Part One In A Nutshell 3 страница

relief to hear all this after I had tormented myself for three days and nights wondering

whether I should hand over five thousand dollars to this professional swindler!

" This experience taught me a lasting lesson. Now, whenever I face a pressing problem

that threatens to worry me, I give it what I call 'the old Willis H. Carrier formula'. "

At just about the same time Willis H. Carrier was worrying over the gas-cleaning

equipment he was installing in a plant in Crystal City, Missouri, a chap from Broken Bow,

Nebraska, was making out his will. His name was Earl P. Haney, and he had duodenal

ulcers. Three doctors, including a celebrated ulcer specialist, had pronounced Mr.

Haney an " incurable case". They had told him not to eat this or that, and not to worry or

fret-to keep perfectly calm. They also told him to make out his will!

These ulcers had already forced Earl P. Haney to give up a fine and highly paid position.

So now he had nothing to do, nothing to look forward to except a lingering death.

Then he made a decision: a rare and superb decision. " Since I have only a little while to

live, " he said, " I may as well make the most of it. I have always wanted to travel around

the world before I die. If I am ever going to do it, I'll have to do it now. " So he bought

his ticket.

The doctors were appalled. " We must warn you, " they said to Mr. Haney, " that if you do

take this trip, you will be buried at sea. "

" No, I won't, " he replied. " I have promised my relatives that I will be buried in the family

plot at Broken Bow, Nebraska. So I am going to buy a casket and take it with me. "

He purchased a casket, put it aboard ship, and then made arrangements with the

steamship company-in the event of his death-to put his corpse in a freezing

compartment and keep it there till the liner returned home. He set out on his trip,

imbued with the spirit of old Omar:

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend;

Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and-sans End!

However, he didn't make the trip " sans wine". " I drank highballs, and smoked long cigars

on that trip, " Mr. Haney says in a letter that I have before me now. " I ate all kinds of

foods-even strange native foods which were guaranteed to kill me. I enjoyed myself

more than I had in years! We ran into monsoons and typhoons which should have put me

in my casket, if only from fright-but I got an enormous kick out of all this adventure.

" I played games aboard the ship, sang songs, made new friends, stayed up half the

night. When we reached China and India, I realised that the business troubles and cares

that I had faced back home were paradise compared to the poverty and hunger in the

Orient. I stopped all my senseless worrying and felt fine. When I got back to America, I

had gained ninety pounds. I had almost forgotten I had ever had a stomach ulcer. I had

never felt better in my life. I promptly sold the casket back to the undertaker, and went

back to business. I haven't been ill a day since. "

At the time this happened, Earl P. Haney had never even heard of Willis H. Carrier and

his technique for handling worry. " But I realise now, " he told me quite recently, " that I

was unconsciously using the selfsame principle. I reconciled myself to the worst that

could happen-in my case, dying. And then I improved upon it by trying to get the utmost

enjoyment out of life for the time I had left. ... If, " he continued, " if I had gone on

worrying after boarding that ship, I have no doubt that I would have made the return

voyage inside of that coffin. But I relaxed-I forgot it. And this calmness of mind gave me

a new birth of energy which actually saved my life. " (Earl P. Haney is now living at 52

Wedgemere Ave., Winchester, Mass. )

Now, if Willis H. Carrier could save a twenty-thousand-dollar contract, if a New York

business man could save himself from blackmail, if Earl P. Haney could actually save his

life, by using this magic formula, then isn't it possible that it may be the answer to some

of your troubles? Isn't it possible that it may even solve some problems you thought were

unsolvable?

So, Rule 2 is: If you have a worry problem, apply the magic formula of Willis H. Carrier

by doing these three things-

1. Ask yourself, ' 'What is the worst that can possibly happen? "

2. Prepare to accept it if you have to.

3. Then calmly proceed to improve on the worst.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 3 - What Worry May Do To You

~~~~

Business men who do not know how to fight worry

die young.

-DR. Alexis Carrel.

~~~~

Some time ago, a neighbour rang my doorbell one evening and urged me and my family

to be vaccinated against smallpox. He was only one of thousands of volunteers who were

ringing doorbells all over New York City. Frightened people stood in lines for hours at a

time to be vaccinated. Vaccination stations were opened not only in all hospitals, but

also in fire-houses, police precincts, and in large industrial plants. More than two

thousand doctors and nurses worked feverishly day and night, vaccinating crowds. The

cause of all this excitement? Eight people in New York City had smallpox-and two had

died. Two deaths out of a population of almost eight million.

Now, I have lived in New York for over thirty-seven years, and no one has ever yet rung

my doorbell to warn me against the emotional sickness of worry-an illness that, during

the last thirty-seven years, has caused ten thousand times more damage than smallpox.

No doorbell ringer has ever warned me that one person out of ten now living in these

United States will have a nervous breakdown-induced in the vast majority of cases by

worry and emotional conflicts. So I am writing this chapter to ring your doorbell and

warn you.

The great Nobel prizewinner in medicine, Dr. Alexis Carrel, said: " Business men who do

not know how to fight worry die young. " And so do housewives and horse doctors and

bricklayers.

A few years ago, I spent my vacation motoring through Texas and New Mexico with Dr.

O. F. Gober-one of the medical executives of the Santa Fe railway. His exact title was

chief physician of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Hospital Association. We got to

talking about the effects of worry, and he said: Seventy per cent of all patients who

come to physicians could cure themselves if they only got rid of their fears and worries.

Don't think for a moment that I mean that their ills are imaginary, " he said. " Their ills

are as real as a throbbing toothache and sometimes a hundred times more serious. I

refer to such illnesses as nervous indigestion, some stomach ulcers, heart disturbances,

insomnia, some headaches, and some types of paralysis.

" These illnesses are real. I know what I am talking about, " said Dr. Gober, " for I myself

suffered from a stomach ulcer for twelve years.

" Fear causes worry. Worry makes you tense and nervous and affects the nerves of your

stomach and actually changes the gastric juices of your stomach from normal to

abnormal and often leads to stomach ulcers. "

Dr. Joseph F. Montague, author of the book Nervous Stomach Trouble, says much the

same thing. He says: " You do not get stomach ulcers from what you eat. You get ulcers

from what is eating you. "

Dr. W. C. Alvarez, of the Mayo Clinic, said " Ulcers frequently flare up or subside

according to the hills and valleys of emotional stress. "

That statement was backed up by a study of 15, 000 patients treated for stomach

disorders at the Mayo Clinic. Four out of five had no physical basis whatever for their

stomach illnesses. Fear, worry, hate, supreme selfishness, and the inability to adjust

themselves to the world of reality-these were largely the causes of their stomach

illnesses and stomach ulcers. ... Stomach ulcers can kill you. According to Life

magazine, they now stand tenth in our list of fatal diseases.

I recently had some correspondence with Dr. Harold C. Habein of the Mayo Clinic. He

read a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association of Industrial Physicians

and Surgeons, saying that he had made a study of 176 business executives whose

average age was 44. 3 years. He reported that slightly more than a third of these

executives suffered from one of three ailments peculiar to high-tension living-heart

disease, digestive-tract ulcers, and high blood pressure. Think of it- a third of our

business executives are wrecking their bodies with heart disease, ulcers, and high blood

pressure before they even reach forty-five. What price success! And they aren't even

buying success! Can any man possibly be a success who is paying for business

advancement with stomach ulcers and heart trouble? What shall it profit a man if he

gains the whole world-and loses his health? Even if he owned the whole world, he could

sleep in only one bed at a time and eat only three meals a day. Even a ditch-digger can

do that-and probably sleep more soundly and enjoy his food more than a high-powered

executive. Frankly, I would rather be a share-cropper down in Alabama with a banjo on

my knee than wreck my health at forty-five by trying to run a railroad or a cigarette

company.

And speaking of cigarettes-the best-known cigarette manufacturer in the world recently

dropped dead from heart failure while trying to take a little recreation in the Canadian

woods. He amassed millions-and fell dead at sixty-one. He probably traded years of his

life for what is called " business success".

In my estimation, this cigarette executive with all his millions was not half as successful

as my father-a Missouri farmer- who died at eighty-nine without a dollar.

The famous Mayo brothers declared that more than half of our hospital beds are

occupied by people with nervous troubles. Yet, when the nerves of these people are

studied under a high-powered microscope in a post-mortem examination, their nerves in

most cases are apparently as healthy as the nerves of Jack Dempsey. Their " nervous

troubles" are caused not by a physical deterioration of the nerves, but by emotions of

futility, frustration, anxiety, worry, fear, defeat, despair. Plato said that " the greatest

mistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to

cure the mind; yet the mind and body are one and should not be treated separately! "

It took medical science twenty-three hundred years to recognise this great truth. We

are just now beginning to develop a new kind of medicine called psychosomatic

medicine-a medicine that treats both the mind and the body. It is high time we were

doing that, for medical science has largely wiped out the terrible diseases caused by

physical germs--diseases such as smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, and scores of other

scourges that swept untold millions into untimely graves. But medical science has been

unable to cope with the mental and physical wrecks caused, not by germs, but by

emotions of worry, fear, hate, frustration, and despair. Casualties caused by these

emotional diseases are mounting and spreading with catastrophic rapidity.

Doctors figure that one American in every twenty now alive will spend a part of his life

in an institution for the mentally ill. One out of every six of our young men called up by

the draft in the Second World War was rejected as mentally diseased or defective.

What causes insanity? No one knows all the answers. But it is highly probable that in

many cases fear and worry are contributing factors. The anxious and harassed individual

who is unable to cope with the harsh world of reality breaks off all contact with his

environment and retreats into a private dream world of his own making, and this solves

his worry problems.

As I write I have on my desk a book by Dr. Edward Podolsky entitled Stop Worrying and

Get Well. Here are some of the chapter titles in that book:

What Worry Does To The Heart

High Blood Pressure Is Fed By Worry

Rheumatism Can Be Caused By Worry

Worry Less For Your Stomach's Sake

How Worry Can Cause A Cold

Worry And The Thyroid

The Worrying Diabetic

Another illuminating book about worry is lion Against Himself, by Dr. Karl Menninger,

one of the " Mayo brothers of psychiatry. " Dr. Menninger's book is a startling revelation of

what you do to yourself when you permit destructive emotions to dominate your life. If

you want to stop working against yourself, get this book. Read it. Give it to your friends.

It costs four dollars-and is one of the best investments you can make in this life.

Worry can make even the most stolid person ill. General Grant discovered that during

the closing days of the Civil War. The story goes like this: Grant had been besieging

Richmond for nine months. General Lee's troops, ragged and hungry, were beaten.

Entire regiments were deserting at a time. Others were holding prayer meetings in their

tents-shouting, weeping, seeing visions. The end was close. Lee's men set fire to the

cotton and tobacco warehouses in Richmond, burned the arsenal, and fled from the city

at night while towering flames roared up into darkness. Grant was in hot pursuit,

banging away at the Confederates from both sides and the rear, while Sheridan's cavalry

was heading them off in front, tearing up railway lines and capturing supply trains.

Grant, half blind with a violent sick headache, fell behind his army and stopped at a

farmhouse. " I spent the night, " he records in his Memoirs, " in bathing my feet in hot

water and mustard, and putting mustard plasters on my wrists and the back part of my

neck, hoping to be cured by morning. "

The next morning, he was cured instantaneously. And the tiling that cured him was not

a mustard plaster, but a horseman galloping down the road with a letter from Lee,

saying he wanted to surrender.

" When the officer [bearing the message] reached me, " Grant wrote, " I was still suffering

with the sick headache, but the instant I saw the contents of the note, I was cured. "

Obviously it was Grant's worries, tensions, and emotions that made him ill. He was cured

instantly the moment his emotions took on the hue of confidence, achievement, and

victory.

Seventy years later, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury in Franklin D.

Roosevelt's cabinet, discovered that worry could make him so ill that he was dizzy. He

records in his diary that he was terribly worried when the President, in order to raise

the price of wheat, bought 4, 400, 000 bushels in one day. He says in his diary: " I felt

literally dizzy while the thing was going on. I went home and went to bed for two hours

after lunch. "

If I want to see what worry does to people, I don't have to go to a library or a physician.

I can look out of the window of my home where I am writing this book; and I can see,

within one block, one house where worry caused a nervous breakdown-and another

house where a man worried himself into diabetes. When the stock market went down,

the sugar in his blood and urine went up.

When Montaigne, the illustrious French philosopher, was elected Mayor of his home

town-Bordeaux-he said to his fellow citizens: " I am willing to take your affairs into my

hands but not into my liver and lungs. "

This neighbour of mine took the affairs of the stock market into the blood stream-and

almost killed himself.

Worry can put you into a wheel chair with rheumatism and arthritis. Dr. Russell L. Cecil,

of the Cornell University Medical School, is a world-recognised authority on arthritis;

and he has listed four of the commonest conditions that bring on arthritis:

1. Marital shipwreck.

2. Financial disaster and grief.

3. Loneliness and worry.

4. Long-cherished resentments.

Naturally, these four emotional situations are far from being the only causes of arthritis.

There are many different kinds of arthritis-due to various causes. But, to repeat, the

commonest conditions that bring on arthritis are the four listed by Dr. Russell L. Cecil.

For example, a friend of mine was so hard bit during the depression that the gas

company shut off the gas and the bank foreclosed the mortgage on the house. His wife

suddenly had a painful attack of arthritis-and, in spite of medicine and diets, the

arthritis continued until their financial situation improved.

Worry can even cause tooth decay. Dr. William I. L. McGonigle said in an address before

the American Dental Association that " unpleasant emotions such as those caused by

worry, fear, nagging... may upset the body's calcium balance and cause tooth decay".

Dr. McGonigle told of a patient of his who had always had a perfect set of teeth until he

began to worry over his wife's sudden illness. During the three weeks she was in the

hospital, he developed nine cavities- cavities brought on by worry.

Have you ever seen a person with an acutely over-active thyroid? I have, and I can tell

you they tremble; they shake; they look like someone half scared to death-and that's

about what it amounts to. The thyroid gland, the gland that regulates the body, has

been thrown out of kilter. It speeds up the heart -the whole body is roaring away at full

blast like a furnace with all its draughts wide open. And if this isn't checked, by

operation or treatment, the victim may die, may " burn himself out".

A short time ago I went to Philadelphia with a friend of mine who has this disease. We

went to see a famous specialist, a doctor who has been treating this type of ailment for

thirty-eight years. And what sort of advice do you suppose he had hanging on the wall of

his waiting-room-painted on a large wooden sign so all his patients could see it? Here it

is. I copied it down on the back of an envelope while I was waiting:

Relaxation and Recreation

The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy

religion, sleep, music, and laughter.

Have faith in God-learn to sleep well-

Love good music-see the funny side of life-

And health and happiness will be yours.

The first question he asked this friend of mine was: " What emotional disturbance

brought on this condition? " He warned my friend that, if he didn't stop worrying, he

could get other complications: heart trouble, stomach ulcers, or diabetes. " All of these

diseases, " said that eminent doctor, " are cousins, first cousins. " Sure, they're first

cousins-they're all worry diseases!

When I interviewed Merle Oberon, she told me that she refused to worry because she

knew that worry would destroy her chief asset on the motion-picture screen: her good

looks.

" When I first tried to break into the movies, " she told me, " I was worried and scared. I

had just come from India, and I didn't know anyone in London, where I was trying to get

a job. I saw a few producers, but none of them hired me; and the little money I had

began to give out. For two weeks I lived on nothing but crackers and water. I was not

only worried now. I was hungry. I said to myself: 'Maybe you're a fool. Maybe you will

neuer break into the movies. After all, you have no experience, you've never acted at

all-what have you to offer but a rather pretty face? '

" I went to the mirror. And when I looked in that mirror, I saw what worry was doing to

my looks! I saw the lines it was forming. I saw the anxious expression. So I said to

myself: 'You've got to stop this at once! You can't afford to worry. The only thing you

have to offer at all is your looks, and worry will ruin them I'"

Few things can age and sour a woman and destroy her looks as quickly as worry. Worry

curdles the expression. It makes us clench our jaws and lines our faces with wrinkles. It

forms a permanent scowl. It may turn the hair grey, and in some cases, even make it

fall out. It can ruin the complexion- it can bring on all kinds of skin rashes, eruptions,

and pimples.

Heart disease, is the number-one killer in America today. During the Second World War,

almost a third of a million men were killed in combat; but during that same period,

heart disease killed two million civilians-and one million of those casualties were caused

by the kind of heart disease that is brought on by worry and high-tension living. Yes,

heart disease is one of the chief reasons why Dr. Alexis Carrel said: " Business men who

do not know how to fight worry die young. "

The Negroes down south and the Chinese rarely have the kind of heart disease brought

on by worry, because they take things calmly. Twenty times as many doctors as farm

workers die from heart failure. The doctors lead tense lives-and pay the penalty.

" The Lord may forgive us our sins, " said William James, " but the nervous system never

does. "

Here is a startling and almost incredible fact: more Americans commit suicide each year

than die from the five most common communicable diseases.

Why? The answer is largely: " Worry. "

When the cruel Chinese war lords wanted to torture their prisoners, they would tie their

prisoners hand and foot and put them under a bag of water that constantly dripped...

dripped... dripped... day and night. These drops of water constantly falling on the

head finally became like the sound of hammer blows-and drove men insane. This same

method of torture was used during the Spanish Inquisition and in German concentration

camps under Hitler.

Worry is like the constant drip, drip, drip of water; and the constant drip, drip, drip of

worry often drives men to insanity and suicide.

When I was a country lad in Missouri, I was half scared to death by listening to Billy

Sunday describe the hell-fires of the next world. But he never ever mentioned the hell-

fires of physical agony that worriers may have here and now. For example, if you are a

chronic worrier, you may be stricken some day with one of the most excruciating pains

ever endured by man: angina pectoris.

Boy, if that ever hits you, you will scream with agony. Your screams will make the

sounds in Dante's Inferno sound like Babes in Toyland. You will say to yourself then: " Oh,

God, oh, God, if I can ever get over this, I will never worry about anything-ever. " (If you

think I am exaggerating, ask your family physician. )

Do you love life? Do you want to live long and enjoy good health? Here is how you can do

it. I am quoting Dr. Alexis Carrel again. He said: " Those who keep the peace of their

inner selves in the midst of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervous

diseases. "

Can you keep the peace of your inner self in the midst of the tumult of a modem city? If

you are a normal person, the answer is " yes". " Emphatically yes. " Most of us are stronger

than we realise. We have inner resources that we have probably never tapped. As

Thoreau said in his immortal book, Walden:

" I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate

his life by a conscious endeavour. ... If one advances confidently in the direction of his

dreams, and endeavours to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success

unexpected in common hours. "

Surely, many of the readers of this book have as much will power and as many inner

resources as Olga K. Jarvey has. Her address is Box 892, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. She

discovered that under the most tragic circumstances she could banish worry. I firmly

believe that you and I can also-if we apply the old, old truths discussed in this volume.

Here is Olga K. Jarvey's story as she wrote it for me: " Eight and a half years ago, I was

condemned to die-a slow, agonising death-of cancer. The best medical brains of the

country, the Mayo brothers, confirmed the sentence. I was at a dead-end street, the

ultimate gaped at me! I was young. I did not want to die! In my desperation, I phoned to

my doctor at Kellogg and cried out to him the despair in my heart. Rather impatiently

he upbraided me: 'What's the matter, Olga, haven't you any fight in you? Sure, you will

die if you keep on crying. Yes, the worst has overtaken you. O. K. -face the facts! Quit

worrying 1 And then do something about it! ' Right then and there I took an oath, an oath

so solemn that the nails sank deep into my flesh and cold chills ran down my spine: 'I am

not going to worry! I am not going to cry! And if there is anything to mind over matter, I