I am aware, of course, that the opposite of the proposition is equally
true. A man cannot enjoy much mental health while he has a sick body. It
is a good deal like the old question, Which comes first, the hen or the
egg? The mind and the body are bound up together, and you may try to
deal with each by turn, but always you find yourself having to deal with
both. Most physicians have a tendency to overlook the mind, and
Christian Scientists make a religion of overlooking the body, and each
pays the penalty in greatly reduced effectiveness.
My first criticism of medical science, as it exists today, is that it
has a tendency to concentrate upon organs and functions, and to overlook
the central unity of the system. You will find a doctor who specializes
in the stomach and its diseases, and is apt to talk as if the stomach
were a thing that went around in the world all by itself. He will
discuss the question of what goes into your stomach, and overlook to
point out to you that your stomach is nourished by your blood-stream,
which is controlled by your nervous system, which in turn is controlled
by hope, by ambition, by love, by all the spiritual elements of your
being. A single pulse of anger or of fear may make more trouble with the
contents of your stomach than the doctor's pepsins and digestive
ferments can remedy in a week.
Of course, you may do yourself some purely local injury, and so for a
time have a purely local problem. You may smash your finger, and that is
a problem of a finger; but neglect it for a few days, and let blood
poison set in, and you will be made aware that the human body is one
organism, and also that, in spite of any metaphysical theories you may
hold, your body does sometimes dominate and control your mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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