Unfavorable Suggestion in Ancient Times.--This unfavorable influence of the mind on the body, even to the extent of the production of disease by means of suggestion, was recognized by the ancients. They knew and wrote of hypochondriasis and, indeed, they invented the term. In many of these cases the seat of auto-suggestion is supposed to be the digestive organs and the localization of the discomfort is in the hypochondria, that is, in the upper abdominal region. The Grecian writers seemed to recognize clearly that the symptoms were the result of thinking over much about self and concentration of attention upon unfavorable suggestions. Plato, in the "Republic," says: In former days the guild of Asclepius did not practice our present system of medicine, which may be said, he declares, to educate diseases. He cites the example of Herodicus who, "being a trainer (of gymnasts) and himself of a sickly constitution, by a happy combination of training and doctoring, came to the invention of lingering death; for he had a mortal disease, which he perpetually tended, and, as recovery was out of question, he passed his entire life as a valetudinarian." Plato, finishing the description, makes us recognize the hypochondriac when he says: "He could do nothing but attend upon himself, and he was in constant torment whenever he departed in anything from his usual regimen, and so dying hard, by the help of science he struggled on to old age." The picture of the neurasthenic, or hypochondriac, who has educated himself, as Plato says, into disease, is an interesting parallel to modern conditions in this matter. Nowhere more than in this matter of knowledge of disease, can weight {95} be attached to Pope's dictum that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that one must drink deep or touch not the Pierian Spring of medical information. The teaching of pathology under the guise of physiology, now so common in our schools, is likely to do more harm than good. Various pathological conditions, such as those produced by alcohol and tobacco, have been emphasized to such an extent as to produce unfavorable suggestions in the pupils' minds with regard to the untoward events that may happen in their insides, and the serious lasting pathological changes that may occur, though all unconsciously, to the sufferer as the result of indiscretions. The study of the morbid changes produced in the mucous membranes of the digestive tract by the use of stimulants, impresses ideas on the mind that are readily transferred to other abuses in eating or drinking. The rather vivid pictures and descriptions of the pathological conditions that may develop, become a portion of the acquired consciousness as to internal conditions, and this consciousness acts as an unfavorable suggestive factor whenever there are any digestive symptoms.