best means of getting relief. They double themselves up tight, and
hold on to the place that hurts. Then all the nervous force tends
toward the sore place and the tension retards the circulation and
makes it difficult for nature to cure the pain, as she would
spontaneously if she were only allowed to have her own way.

I once knew a little girl who, whenever she hit one elbow, would at
once deliberately rub the other. She said that she had discovered
that it took her mind away from the elbow that hurt, and so stopped
its hurting sooner. The use of a counterirritant is not uncommon
with good physicians, but the counter-irritant only does what is
much more effectually accomplished when the patient uses his will
and intelligence to remove the original irritant by ceasing to
resist it.

A man who was troubled with spasmodic contraction of the throat once
went to a doctor in alarm and distress. The doctor told him that, in
any case, nothing worse than fainting could happen to him, and that,
if he fainted away, his throat would be relieved, because the
fainting would relax the muscles of the throat, and the only trouble
with it was contraction. Singularly, it did not seem to occur to the
doctor that the man might be taught to relax his throat by the use
of his own will, instead of having to faint away in order that
nature might do it for him. Nature would be just as ready to help us
if we were intelligent, as when she has to knock us down, in order
that she may do for us what we do not know enough to do for
ourselves.

There is no illness that could not be much helped by quiet relaxing
on the part of the patient, so as to allow nature and remedial