In any discussion of the influence of mind over body, favorable and unfavorable, too much emphasis cannot be placed on the hold that dreads have over a great many people and how much they mean, not alone for the mental state, but also for the physical sense of well-being or of ill-feeling in the individual. The expression attributed to the old hermit who had lived to the age of one hundred and had spent some sixty years of existence in the solitude of the desert, with all the opportunities for introspection that this afforded, is the best illustration even in our day of what dreads signify in life: "I am an old man," he said to the young solitary who came to him for advice, "and I have had many troubles, but most of them never happened." We are nearly all of us, or at least those of us who spend most of our time in sedentary mental occupations, prone to fear that something untoward is preparing for us and in many cases to dread lest some serious ailment or other is just ahead of us. We are afraid that certain feelings, though we like to call them symptoms, due to some trivial cause or other as a rule that deserves no notice, may mean the insidious inroads of a constitutional disease destined to shorten existence. A little fatigue, over-tiredness of particular muscles, the straining of joints, the discomforts due to overeating and undersleeping, that are meant as passing warnings of nature for the necessity of a little more care in life, are exaggerated into symptoms that have a more or less serious significance.