How absurd it would seem if a wounded man were to expose his wound
to unnecessary friction, and then complain that it did not heal! Yet
that is what many of us have done at one time or another, when
prevented by illness from carrying out our plans in life just as we
had arranged. It matters not whether those plans were for ourselves
or for others; chafing and fretting at their interruption is just as
absurd and quite as sure to delay our recovery. "I know," with tears
in our eyes, "I ought not to complain, but it is so hard," To which
common-sense may truly answer: "If it is hard, you want to get well,
don't you? Then why do you not take every means to get well, instead
of indulging first in the very process that will most tend to keep
you ill?" Besides this, there is a dogged resistance which remains
silent, refuses to complain aloud, and yet holds a state of rigidity
that is even worse than the external expression. There are many
individual ways of resisting. Each of us knows his own, and knows,
too, the futility of it; we do not need to multiply examples.

The patients who resist recovery are quite as numerous as those who
keep themselves ill by resisting illness. A person of this sort
seems to be fascinated by his own body and its disorders. So far
from resisting illness, he may be said to be indulging in it He will
talk about himself and his physical state for hours. He will locate
each separate disease in a way to surprise the listener by his
knowledge of his own anatomy. Not infrequently he will preface a
long account of himself by informing you that he has a hearty
detestation of talking about himself, and never could understand why
people wanted to talk of their diseases. Then in minute detail he
will reveal to you his brain-impression of his own case, and look
for sympathetic response. These people might recover a hundred times
over, and they would never know it, so occupied are they in living