“EVERY NIGHT IN these United States more than six million sleeping tablets are required to put the American people to sleep.”
This startling statement was made to me several years ago by a drug manufacturer at a convention of that industry where I was giving a speech. Though his assertion seemed incredible, I have been told by others who are in a position to know that the above estimate is now an understatement.
In fact, I heard another good authority assert that the American people are using about twelve million doses of sleeping tablets per day. That is enough to put every twelfth American to sleep tonight. Statistics show that the use of sleeping tablets has risen 1000 per cent in recent years. But a more recent statement is even more startling. According to the vice-president of a large drug manufacturing concern approximately seven billion one-half-grain tablets are consumed yearly, which works out at about nineteen million tablets per night.
What a pathetic situation. Sleep is a natural restorative process. One would think that any person after a day’s work would be able to sleep peacefully, but apparently Americans have even lost the art of sleeping. In fact, so keyed up are they that I, a minister with ample opportunity to test the matter, must report that the American people are so nervous and high-strung that now it is almost next to impossible to put them to sleep with a sermon. It has been years since I have seen anyone sleep in church. And that is a sad situation.
A Washington official who loves to juggle figures, especially astronomical figures, told me that last year in the United States there was a total of seven and a half billion headaches. This works itself out at approximately fifty headaches per head per annum. Have you had your quota yet this year? Just how this official arrived at these figures he did not say, but shortly after our conversation I noticed a report that in a recent year the drug industry sold eleven million pounds of aspirin. Perhaps this era might appropriately be termed “The Aspirin Age,” as one author has called it.
An authoritative source declares that every other hospital bed in the United States is occupied by a patient who was put there not because he encountered a germ or had an accident or developed an organic malady, but because of his inability to organize and discipline his emotions.
In a clinic five hundred patients were examined hand running and 386, or 77 per cent, were found to be ill of psychosomatic difficulties—physical illness caused largely by unhealthy mental states. Another clinic made a study of a large number of ulcer cases and reported that nearly half were made ill, not as the result of physical troubles, but because the patients worried too much or hated too much, had too much guilt, or were tension victims.
A doctor from still another clinic made the observation that in his opinion medical men, despite all extraordinary scientific developments, are now able to heal by the means of science alone less than half the maladies brought them. He declares that in many cases patients are sending back into their bodies the diseased thoughts of their minds. Prominent among these diseased thoughts are anxiety and tension.
This unhappy situation has become so serious that in our own Marble Collegiate Church, Fifth Avenue at 29th Street, New York City, we now have twelve psychiatrists on the staff under the supervision of Dr. Smiley Blanton. Why psychiatrists on the staff of a church? The answer is that psychiatry is a science. Its function is the analysis, diagnosis, and treatment of human nature according to certain well-authenticated laws and procedures.
Christianity may also be thought of as a science. It is a philosophy, a system of theology, a system of metaphysics, and a system of worship. It also works itself out in moral and ethical codes. But Christianity also has the characteristics of a science in that it is based upon a book which contains a system of techniques and formulas designed for the understanding and treatment of human nature. The laws are so precise and have been so often demonstrated when proper conditions of understanding, belief, and practice are applied that religion may be said to form an exact science.
When a person comes to our clinic the first counselor is perhaps a psychiatrist who in a kindly and careful manner studies the problem and tells the patient “why he does what he does.” This is a most important fact to learn. Why, for example, have you had an inferiority complex all your life long, or why have you been haunted by fear, or, again, why do you nurse resentment? Why have you always been shy and reticent, or why do you do stupid things or make inept statements? These phenomena of your human nature do not just happen. There is a reason why you do what you do and it is an important day in your life experience when at last you discover the reason. Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-correction.
Following the self-knowledge process the psychiatrist turns the patient over to the pastor who tells him how to do what he ought to do. The pastor applies to the case, in scientific and systematic form, the therapies of prayer, faith, and love. The psychiatrist and the minister pool their knowledge and combine their therapies with the result that many people have found new life and happiness. The minister does not attempt to be a psychiatrist nor the psychiatrist a pastor. Each performs his own function but always in co-operation.
The Christianity utilized in this procedure is the undiluted teachings of Jesus Christ, Lord and Saviour of man’s life. We believe in the practical, absolute workability of the teachings of Jesus. We believe that we can indeed “do all things through Christ.” (Philippians 4:13) The Gospel as we work with it proves be a literal fulfillment of the astonishing promise, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” (I Corinthians 2:9) Believe (in Christ); believe in His system of thought and practice; believe and you will overcome all fear, hate, inferiority, guilt, and every form and manner of defeat. In other words, no good thing is too good to be true. You have never seen, never heard, never even imagined the things God will give to those who love Him.
In the work of the clinic one frequent problem is that of tension. This, to a very large degree, may be called the prevailing malady of the American people. But not only the American people seem to suffer from tension. The Royal Bank of Canada some time ago devoted its monthly letter to this problem under the title, “Let’s Slow Down,” and says in part: “This monthly letter does not set itself up as a counselor of mental and physical health, but it is attempting to break down a problem that bedevils every adult person in Canada,” and, I might add, in the United States as well.
The bank letter goes on to say: “We are victims of a mounting tension; we have difficulty in relaxing. Our high-strung nervous systems are on a perpetual binge. Caught up as we are in the rush all day, every day, and far into the night, we are not living fully. We must remember what Carlyle called ‘the calm supremacy of the spirit over its circumstances.’”
When a prominent banking institution calls to the attention of its customers the fact that they are failing to derive from life what they really want from it because they have become victims of tension, it is certainly time something was done about the situation.
In St. Petersburg, Florida, I actually saw a machine on the street equipped with a sign, “What is your blood pressure?” You could put a coin in a slot and get the bad news. When you can buy a reading on blood pressure like you buy gum out of a slot machine, it indicates that many people have this problem.
One of the simplest methods for reducing tension is to practice the easy-does-it attitude. Do everything more slowly, less hectically, and without pressure. My friend Branch Rickey, famous baseball man, told me that he would not use a player no matter how well he hits, fields, or runs if he is guilty of “overpressing.” To be a successful big-league baseball player there must be a flow of easy power through every action and of course through the mind. The most effective way to hit a ball is by the easy method, where all the muscles are flexible and operating in correlated power. Try to kill the ball and you will slice it or maybe miss it altogether. This is true in golf, in baseball, in every sport.
From 1907 through 1919, except for one year, 1916, Ty Cobb’s batting average led the American League, a record so far as I know that has never been surpassed. Ty Cobb presented the bat with which he performed his extraordinary feats to a friend of mine. I was permitted to take this bat in my hand, which I did with considerable awe. In the spirit of the game I struck a pose, as if to bat. Doubtless my batting stance was not in any sense reminiscent of the immortal slugger. In fact, my friend, who was himself at one time a minor league baseball player, chuckled and said, “Ty Cobb would never do it that way. You are too rigid, too tense. You are obviously overtrying. You would probably strike out.”
It was beautiful to watch Ty Cobb. The man and the bat were one. It was a study in rhythm, and one marveled at the ease with which he got into the swing. He was a master of easy power. It is the same in all success. Analyze people who are really efficient and they always seem to do things easily, with a minimum of effort. In so doing they release maximum power.
One of my friends, a famous businessman who handles important affairs and varied interests, always seems to be at ease. He does everything efficiently and quickly but is never in a dither. He never has that anxious, frazzled look on his face which marks people who cannot handle either their time or their work. I inquired the secret of his obviously easy power.
He smiled and replied, “Oh, it isn’t much of a secret. I just try keep myself in tune with God. That’s all. Every morning after breakfast,” he explained, “my wife and I go into the living room for a period of quietness. One of us reads aloud some inspirational piece to get us into the mood of meditation. It may be a poem or a few paragraphs of a book. Following that we sit quietly, each praying or meditating according to his own mood and manner, then together we affirm the thought that God is filling us with strength and quiet energy. This is a definite fifteen-minute ritual and we never miss it. We couldn’t get along without it. We would crack up. As a result I always seem to feel that I have more energy than I need and more power than is required.” So said this efficient man who demonstrates easy power.
I know a number of men and women who practice this or similar techniques for reducing tension. It is becoming a quite general and popular procedure nowadays.
One February morning I was rushing down the long veranda of a Florida hotel with a handful of mail just in from my office in New York. I had come to Florida for a midwinter vacation, but hadn’t seemed to get out of the routine of dealing with my mail the first thing in the morning. As I hurried by, headed for a couple of hours’ work with the mail, a friend from Georgia who was sitting in a rocking chair with his hat partially over his eyes stopped me in my headlong rush and said in his slow and pleasant Southern drawl, “Where are you rushing for, Doctor? That’s no way to do down here in the Florida sunshine. Come over here and ‘set’ in one of these rocking chairs and help me practice one of the greatest of the arts.”
Mystified, I said, “Help you practice one of the greatest of the arts!”
“Yes,” he replied, “an art that is passing out. Not many people know how to do it any more.”
“Well,” I asked, “please tell me what it is. I don’t see you practicing any art.”