Anxiety and Disease Lord Horder opened a very interesting discussion
at Blackpool on Tuesday on the physiological strain caused by modern civilised conditions, and uttered a warning that most middle-class people would do well to hear. " In case after ease," he said, " a tactfully conducted pursuit after fundamental causes removed the screen of headache, insomnia, indigestion and fatigue. and revealed the anxiety factor." Fundamentally, that is, anxiety is among the commonest causes of serious disease. Why are we so much more anxious than our parents or our grand- parents were ? Partly, no doubt, because our material standards of life are higher. and we quail more before the deeper drop from them. Partly, because weAre conscious, in the near background, of social and international insecurities, which before 1914 seemed much less real. Partly because, in the general decay of religious faith, a thought like " casting all your care upon Him " scarcely sustains as many thousands today as it sustained hundreds of thousands half-a-century ago. Partly, again, because the systems of social insurance, which have made the manual worker's life less precarious, are such as in effect to leave the brain-worker out. The last point suggests, perhaps, the line of remedy for statesmen.
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