One of the author's favorite terms is "over-solicitous". The patient literally "worrys themselves sick" over trivial symptoms and makes serious cases worse than necessary. Most of his use of psychotherapy consists of informing, diverting and cheering the patient so that worry and its consequences are not piled on top of real or imagined disease. This book illustrates the general state of medicine in 1910. Psychotherapy was more important to medical care because so little was known of the complex physical mechanisms of the body. I particularly reacted to the discussion of hay fever because it plagued me for thirty years until experimental desensitization therapy successfully cured my case. N…
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