Show Daily Health Service Doctors See Your Mind and Body as One By DR MORRIS 1 FISHBEIN The trouble you may have in making making making mak mak- ing a child of yours behave properly may come not alone from what you might consider stubbornness but but- it may also be due to to some physical all all- ment menU You cant can't separate mind and body completely and the modern specialist special special- is likely to make a study of both when confronted by strange mental processes In other words the scientific ic physician cian can now looks looks' upon you or your child as a unit and not as a a collection collection tion of of separate organs and tissues Many a human being has had his whole life marred by some chronic disease in childhood Investigators Investigators' at Johns Hopkins hospital hos has pital in Baltimore have pointed out how a disease may change chance the whole nature of a 1 child o e The average child hild might have measles scarlet fever fever- whooping cough hay fever or any of the other common conditions which afflict youngsters and after recovering be beno beno beno no diff different rent in Its behavior than it was before the illness ss On the other hand some children do not DOt respond in this normal manner One boy who had had a mild attack attack attack at at- tack of asthma il in infancy constantly developed spells of shortness of breath and a typical asthma reaction again when at the age of 9 2 1 1 he was sent to a new school at a distance dis tance from his home Unfortunately 2 his parents had been told at the time 0 of the first illness that the asthma was likely ly to occur again This coupled with their extraordinary nary anxiety for the boy led to the apparent asthmatic symptoms at the vcr very first time when he found himself himself him him- self sell in a a. condition which he did not like When his habits bits were changed and he had more recreation and when his parents were told that the new asthmatic attacks were probably not actually asthma all symptoms S o e Another boy of 9 who developed develop d da a shortness of breath while hIl sleeping at night was as believed d b by b his mother to be merely pretending So his par parents cuts nagged and und worried him J 4 As a result he developed twitching of the eyelids and nostrils A careful study indicatEd Indicate was particularly I sensitive to chicken feathers and when he went to sleep on a bed without with without out chicken feathers athers the asthmatic attacks disappeared I In another interesting case an 8 year old boy complained of headaches I and he also wet vet the bed He walked and talked in his sleep and progressed slowly In school The boy was studied from every angle Finally it was found that he required glasses to read prop properly properly erly When sla glasses es were obtained the headaches disappeared gradually the bed wetting became less les frequent and inside of a few months the boy improved im im- im proved so rapidly that his mental age was estimated at more than one and one half years above what it was wa be be- fore All Al these cases show the Importance importance tance lance of ot stud studying ng your child completely com corn both as 15 to its mind and its body boy when unusual reactions appear They show also Dio the necessity of considering con con- each child as i an individual human being rather than as a collection collection collection col col- I lection of various organs organ and tissues |