Produced by Peter Vachuska, Dave Morgan, Laura Wisewell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE UNTROUBLED MIND BY HERBERT J. HALL, M.D. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HERBERT J. HALL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published May 1915_ PREFACE A very wise physician has said that "every illness has two parts--what it is, and what the patient thinks about it." What the patient thinks about it is often more important and more troublesome than the real disease. What the patient thinks of life, what life means to him is also of great importance and may be the bar that shuts out all real health and happiness. The following pages are devoted to certain ideals of life which I would like to give to my patients, the long-time patients who have especially fallen to my lot. They are not all here, the steps to health and happiness. The reader may even be annoyed and baffled by my indirectness and unwillingness to be specific. That I cannot help--it is a personal peculiarity; I cannot ask any one to live by rule, because I do not believe that rules are binding and final. There must be character behind the rule and then the rule is unnecessary. All that I have written has doubtless been presented before, in better ways, by wiser men, but I believe that each writer may expect to find his small public, his own particular public who can understand and profit by his teachings, having partly or wholly failed with the others. For that reason I am encouraged to write upon a subject usually shunned by medical men, being assured of at least a small company of friendly readers. I am grateful to a number of friends and patients who have read the manuscript of the following chapters. These reviewers have been frank and kind and very helpful. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Richard C. Cabot, who has given me much valuable assistance. CONTENTS I. THE UNTROUBLED MIND 1 II. RELIGIO MEDICI 10 III. THOUGHT AND WORK 20 IV. IDLENESS 30 V. RULES OF THE GAME 38 VI. THE NERVOUS TEMPERAMENT 50 VII. SELF-CONTROL 59 VIII. THE LIGHTER TOUCH 65 IX. REGRETS AND FOREBODINGS 73 X. THE VIRTUES 81 XI. THE CURE BY FAITH 88 I THE UNTROUBLED MIND Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart? MACBETH.