say to another, "I always
feel better when you come." There is a deep scientific reason
underlying the stat