A discouraged and downcast fellow, struggling with obstacles and fighting with failures, will often deliberately attribute all his misfortune and difficulties to some trifling mistake in his youth, or to some insignificant blunder or minor transgression in later life.
There recently came into our clinic a young man whose life was a perfect failure; he had contemplated suicide, but a friend urged him to come and see us. After an hour’s talk he was ready to go to work and he has continued to make rapid progress and satisfactory improvement…. In times of trouble and harassment, let us swell out our chests, breathe deeply, and face these trifling difficulties like men. —William S. Sadler, M.D. (1914)