Why Worry?
- Author:
George Lincoln Walton, M.D., Consulting Neurologist
to the Massachusetts General Hospital. Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1908. Pp. 275.
Dr Walton does not content himself with analyzing worry, showing its relationship to fears, doubts, and obsessions, but in the last two chapters he points out the mental treatment or training necessary to conquer this so-called “disease of the age.” In his book Dr Walton follows the worrier home, sits with him at table, accompanies him on his travels, and exhibits him in all his familiar unattractiveness. In his chapter on obsessions he points out their presence in childhood, and their persistence under different forms in many adults. An amusing instance quoted is that of “a boy who had to touch everyone wearing anything red. On one occasion his whole family lost their train because of the prevalence of this color among those waiting in the station.”
Dr Walton recommends the fad, be it stamps or golf, as an admirable method of changing the current of one’s thoughts; he quotes Saleeby as saying that “the mock worry of a game is a good antidote for the real worry of life.” As Dr Walton says, we spend far too much thought on the weather. Dr Samuel Johnson remarked this some years ago with “Sir, this is all imagination, which physicians encourage.” Dr Walton’s premises are sound and his advice excellent, none the less so for the fact that we have heard all of it before. It is no new thing to be told that in order to woo sleep successfully, you must be indifferent to whether you sleep or not; that in order to digest your food properly, you must stop fussing about it, and that in order to live at peace with your family you must have both self-control and philosophy. Dr Walton makes no claim to originality; rather does he collate for us the wisdom of the ages. He devotes a chapter to the philosophy of Epicurus, and another to that of Marcus Aurelius, two forerunners of psycho-therapy and mental healing. To him “who finds himself out of joint with his surroundings,” he offers the sage reflection of the Chinese philosopher,?”The legs of the stork are long, the legs of the duck are short; you cannot make the legs of the stork short, neither can you make the legs of the duck long. Why worry V
No honest reader of Dr Walton’s arraignment of “fuss-budgets” can fail to cry out peccavi at some point in “Why Worry.” But what then? Between Epicurus and Dr Walton we have had countless philosophers and teachers who have pointed out to us the evils of worry and the pleasures of the tranquil mind,?and yet here is worry called the disease of the age. “I told them once, I told them twice, they would not listen to advice,” for, like the little fishes in “Alice in Wonderland,” the public offers an impassive resistance to the reiterated counsel of the mentor. Herein is sufficient warrant for recommending the perusal of Dr Walton’s clever and entertaining resetting of an old theme. E. R. W.
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