absolute and probably every expenditure of nervous energy which is
not required for efforts toward self-preservation is arrested;
hence fear and injury drain the cup of energy to the dregs.
This is the potential difference between fear and desire,
between injury and conjugation.

What is the practical application of this? In operative surgery
there is introduced a new principle, which removes from surgery much
of the immediate risk from its trauma by establishing ANOCI-ASSOCIATION;
it places certain of the phenomena of fear on a physical basis;
it explains to us the physical basis for the impairment of the entire
individual under worry or misfortune; it makes evident the physical
results of the daily noci-associations experienced by the individual
as a social unit. On the other hand, it explains the power
of therapeutic suggestion and of other influences which serve
for the time to change the noci-integration; it shows the physical
basis for the difference between hope and despair; it explains
some of the phenomena of Graves' disease, of sexual neurasthenia,
possibly of hay-fever and of the common cold. The principle is probably
equally applicable to the acute infections, in each of which chemical
noci-association gives rise to many of the phenomena of the disease
and it explains their cure by natural immunity and by vaccines.
This hypothesis should teach us to view our patients as a whole;
and especially should it teach the surgeon gentleness. It should
teach us that there is something more in surgery than mechanics,
and something more in medicine than physical diagnosis and drugs.


Conclusion