words, as it were, on his finger-tips, "that worry kills, but the most
minute details of its murderous methods are familiar to modern
scientists. It is a common belief of those who have made a special study
of the science of brain diseases that hundreds of deaths attributed to
other causes each year are due simply to worry. In plain, untechnical
language, worry works its irreparable injury through certain cells of
the brain life. The insidious inroads upon the system can be best
likened to the constant falling of drops of water in one spot. In the
brain it is the insistent, never-lost idea, the single, constant
thought, centered upon one subject, which in the course of time destroys
the brain cells. The healthy brain can cope with occasional worry; it is
the iteration and reiteration of disquieting thoughts which the cells of
the brain cannot successfully combat.

"The mechanical effect of worry is much the same as if the skull were
laid bare and the brain exposed to the action of a little hammer beating
continually upon it day after day, until the membranes are disintegrated
and the normal functions disabled. The maddening thought that will not
be downed, the haunting, ever-present idea that is not or cannot be
banished by a supreme effort of the will, is the theoretical hammer
which diminishes the vitality of the sensitive nerve organisms, the
minuteness of which makes them visible to the eye only under a powerful
microscope. The 'worry,' the thought, the single idea grows upon one as
time goes on, until the worry victim cannot throw it off. Through this,
one set or area of cells is affected. The cells are intimately
connected, joined together by little fibres, and they in turn are in
close relationship with the cells of the other parts of the brain.

"Worry is itself a species of monomania. No mental attitude is more
disastrous to personal achievement, personal happiness, and personal