Jim suffered heart problems. In conversation he expressed little joy and it seemed that his life was drawing to a close.
When his heart problems led to operation, Jim went through it successfully, and a full recovery was expected. Within days, however, his heart was not beating properly. Jim was rushed back to operation, but nothing was found to explain the cause of his illness. He died on the operating table on the day before his 48th birthday.
Dr. Bruce Smoller, a psychologist （心理学家）, had had many conversations with him, and the more he learned, the stranger he realized Jim's case was. When Jim was a child, his father, a teacher, suffered a heart attack and stayed home to recover. One morning Jim asked his father to look over his homework, promising to come home from school at noon to pick it up. His father agreed, but when Jim returned his father had died. Jim's father was 48.
"I think all his life Jim believed he killed his father," Dr. Smoller says. "He felt that if he had not asked him to look at his homework, his father would have lived. Jim had been troubled by the idea. The operation was the trial （判决） he had expected for forty years. " Smoller believes that Jim willed himself not to live to the age of 48.
Jim's case shows the powerful role that attitude （态度） plays in physical health, and that childhood experiences produce far-reaching effect on the health of grown-ups. Although most cases are less direct than Jim's, studies show that childhood events, besides genes, may well cause such midlife diseases as cancer, heart disease and mental illness.

吉姆深受心脏病的困扰，在谈话中表现出不快乐似乎他的生命就要走到尽头。
当他的心脏病严重到非手术不可时，他成功地闯过了这一关，并象预计的那样，完全康复。然而没过多少时日，他的心跳又不正常了，他被送进医院急救，医生却找不到病因，他死在了手术台上，当时他还不到48岁。
布鲁斯.斯穆尔医生，一位心理学家，与吉姆交谈过许多次，他了解的越多，就越感到吉姆的病例特别。当吉姆的孩提时代，他的父亲，一位教师，因心脏病发作而呆在家里康复。一天上午，吉姆要求父亲检查他的家庭作业，说中午从学校回来取，但当吉姆中午回到家时，父亲已经死了，吉姆父亲死时只有48岁。
“我认为在他生活中，他认定是他杀死了父亲，”斯穆尔说道，“他觉得如果他没有要求他父亲看他的作业，他父亲可能还活着，吉姆一直受到这种想法的困扰，手术是他期待了40年的对他的判决。”斯穆尔相信，在吉姆的意念当中，他活不到48岁。
吉姆的案例说明，观念对身体健康起着巨大的作用，孩提时代的经历对成年人的健康会产生深远的影响，研究表明，除基因的原因外，孩提时代的事件是中年时代诸如癌症、心脏病和精神病这样的疾患不可否认的成因。

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