Hypnotism is talked of as if it were some new discovery, a product of our present civilization, specially suited as a remedial agent to the more nervous organizations induced by a high pressure existence. But it is no modern evolution; it doubtless dates back to when men became sufficiently differentiated for the strong-willed to coerce the weaker. It is distinctly traced to the history of the Middle Ages; and, not to go further back, it is simply mesmerism which has been rescued by science from the hands of quacks and funambulists, renamed, and taken under the agis of science,

Hypnotism is a method of treatment which acts through, and directly on, the mind and nervous system of the patient. It is itself a morbid state; it is but the substitution of one morbid condition for another; a neurosis which can be brought about artificially by certain means; in short, a disease to which the hysterical and neurotic are especially liable. Of mind we know nothing beyond its phenomena.. It is ridiculous, therefore, to expect us to be able to explain one of its disorders thoroughly. Until more is known of mind, we must rest satisfied with the explanation that hypnotism is a disease of the mind.

These considerations should have made us the more careful of its study before venturing to employ it as an ordinary therapeutic agent. They should have served to check the flood of unreasoned verbiage, the expectancy, and blind faith, with which hypnotism has been received. They have not done so, and I venture, therefore, to state some demonstrable proofs of the limits of its powers for good, and of the extent of its powers for evil.

Some of the phenomena of hypnotism appear at first sight much more wonderful than they really are, because we have not been accustomed to watch and trace the effect of suggestion. For instance, a patient is hypnotized, and, in the induced

sleep, it is suggested to him that he shall do a certain act at a fixed time, hours or days afterward; he is awakened, has no memory of what he has been directed to do; yet he will (in a large majority of cases) perform the stated act at the exact timethough unable to explain why he does it. But is that as wonderful as the fact that a large proportion of mankind can go to sleep with the voluntary determination to wake at a certain hour; that, in their sleep, all memory of their determination vanishes, that the hours of the night pass unremarked and unrecorded, and that, without any fresh suggestion, without a hint of what o'clock it is, their eyes open and their senses wake when the hands indicate the determined hour?

Again, is it more wonderful than the following? I have known a mother, a regular and unwaking sleeper, who, having

been told that it was advisable for her child to continue its medicine every three hours through the night, fell asleep-being worn with watching-but woke to the minute every three hours. The following nights, although it was no longer necessary, she continued to wake at the stated hours. Love began and habit continued the work.

Much wonder has been expressed that with certain hypnotized patients the effects of drugs can be obtained without their coming in contact with the body: this has been called the "action of drugs at a distance." For instance, a phial of ipecacuanha is held behind the hypnotee's neck, and he vomits! But on scientifically controlling such an experiment, it will be found that it is not the action of the drug, but the action of a concentrated idea. is the suggestion that the drug is ipecacuanha and will certainly have this effect, which produces emesis.

It

Hypnotizable persons frequently have very acute senses, and would be very quick to detect ipecacuanha by its smell. But if a phial of pure water were used, and the patient impressed with the idea that it was ipecacuanha, the same result would be obtained. If the ipecacuanha were used, all hint of what it was being withheld, and all possibility of the patient detecting it removed, and, at the same time, it was suggested to him that it was a different drug -say strychnine-there would be no vomiting, but instead, the symptoms of strychnine poisoning! However, hypno

tees are so sensitive and so sly that all but the most careful and rightly sceptical are liable to be deceived. And here again, this effect of suggestion in the hypnotized state does not appear to me much more wonderful than, or very different from, the well-known fact that the memory of the taste of a nauseous drug will turn the stomach, especially when enhanced by the idea that it has again to be taken! It is only a gradient from this to the effect of a fear of impending death, as shown in the story of the college porter who died after the dash of a wet towel on his neck, having previously been persuaded that he was about to be beheaded.

Having shown that hypnotism is a disease, it of course follows, that if we use it as a therapeutic agent, we employ one discase to cure another. This frequently occurs in medicine, where we know that no drug is without its objections; those which reduce fever frequently depress the circulation, many which cure pain check the secretions. Opium is not without its drawback, and a blister is a painful remedy. But, on the other hand, we do not apply a blister (whose disagreeable effects continue for days) for a pain of a few hours; and we determine whether the permanent good result to the patient induced by a drug-or other treatmentoutweighs its objectionable features.

I now propose to show that the dangers of hypnotism are numerous and far-reaching, that hypnotism has far more serious drawbacks than ordinary treatment; in that it deeply, and possibly permanently, alters the nervous system, the character, feelings, etc., of the patient.

The evil effects are both immediate and gradual in their appearance. Cases of the

former kind have even been recorded in the daily papers in which such a deep state of lethargy had been produced, that it required a severe treatment of stimulation, flagellation, electricity, etc., lasting several hours, to bring the patient back to consciousness. I myself have seen hypnotism carried to the sixth state, at the first séance, with a patient who said he had never heard of it or seen it practised. No one who saw him aroused from his artificial somnambulism could doubt that his exhausted and dazed look, his pale face and foolish tone, betokened a severe shock to the sysThese symptoms pass off in a few hours, but such striking immediate results

tem.

are not the rule; in fact, after repeated séances, secondary changes are much more frequent and much more dangerous. Indeed, it would be strange if hypnotism left no trace, considering that it is a disease which affects the nervous system. As after-effects, everything, from a slight confusion of head up to madness, has been noticed by conscientious observers.

I know a medical man who made some hypnotic experiments on his wife: she has become so sensitive to suggestion that, if her husband is hypnotizing a patient, and she, from an adjoining room, only gathers what he is doing, she " goes off" in the hypnotic sleep. At Nancy it is not uncommon to see a patient put aside his work, or book, on the appearance of M. Bernheim in the ward, and go off into the hypnotic sleep before a word, a look, a gesture, or any direct suggestion has been given him. In addition to this dangerous proneness to be hypnotized, the patients change in character in various ways. They may become melancholic and morbid, or get into an undesirable condition of subjection, feeling constrained to return to the place where the séances take place, and to follow the hypnotizer. Haunted by the idea of his power over them, they become depressed and lose their self-confi dence. Others become annoying by their vanity, carried away, as they are, by the idea that their nervous organization is exceptional and by the interest they evoke. They strive to imitate the phenomena which the hypnotizer may mention he is looking for or which he strives to elicit. They become obtrusive, headstrong, and annoying, their thoughts centre round. their symptoms and hypnotism, the effects of which they exaggerate to themselves and others. and others. In this way, they spread the influence of hypnotic suggestion and predispose others to its power.

In many cases there is no improvement in the symptoms, and in others only fresh ones are added, or graver ones replace the original.

At the same time, I do not for one instant throw the slightest doubt on the large number of apparently excellent results. Patients, with various aches and pains, express themselves as quite relieved; the trembling of paralysis can be checked ; spasmodic contractions loosened, and paralyzed limbs (in hysterics) restored to use. But this is not sufficient; the further his

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tory of the patient and his malady must be observed, and what is the record when we meet with a physician who has largely practised hypnotism, and publishes the failures as well as the successes of his experience? Dr. Lumbroso, of Leghorn, states I can affirm that of the cases treated by me, three quarters at least have relapsed; for the majority of these hypnotism could do nothing further. (Io posso afferinare che, fra i casi da me curati, i tre quarti almeno hanno recidivato, la maggior parte, senza che l'ipnotismo potesse più nulla sulla malattia.)

During six months or more, the apparently uncomplicated good results of a hypnotic cure may continue, but ultimately we find that the hysterical convulsions were cured, to be replaced by melancholy or paralysis, or that neuralgias have been relieved, only to be succeeded by serious psychical changes.

It is also to be noted that, as referred to in the above quotation, when several séances have been required to disperse the first set of symptoms and the patient relapses, he is much less easily affected by hypnotism than if he had been relieved by one or a few séances so the longer hypnotism is continued the more dangerous are its results, and it is unable to undo the mischief it has induced.

I only mention, en passant, the great danger of hypnotism being used by unscrupulous persons for criminal purposes. This point requires an investigation which present space does not admit of; it has been largely studied in France, and shown to be a very real danger. Those who have followed the drift of these remarks will not require to have much stress laid on the danger and demoralizing effect of public performances. They serve no therapeutic end whatever, so that all the dangers I have pointed out are there in unmitigated action. It has been remarked that the public might as well be admitted to see the contortions of chloroformed patients in the operating theatres of our hospitals. The analogy is not perfect, as the patients are chloroformed in order that they may endure the painless blessing of the surgeon's knife. The public performances do good to no one-but the showman; and he might as well be permitted to chloroform people in public in order to amuse a mixed audience with the phenomena of their narcotization. It would be well were

England (by the force of public opinion) to prohibit these dangerous, purposeless, and degrading performances, following the example of Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, etc., before she is compelled to do so by dearly purchased experience.

I now pass on to consider the uselessness of hypnotism.

To begin with, only a very small proportion of people can be influenced by hypnotism. Bernheim states that the number of subjects unaffected forms the "large majority," but his patients, whom I have seen at Nancy, are chiefly drawn from ignorant peasants and ex-soldiers, all with very little individuality and accustomed to blind obedience. They mostly come to him for the express purpose of being hypnotized, they have probably heard of his celebrity, they see other patients hypnotized in their presence, in fact, they are surrounded by an atmosphere of hypnotism and of faith in it, and (as I hope to demonstrate in another article) are infected by suggestion just as fear spreads in the panic of crowds, or courage takes possession of a hopeful or victorious army. Lumbroso, who has thoroughly studied and largely practised hypnotism, states that the hypnotizable are only found among neurotics, and that of these only 50 per cent can be influenced! Let it be noted that these results are drawn from practice among Italians, a people much more mobile, susceptible, and impressionable than perhaps any other European people.

If an

This point must be insisted on. individual can be hypnotized, he is a neurotic-i.e., a person with an unstable equilibrium, a frail nervous organization. I would accept the fact of being hypnotizable as the proof of this, even if it were to lead to a confirmation of Carlyle's dictum, that we are mostly fools.''

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At Nancy I have seen a young woman return on three consecutive mornings to be hypnotized for a headache! After each séance, she expressed herself as feeling quite relieved. Now, if the hypnotic cure of a headache has to be repeated three consecutive mornings, it has nothing to boast of over simpler remedies, whereas it may, as I have shown, be but substituting a dangerous neurosis for a headache.

Again, it seems to me that the public may be deceived on reading the published accounts into imagining that the striking results are generally obtained. The authors

generally refrain from stating the number of cases in which hypnotism entirely failed, and also from showing clearly whether it was only with a very limited number of cases that the phenomena, which to the uninitiated appear so miraculous, were

obtained. Now it is well known that certain "neurotics'' exhibit those phenomena, and that in large centres of medical education-like Paris-they pass from one medical school to another exhibiting their abnormalities. By so doing, they develop the morbid delight they themselves take in these displays, and prevent the medical man from tracing their subsequent history. I remember that when I was house physician in a London hospital, a patient presented herself with a large abdominal swelling, which proved to be a "hysterical tumor;" i.e., a simulation of the appear ance of a tumor, caused by the spasmodic contraction of the muscles of the abdominal walls. Over the centre of this swelling was a small cicatrix, which she said was due to an operation made some years previously, when a similar tumor was removed in another hospital. Hardly believing that any medical man could have made such a mistake in diagnosis as to have opened the abdomen for a tumor which did not exist, we questioned her as to whether she had seen the tumor which was removed. She answered ingenuously that she had not seen it, but had heard the doctor say it was a phantom tumor. A small incision had evidently been made only skin deep, she had been treated as if a serious operation had been performed, and the effect so induced on her mind was sufficient to make the false tumor disappear for two years. I found that she had previously been in the hospital for other hysterical symptoms, and she continued to return from time to time as a museum of varying phenomena, full of interest to successive generations of students. It is from experiments in a few such cases as these that the striking articles in popular magazines are drawn,

Hypnotism has been used as an educational and moral instrument, and there are those who maintain that through its aid the dunce has become the first boy of his class; the truant, a devoted scholar; the morally deficient, models of uprightness; and the dipsomaniac a stanch teetotaller! Of these enthusiasts I would ask how long have these results lasted and have they been unaccompanied by any evil effects?

I must leave the psychologist and moralist to decide whether it ever can be right that a conscious being is made to act blindly in accordance with the will of another. Whether the fact that no two faces are alike does not indicate an essential difference of soul and character, a difference which would vanish if hypnotism had the power claimed for it; and, finally, whether there are any so certain of their absolute rightness that they can take upon themselves forcibly to bend a character to whatever they deem best?

A large number of people are nowadays sufficiently intelligent to trace, more or less successfully, effects to causes. When they see the impossibility of immediately removing the causes, they are prepared to see the resulting effects continue. In calm moments, and when their own illness is not under discussion, they acknowledge that most diseases are results of weeks, months, or years of unphysiological living and insalubrious surroundings, coupled frequently with generations of hereditary tendency. They agree with the observation of a philosophical physician, that the treatment of many diseases should be commenced two hundred years or more before the birth of the patient, and recognize the impossibility of dispersing the results of these accumulated causes in the twinkling of an eye, or even at all. Are they then prepared to affirm that hypnotism will outweigh or undo all these antecedents?

Coming now to the employment of hypnotism, I need hardly say, having shown its numerous dangers and doubtful benefits, that it should be used in medicine as little as possible. Those with whom the psychological and moral considerations have weight will not use it at all. But in any case, it should only be used as a last resource, when every ordinary method of treatment has failed, or when the patient's condition can hardly be made worse. would limit its employment to certain cases of lunacy, forms of paralysis, and inveterate hysterical phenomena.

This

Let us, therefore, be very chary of the employment of hypnotism, let it be used as a last resource, let it be done without altogether if possible. Let us remember that its benefits are illusory, its subjects the most unequally balanced of human beings, its principles tending to retrogression and its practice fraught with dangers which outweigh all benefits. Let us not

deceive ourselves into expecting to gather figs from thistles, into thinking that if we only cram in the seed hard enough (no matter what the soil), it will surely spring up and bear fruit a hundredfold. On the contrary, by all means let every one be surrounded by such suggestions as are most useful to his receptive capacity, that he may try all things, and bold fast to that which seems to him true, and not have his ideas crammed, nolens volens, unaccepted and undigested, into a cerebral store-house perfectly unfit for them, and where they must ferment and cause damage to the building. Let each be helped to the more perfect study of himself, that he may take

his own measure, and possess his soul in calmness. Let him learn to hypnotize himself, by remembering that pain is frequently only nature's danger-signal, and that the ruin it points to must be attended to, before it will cease; that not uncommonly it must be tolerated, since to check the pain would check at the same time nature's reparative process; that "the labor we delight in physics pain ;" and that pain borne for another, or for some good cause, ceases to wound. When this state of things which is inevitable if we believe in progress arrives, hypnotism will be an extinct force.- Westminster Review.

SOME years ago, when I first established myself in medical practice, it happened that I had two patients, a consideration of whose cases, bearing as they do impressively upon the question of woman's education, will, I am sure, be interesting to the psychological reader.

I was sitting in my consulting-room, spending the morning in some literary work, and awaiting the advent of patients with that delighted expectation which characterizes the hopeful young practitioner, when a lady, whom I will call Mrs. Graham, was announced.

An extraordinarily handsome woman of about twenty-five, with a broad intellectual brow, and bright intelligent eyes, entered. She came in with a firm quick tread, her head erect; strength, decision, and activity in every movement of her tall figure. A fine health glanced from her eyes, and lay in the clear red and white of her cheeks. Her features were straight and beautifully formed, her firm, well-cut lips showing considerable strength of will and self-control. She did not look much like a patient; and, indeed, before she had time to speak, I had had time to experience some qualms of conscience with regard to my impending obligation of mixing with the healthy current of her blood some potion of iny pharmacopoeia.

She soon relieved my mind of its premature misgivings. After we had exchanged greetings, she plunged at once in medias res.

" she said, in a

"I have come to you,' clear, concise way, and her strong resonant voice betokened its source in a healthful, ample pair of lungs; "I have come to you because you are a woman, and I am an upholder of my sex. We live in an age -a glorious age-which is seeing, and will see still more fully, the emancipation of woman, her development and the ultimate maturing of her powers, which have been so long in a crude and rudimentary state. I look forward to the time-and it is not far distant-when woman shall be in every way the equal of man, physically as well as mentally. Her mind shall be as free and vigorous as her unfettered limbs. She shall throw off the intellectual yoke as she shall throw off her corsets, allowing herself to develop strong and active. From mother to daughter her powers shall descend, evoluting and reaching farther until she stands by man, her name beside his in scientific, political, and all other attainment."

Much more she said in the same strain, anticipating with glowing eagerness the future of her sex, speaking with the utmost enthusiasm, the clearest intelligence. The definiteness of her views, and her remarkable powers of expression, interested me greatly.

She had been a year married, and was now looking forward to motherhood to complete her life.

"I consider," she went on, her clear,