Then there are the naturopaths, physicultopaths, gymnastopaths, hygienists, raw food advocates, and a thousand and one other notionists, who give advice as to what, when, and how you shall eat.  Horace Fletcher insists that food be chewed until it is liquid; another authority says, “Bosh!” to this and asks you to look at the dog who bolts his meat and is still healthy, vigorous and strong.  The raw food advocate assures you that the only good food is uncooked, and that you take out this, that, and the other by cooking, all of which are essential to the welfare of the body.  Between these natural authorities and the medical authorities, there is a great deal of warfare going on all the time, and the layman knows not wherein true safety lies.  Is it any wonder that he is worried.

Many members of the medical profession and the drug-stores have themselves to thank for this state of perpetual worriment and mental unrest.  They inculcated, nurtured, and fostered a colossal ignorance in regard to the needs of the body, and a tremendous dread and blind fear of everything that seems the slightest degree removed from the everyday normal.  They have persistently taught those who rely upon them that the only safe and wise procedure is to rush immediately to a physician upon the first sign of anything even slightly out of the ordinary.  Then, with wise looks, mysterious words, strange symbols, and loathsome decoctions, they have sent their victims home to imagine that some marvelous wonder work will follow the swallowing of their abominable mixtures instead of frankly and honestly telling their consultants that their fever was caused by overeating, by too late hours, by dancing in an ill-ventilated room, by too great application to business, by too many cocktails, or too much tobacco smoking.

The results are many and disastrous.  People become confirmed “worriers” about their health.  On the slightest suspicion of an ache or a pain, they rush to the doctor or the drug-store for a prescription, a dose, a powder, a potion, or a pill.  The telephone is kept in constant operation about trivialities, and every month a bill of greater or lesser extent has to be paid.

While I do not wish to deprecate the calling in of a physician in any serious case, by those who deem it advisable, I do condemn as absurd, unnecessary, and foolish in the highest degree, this perpetual worry about trivial symptoms of health.  Every truthful physician will frankly tell you—­if you ask him—­that worrying is often the worst part of the trouble; in other words, that if you never did a thing in these cases that distress you, but would quit your worrying, the discomfort would generally disappear of its own accord.

One result of this kind of worry is that it genders a nervousness that unnecessarily calls up to the mind pictures of a large variety of possible dangers.  Who has not met with this nervous species of worrier?