CHAPTER LIII THE POWER OF SUGGESTION

When plate-glass windows first came into use, Rogers, the poet, took a severe cold by sitting with his back to what he supposed was an open window in a dining-room but which was really plate-glass. All the time he was eating he imagined he was taking cold, but he did not dare ask to have the window closed.

We little realize how much suggestion has to do with health. In innumerable instances people have been made seriously ill, sometimes fatally so, by others telling them how badly they looked, or suggesting that they had inherited some fatal disease.

A prominent New York business man recently told me of an experiment which the friends of a robust young man made upon him. It was arranged that, beginning in the morning, each one should tell him, when he came to work, that he was not looking well, and ask him what the trouble was. They were to say it in a way that would not arouse his suspicions, and note the result. At one o'clock this vigorous young man had been so influenced by the suggestion that he quit work and went home, saying that he was sick.

There have been many interesting experiments in the Paris hospitals upon patients in a hypnotic trance, wounds being inflicted by mental suggestion. While a cold poker was laid across their limbs, for example, the subjects were told that they were being seared with a red-hot iron, and immediately the flesh would have the appearance of being severely burned.

I have known patients to collapse completely at the sight of surgical instruments in the operating room. I have heard them say that they could actually feel the cutting of the knife long before they took the anesthetic.

Patients are often put to sleep by the injection into their arms of a weak solution of salt and water, which they are led to think is morphia. Every physician of large experience knows that he can relieve or produce pain simply by suggestion. Many a physician sends patients to some famous resort not so much for the waters or the air as for the miracle which the complete change of thought effects.

Even quacks and charlatans are able, by stimulating the hope of those who are sick, to produce marvelous cures. The mental attitude of the nurse has much to do with the recovery of a sick person. If she holds the constant suggestion that the patient will recover; if she stoutly affirms it, it will be a wonderful rallying help to the forces which make for life. If, on the other hand, she holds the conviction that he is going to die, she will communicate her belief, and this will consequently depress the patient.

We are under the influence of suggestion every moment of our waking lives. Everything we see, hear, feel, is a suggestion which produces a result corresponding to its own nature. Its subtle power seems to reach and affect the very springs of life.

The power of suggestion on expectant minds is often little less than miraculous. An invalid with a disappointed ambition, who thinks he has been robbed of his chances in life and who has suffered for years, becomes all wrought up over some new remedy which is advertised to do marvels.

He is in such an expectant state of mind that he is willing to make almost any sacrifice to obtain the wonderful remedy; and when he receives it, he is in such a receptive mood that he responds quickly, and thinks it is the medicine which has worked the magic.

Faith in one's physician is a powerful curative suggestion. Many patients, especially those who are ignorant, believe that the physician holds the keys of life and death. They have such implicit confidence in him that what he tells them has powerful influence upon them for good or ill. The possibilities of healing power in the affirmative suggestion that the patient is going to get well are tremendous. The coming physician will constantly reassure his patient verbally, often vehemently, that he is absolutely bound to recover; he will tell him that there is an omnipotent healing power within him, and that he gets a hint of this in the power which heals a wound, and which refreshes, renews, and recreates him during sleep.

It is almost impossible for a patient to get well while people are constantly reminding him how ill he looks. His will-power together with all his physical recuperative forces could not counteract the effect of the reiteration of the sick suggestion. Many a sick-room is made a chamber of horrors because of the depressing suggestion which pervades it. Instead of being filled with sunshine, good cheer, and encouragement, it is often darkened, God's beautiful sunshine shut out; ventilation is poor; everybody has a sad, anxious face; medicine bottles and surgical apparatus are spread about; everything is calculated to engender disease rather than to encourage health and inspire hope. Why, there is enough depressing suggestion in such a place to make a perfectly well person ill

What people need is encouragement, uplift, hope. Their natural resisting powers should be strengthened and developed.

Instead of telling a friend in trouble, despair, or suffering that you feel very sorry for him, try to pull him out of his slough of despond, to arouse the latent recuperative, restorative energies within him. Picture to him his God image, his better self, which, because it is a part of the great immortal principle, is never sick and never out of harmony, can never be discordant or suffer.

Right suggestion would prevent a great majority of our divorces. Great infatuation for another has been overcome by suggestion in numerous instances. Many women have been thus cured of a foolish love for impossible men, as in the case of girls who have become completely infatuated with the husband of a friend. Fallen women have been entirely reclaimed, have been brought to see their better, finer, diviner selves through the power of suggestion.

The suggestion which comes from a sweet, beautiful, charming character is contagious and sometimes revolutionizes a whole neighborhood. We all know how the suggestion of heroic deeds, great records, has aroused the ambitions and stirred the energies of others to do likewise. Many a life has turned upon a few moments' conversation, upon a little encouragement, upon the suggestion of an inspiring book.

Many men who have made their impress upon history, who have left civilization a little higher, accomplished what they did largely because their ambition was aroused by suggestion; some book or some individual gave them the first glimpse of their possibility and enabled them to feel for the first time a thrill of the power within them.

The suggestion of inferiority is one of the most difficult to overcome. Who can ever estimate the damage to humanity and the lives wrecked through it! I know men whose whole careers have been practically ruined through the constant suggestion, while they were children, that they would never amount to anything.

This suggestion of inferiority has made them so timid and shy and so uncertain of themselves that they have never been able to assert their individuality.

I knew a college student whose rank in his class entitled him to the highest recognition, whose life was nearly ruined by suggestion; he overheard some of his classmates say that he had no more dignity than a goose, and always made a very poor appearance; that under no circumstances would they think of electing him as class orator, because he would make such an unfortunate impression upon an audience. He had unusual ability, but his extreme diffidence, timidity, shyness, made him appear awkward and sometimes almost foolish, all of which he would undoubtedly have overgrown, had he not overheard the criticism of his classmates. He thought it meant that he was mentally inferior, and this belief kept him back ever after.

What a subtle power there is in the suggestion of the human voice! What emotions are aroused in us by its different modulations! How we laugh and cry, become indignant, revengeful, our feelings leaping from one extreme to the other, according to the passion-freighted or love-freighted words which reach our ear; how we sit spell-bound, with bated breath, before the great orator who is playing upon the emotions of his audience, as a musician plays upon the strings of his harp, now bringing out tears, now smiles, now pathos, now indignation! The power of his word-painting makes a wonderful impression. A thousand listeners respond to whatever he suggests. The voice is a great betrayer of our feelings and emotions.

It is tender when conveying love to our friends; cold, selfish, and without a particle of sympathy during business transactions when we are trying to get the best of a bargain. How we are attracted by a gentle voice, and repulsed by one that is harsh! We all know how susceptible even dogs and horses are to the different modulations of the human voice. They know the tone of affection; they are reassured and respond to it. But they are stricken with fear and trembling at the profanity of the master's rage.

Some natures are powerfully affected by certain musical strains; they are immediately lifted out of the deepest depression and despondency into ecstasy. Nothing has touched them; they have just merely felt a sensation through the auditory nerve which aroused and awakened into activity certain brain cells and changed their whole mental attitude. Music has a decided influence upon the blood pressure in the arteries, and upon the respiration. We all know how it soothes, refreshes, and rests us when jaded and worried. When its sweet harmonies fill the soul, all cares, worries, and anxieties fly away.

George Eliot, in " The Mill on the Floss," gives voice to what some of us have often, doubtless, felt, when under its magic spell. " Certain strains of music," she says, " affect me so strangely that I can never hear them without changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroism." Latimer, Ridley, and hundreds of others went to the stake actually rejoicing, the spectators wondering at the smile of ineffable peace which illumined their faces above the fierce glare of the flames, at the hymns of praise and thanksgiving heard amid the roar of crackling fagots.

" No, we don't get sick," said an actor, " because we can't get sick. Patti and a few other stars could afford that luxury, but to the majority of us it is denied.

It is a case of `must' with us; and although there have been times when, had I been at home, or a private man, I could have taken to my bed with as good a right to be sick as any one ever had, I have not done so, and have worn off the attack through sheer necessity. It's no fiction that will power is the best of tonics, and theatrical people understand that they must keep a good stock of it always on hand.

A tight-rope walker was so ill with lumbago that he could scarcely move. But when he was advertised to appear, he summoned all his will power, and traversed the rope several times with a wheelbarrow, according to the program. When through he doubled up and had to be carried to his bed, "as stiff as a frozen frog."

Somewhere I have read a story of a poor fellow who went to hang himself, but finding by chance a pot of money, he flung away the rope and went hurriedly home. He who hid the gold, when he missed it, hanged himself with the rope which the other man had left. Success is a great tonic, and failure a great depressant.

The successful attainment of what the heart longs for, as a rule, improves health and happiness. Generally we not only find our treasure where our heart is, but our health also. Who has not noticed men of indifferent health, perhaps even invalids, and men who lacked energy and determination, suddenly become roused to a realization of unthought-of powers and unexpected health upon attaining some signal success? The same is sometimes true of persons in poor health who have suddenly been thrown into responsible positions by death of parents or relatives, or who, upon sudden loss of property, have been forced to do what they had thought impossible before.

An education is a health tonic. Delicate boys and girls, whom parents and friends thought entirely too slender to bear the strain, often improve in health in school and college. Other things equal, intelligent, cultured, educated people enjoy the best health. There is for the same reason a very intimate relation between health and morals. A house divided against itself can not stand. Intemperance, violation of chastity, and vice of all kinds are discordant notes in the human economy which tend to destroy the great harmony of life. The body is but a servant of the mind. A well-balanced, cultured, and well-disciplined intellect reacts very powerfully upon the physique, and tends to bring it into harmony with itself. On the other hand, a weak, vacillating, one sided, unsteady, and ignorant mind will ultimately bring the body into sympathy with it. Every pure and uplifting thought, every noble aspiration for the good and the true, every longing of the heart for a higher and better life, every lofty purpose and unselfish endeavor, reacts upon the body, makes it stronger, more harmonious, and more beautiful.

" As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The body is molded and fashioned by the thought. If a young woman were to try to make herself beautiful, she would not begin by contemplating ugliness, or dwelling upon the monstrosities of vice, for their hideous images would be reproduced in her own face and manners. Nor would she try to make herself graceful by practising awkwardness. We can never gain health by contemplating disease any more than we can reach perfection by dwelling upon imperfection, or harmony through discord.

We should keep a high ideal of health and harmony constantly before the mind; and we should fight every discordant thought and every enemy of harmony as we would fight a temptation to crime.

Never affirm or repeat about your health what you do not wish to be true. Do not dwell upon your ailments nor study your symptoms. Never allow yourself to think that you are not complete master of yourself. Stoutly affirm your own superiority over bodily ills, and do not acknowledge yourself the slave of an inferior power.

The mind has undoubted power to preserve and sustain physical youth and beauty, to keep the body strong and healthy, to renew life, and to preserve it from decay, many years longer than it does now. The longest lived men and women have, as a rule, been those who have attained great mental and moral development. They have lived in the upper region of a higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the ' friction, and the discords which weaken and shatter most lives.

Many nervous diseases have been cured by music, while others have been greatly retarded in their development by it. Anything which keeps the mind off our troubles tends to restore harmony throughout the body. It is a great thing to form a habit, acquire a reputation, of always talking up and never down, of seeing good things and never bad, of encouraging and never discouraging, and of always being optimistic about everything.

" Send forth loving, stainless, and happy thoughts, and blessings will flow into your hands; send forth hateful, impure, and unhappy thoughts, and curses will rain down upon you and fear and unrest will wait upon your pillow."

There is no one principle that is abused today in the business world more than the law of suggestion. Everywhere in this country we see the pathetic victims of those who make a business of overpowering and controlling weaker minds.

Thus is suggestion carried even to the point of hypnotism as is illustrated by unscrupulous salesmen and promoters.

If a person steals the property of another he is imprisoned, but if he hypnotizes his victim by projecting his own strong trained thought into the innocent, untrained, unsuspecting victim's mind, overcomes his objections, and induces him voluntarily to buy the thing he does not want and can not afford to buy, perhaps impoverishing himself for years so that he and his family suffer for the necessities of life, no law can stop him. It would be better and should be considered less criminal for a man to go into a home and steal articles of value than to overpower the minds of the heads of poor families and hypnotize them into signing contracts for what they have really no right and are not able to buy.

Solicitors often command big salaries because of their wonderful personal magnetism and great powers of persuasion. The time will come when many of these " marvelous persuaders," with long heads cunningly trained, traveling about the country, hypnotizing their subjects and robbing them of their hard earned money, will be regarded as criminals.

On the other hand, suggestion is used for practical good in business life. It is now a common practise in many concerns to put in the hands of their employees inspiring books and to republish in pamphlet form special articles from magazines and periodicals which are calculated to stir the employees to new endeavor, to arouse them to greater action and make them more ambitious to do bigger things. Schools of salesmanship are using very extensively the psychology of business and are giving all sorts of illustrations which will spur men to greater efficiency.

The up-to-date merchant shows his knowledge of the power of suggestion for customers by his fascinating show-windows and display of merchandise. The restaurant keeper knows the power of suggestion of delicious viands upon the appetite, and we often see tempting dishes and articles of food displayed in the window or in the restaurant where the eye will carry the magic suggestion to the brain.

A person who has been reared in luxury and refinement would be so affected by the suggestion of uncleanliness and disorderliness in a cheap Bowery eating place that he would lose the keenest appetite. If, however, the same food, cooked in the same way, could be transferred to one of the luxurious Broadway restaurants and served upon delicate china and spotless linen with entrancing music, the entire condition would be reversed. The new suggestion would completely reverse the mental and physical conditions.

The suggestion of the ugly suspicions of a whole nation so overpowered Dreyfus during his trial that it completely neutralized his individuality, overbalanced his consciousness of innocence. His whole manner was that of a guilty person, so that many of his friends actually believed him guilty. After the verdict, in the presence of a vast throng which had gathered to see him publicly disgraced, when his buttons and other insignia of office were torn from his uniform, his sword taken from him and broken, and the people were hissing, jeering, and hurling all sorts of anathemas at him, no criminal could have exhibited more evidence of guilt. The radiations of the guilty suggestion from millions of people completely overpowered his own mentality, his individuality, and, although he was absolutely innocent, his appearance and manner gave every evidence of the treason he was accused of.

There is no suggestion so fatal, so insinuating, as that of impurity. Vast multitudes of people have fallen victims to this vicious, subtle, fatal poison. Who can depict the tragedies which have been caused by immoral, impure suggestion conveyed to minds which were absolutely pure, which have never before felt the taint of contamination? The subtle poisoning infused through the system makes the entrance of the succeeding vicious suggestions easier and easier, until finally the whole moral system becomes saturated, with the poison.

There is a wonderful illustration of the power of suggestion in the experience of what are called the Stigmatists. These nuns who for years concentrated all of their efforts in trying to live the life that Christ did, to enter into all of His sufferings, so completely concentrated all of their energies upon the Christ suffering, and so vividly pictured the wounds in their imaginations, that their thought really changed the chemical and physical structure of the tissues and they actually reproduced the nail marks in the hands and feet and the spear wound as in the side of the crucified Christ.

These nuns devoted their lives to this reproduction of the physical evidences of the crucifixion. The fixing of the mind for a long period of time upon the wounds of the hands, feet, and the side, were so vivid, so concentrated, that the picture was made real in their own flesh. In addition to the mental picturing, they kept constantly before them the physical picture of the crucified Christ, which made their mental picture all the more vivid and concentrated. The religious ecstasy was so intense that they could actually see Christ being crucified, and this mental attitude was out -pictured in the flesh.

This monster dogs us from the cradle to the grave. There is no occasion so sacred but it is there. Unbidden it comes to the wedding and the funeral alike. It is at every reception, every banquet; it occupies a seat at every table. No human intellect can estimate the unutterable havoc and ruin wrought by worry. It has ever forced genius to do the work of mediocrity; it has caused more failures, more broken hearts, more blasted hopes, than any other one cause since the dawn of the world.

Did you ever hear o f any good coming to any human being from worry? Did it ever help anybody to better his condition? Does it not always-everywhere-do just the opposite by impairing the health, exhausting the vitality, lessening efficiency? What have not men done under the pressure of worry! They have plunged into all sorts of vice; have become drunkards, drug fiends; have sold their very souls in their efforts to escape this monster.

Think of the homes which it has broken up; the ambitions it has ruined; the hopes and prospects it has blighted! Think of the suicide victims of this demon! If there is any devil in existence, is it not worry, with all its attendant progeny of evils?

Yet, in spite of all the tragic evils that follow in its wake, a visitor from another world would get the impression that worry is one of our dearest, most helpful friends, so closely do we hug it to ourselves and so loath are we to part from it.