I was interested to read a statement by a psychologist that infants can “catch” fear and hatred from people around them more quickly than they can catch measles or other infectious diseases. The virus of fear may burrow deeply into their subconsciousness and remain there for a lifetime. “But,” adds the psychologist, “fortunately infants can also catch love and goodness and faith and so grow up to become normal, healthy children and adults.”

In an article in the Ladies’ Home Journal, Constance J. Foster quotes Dr. Edward Weiss of Temple University Medical School in a speech to the American College of Physicians in which Dr. Weiss stated that chronic victims of pains and aches in the muscles and joints may be suffering from nursing a smoldering grudge against someone close to them. He added that such persons usually are totally unaware that they bear a chronic resentment.

“To clear up any possible misunderstanding,” the author continues, “it is necessary to state emphatically that emotions and feelings are quite as real as germs and no less respectable. The resultant pain and suffering of diseases caused primarily by the emotions are no more imaginary than those caused by bacteria. In no case is the patient consciously to blame for developing the disease. Such persons are not suffering from any disease of the mind, but rather from a disorder of their feelings, often linked to a marital or parent-child problem.”

In this same magazine article the story is told of a certain Mrs. X who came to the doctor’s office complaining of a breaking out on her hands which was diagnosed as eczema. The doctor encouraged Mrs. X to talk about herself. It developed that she was a very rigid person. Her lips were thin and unyielding. She was also rheumatoid. The doctor sent Mrs. X to a psychiatrist who saw at once that there was some irritating situation in her life which she was translating outwardly in the form of a skin rash, thus taking out on her own person the urge to scratch some thing or person.

The doctor finally put it to her bluntly. “What is eating you?” he asked. “You’re peeved at something, aren’t you?”

“She stiffened up like a ramrod and marched right out of the office, so I knew I’d hit the target too closely for comfort. A few days later she came back. Due to the agony of the eczema, she was ready to let me help her even if it meant she had to give up a hate.

“It turned out to be a family row over a will with Mrs. X feeling she had been treated unfairly by a younger brother. When she got rid of the hostility, she got well, and when she made up the quarrel with her brother, within twenty-four hours the eczema vanished.”

That there is even a relationship between emotional disturbance and the common cold is indicated by Dr. L. J. Saul of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, who has made a study of this subject.

“Emotional disturbances are believed to affect the blood circulation in the linings of the nose and throat. They also affect glandular secretions. These factors make the mucous membranes more susceptible to attack by cold viruses or germ infection.”

Dr. Edmund P. Fowler, Jr., of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, stated, “There are colds which develop in medical students at the time of their examinations and colds which develop in many persons before or after a trip. Colds develop in housewives when they must care for a large family. And one often sees a cold develop in a patient when his mother-in-law comes to live in the house, and it often disappears when she leaves.” (Dr. Fowler does not specify the effects on the mother-in-law of a daughter-in-law or son-in-law. Perhaps she has a cold also.)

One of the cases Dr. Fowler reports concerned a twenty-five-year-old salesgirl. When she visited his office her nose was stuffy, the lining was red and congested, and she suffered from a headache and a mild temperature. These symptoms had persisted for nearly two weeks. Questioning disclosed that they had started a few hours after a violent quarrel with her fiancé.

Local treatments cleared up the cold but the young woman was back in a few weeks with another attack. This time the trouble had started after an argument with the butcher. Again local treatments brought relief. But the girl continued to have recurring colds, and each time they were traced to a fit of anger. Finally Dr. Fowler was able to persuade the girl that her bad temper was at the root of her chronic cold symptoms. When she learned to lead a calmer existence, her sneezes and sniffles disappeared.

And yet people still think that when the Bible tells you not to hate or to get angry that it is “theoretical advice.” The Bible is not theoretical. It is our greatest book of wisdom. It is filled with practical advice on living and on health. Anger, resentment, and guilt make you sick, modern physicians tell us, which proves once again that the most up-to-date book on personal well-being is the Holy Bible, neglected by so many or regarded by them as purely a religious book and certainly as one that is not practical. No wonder more copies are read than all other books. That is because in this book we discover not only what is wrong with us but how to correct it as well.

Dr. Fowler calls attention to the “emotional colds” suffered by children who feel insecure. He reports that many cases of chronic colds occur in children who come from broken homes. An older child often has recurring respiratory infection when a new baby is born because he feels neglected and jealous. A nine-year-old boy had an extremely dictatorial father and an indulgent mother. The conflict between the strictness of one parent and the lenience of the other obviously was disturbing to the child. He particularly feared punishment by his father. This boy suffered for several years from continuous coughs and sniffles. It was noted that the colds disappeared when he went to camp—away from his parents.

Since irritation, anger, hate, and resentment have such a powerful effect in producing ill-health, what is the antidote? Obviously it is to fill the mind with attitudes of good will, forgiveness, faith, love, and the spirit of imperturbability. And how is that accomplished? Following are some practical suggestions. They have been used successfully by many in counterattacking especially the emotion of anger. A consistent application of these suggestions can produce feelings of well-being:

1. Remember that anger is an emotion, and an emotion is always warm, even hot. Therefore to reduce an emotion, cool it. And how do you cool it? When a person gets angry, the fists tend to clench, the voice rises in stridency, muscles tense, the body becomes rigid. (Psychologically you are poised for fight, adrenaline shoots through the body.) This is the old caveman hangover in the nervous system. So deliberately oppose the heat of this emotion with coolness—freeze it out. Deliberately, by an act of will, keep your hands from clenching. Hold your fingers out straight. Deliberately reduce your tone; bring it down to a whisper. Remember that it is difficult to argue in a whisper. Slump in a chair, or even lie down if possible. It is very difficult to get mad lying down.

2. Say aloud to yourself, “Don’t be a fool. This won’t get me anywhere, so skip it.” At that moment it may be a bit hard to pray, but try it anyway; at least conjure up a picture of Jesus Christ in your mind and try to think of Him mad just as you are. You can’t do it, and the effort will serve to puncture your angry emotions.

3. One of the best techniques for cooling off anger was suggested by Mrs. Grace Oursler. She formerly employed the usual “count to ten” technique but happened to notice that the first ten words of the Lord’s Prayer worked better. “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” When angry, say that ten times and your anger will lose its power over you.

4. Anger is a great term expressing the accumulated vehemence of a multitude of minor irritations. These irritations, each rather small in itself, having gathered force by reason of the one being added to the other, finally blaze forth in a fury that often leaves us abashed at ourselves. Therefore, make a list of everything that irritates you. No matter how inconsequential it may be or how silly each is, list it just the same. The purpose in doing this is to dry up the tiny rivulets that feed the great river of anger.

5. Make each separate irritation a special object of prayer. Get a victory over each, one at a time. Instead of attempting to destroy all of your anger, which as we have pointed out is a consolidated force, snip away by prayer each annoyance that feeds your anger. In this way you will weaken your anger to the point where presently you will gain control over it.

6. Train yourself so that every time you feel the surge of anger you say, “Is this really worth what it is doing to me emotionally? I will make a fool of myself. I will lose friends.” In order to get the full effect of this technique, practice saying to yourself a few times every day, “It is never worth it to get worked up or mad about anything.” Also affirm: “It isn’t worth it to spend $1000 worth of emotion on a five-cent irritation.”

7. When a hurt-feeling situation arises, get it straightened out as quickly as possible. Don’t brood over it for a minute longer than you can help. Do something about it. Do not allow yourself to sulk or indulge in self-pity. Don’t mope around with resentful thoughts. The minute your feelings are hurt, do just as when you hurt your finger. Immediately apply the cure. Unless you do so the situation can become distorted out of all proportion. So put some spiritual iodine on the hurt at once by saying a prayer of love and forgiveness.

8. Apply grievance drainage to your mind. That is, open your mind and let the grievance flow out. Go to someone you trust and pour it out to him until not a vestige of it remains within you. Then forget it.

9. Simply start praying for the person who has hurt your feelings. Continue this until you feel the malice fading away. Sometimes you may have to pray for quite a while to get that result. A man who tried this method told me that he kept account of the number of times he needed to pray until the grievance left and peace came. It was exactly sixty-four times. He literally prayed it out of his system. This is positively guaranteed to work.

10. Say this little prayer: “May the love of Christ fill my heart.” Then add this line: “May the love of Christ for —– (insert the other’s name) flood my soul.” Pray this, mean it (or ask to mean it), and you will get relief.

11. Actually take the advice of Jesus to forgive seventy times seven. To be literal, that means four hundred ninety times. Before you have forgiven a person that many times you will be free of resentment.

12. Finally, this wild, undisciplined, primitive urge in you which flames to the surface can be tamed only by allowing Jesus Christ to take control. Therefore, complete this lesson by saying to Jesus Christ, “Even as You can convert a person’s morals, so now I ask You to convert my nerves. As You give power over the sins of the flesh, so give me power over the sins of the disposition. Bring my temper under Your control. Give me Thy healing peace in my nervous system as well as in my soul.” If you are beset by temper, repeat the above prayer three times every day. It might be advisable to print it on a card and put it on your desk, or above the kitchen sink, or in your pocketbook.