of all so-called "stomach trouble" is due not to any
inherent weakness of the organ itself but to a misunderstanding
between the stomach and its owner.

=Organic Trouble.= Unfortunately, there are a few real organic causes
for trouble. There are a few cancers of the stomach and a certain
number of ulcers. But if the patients whom I have seen are in any way
typical, the ulcers that really are cannot compare in number with the
ulcers that are supposed to be. Patients go to physicians with so many
tales of digestive distress that even the best doctors are fooled
unless they are especially alert to the ways of "nerves." They must
find some explanation for all the various functional disturbances
which the patients report, and as they are in the habit of taking only
the body into account, they find the diagnosis of stomach ulcer as
satisfactory as any.

There is, of course, such a thing as an enlarged or sagging stomach.
But it is only in the rarest of cases that such a condition leads to
any functional disturbances unless complicated by suggestion. In most
cases a person can go about his business as happily as ever unless he
gets the idea that ptosis must inevitably lead to pain and discomfort.

Confusion sometimes arises when the stomach is blamed for
disturbances which originate elsewhere. One day a very sick-looking
girl came to me with eager expectation written all over her face. Her
stomach was misbehaving and she had heard that I could cure nervous
indigestion. It needed little more than a glance to know that she was
suffering from organic heart trouble. A boy of sixteen had been taking
a stomach-tonic for three months, but the thin, wiry pulse pointed to
a different ailment. His digestive disturbances were merely the echo
of an organic disease of the kidneys. When the body is burdened by
disease, it may have little energy left for digesting food, but in
that case the trouble must be sought in other quarters than the
stomach.

Aside from a few organic difficulties, there is almost no real disease
of the stomach. Its misdoings are not matters of food and chemistry,
muscle-power and nerve supply, but are the end results of slips in the
mental and emotional life of its owner.

=Fads Dynamogenic.= What is it that gives the impetus to fads about
eating, or about religious belief? Are they advocated by the
individual whose libido is finding abundant expression in the natural
channels of business and family life, or by