878 INFLUENCE OF EXPECTANT ATTENTION. 



fright and distress as to be unable to render it any assistance. A surgeon 

 was speedily obtained, who, having dressed the wounds turned himself to 

 the mother, whom he found seated, moaning, and complaining of pain in her 

 hand. On examination, three fingers, corresponding to those injured in the 

 child, were discovered to be swollen and inflamed, although they had ailed 

 nothing prior to the accident. In four-and-twenty hours incisions were made 

 into them, and pus was evacuated ; sloughs were afterwards discharged, and 

 the wounds ultimately healed." 



725. The influence of the state of expectant attention, in modifying the 

 processes of Nutrition and Secretion, is not less remarkable than we have 

 already seen it to be in the production or modification of Muscular move- 

 ments ( 717). It seems certain that the simple direction of the consciousness 

 to a part, independently of emotional excitement, but with the expectation 

 that some change will take place in its organic activity, is often sufficient to 

 induce such an alteration ; and would probably always do so, if the concen- 

 tration of the attention were sufficient. The most satisfactory exemplifica- 

 tion of this principle has been given by the experiments of Mr. Braid, who 

 has succeeded in producing very decided changes in the secretions of par- 

 ticular organs, by the fixation of the attention upon them in the " hypnotic" 

 state ( 586). Thus he brought back an abundant flow of milk to the 

 breast of a female who was leaving off nursing from defect of milk, and 

 repeated the operation upon the other breast a few days subsequently, after 

 which the supply was abundant for nine months ; and in another instance he 

 induced the catamenial flow on several successive occasions, when the usual 

 time of its appearance had passed. It is not requisite, however, to produce 

 the state of Somnambulism for this purpose, if the attention can be suffi- 

 ciently drawn to the subject in any other mode ; thus Mr. Braid l has repeat- 

 edly produced the last-named result on a female who possessed considerable 

 power of mental concentration, by inducing her to fix her thoughts upon it 

 for ten or fifteen minutes, so as to bring on a state of Abstraction. Now 

 the effects which are producible by this voluntary or determinate direction of 

 the consciousness to the result, are doubtless no less producible by that invol- 

 untary fixation of the attention upon it, which is consequent upon the eager 

 expectation of benefit from some curative method in which implicit confi- 

 dence is placed. It is to such a state that we may fairly attribute most, if 

 not all, the cures, which have been worked through what is popularly termed 

 the " imagination." The cures are real facts, however they may be explained ; 

 and there is scarcely a malady in which amendment has not been produced, 

 not merely in the estimation of the patient, but in the more trustworthy 

 opinion of medical observers, by practices which can have had no other effect 

 than to direct the attention of the sufferer to the part, and to keep alive his 

 confident expectation of the cure. The " charming away " of warts by spells 

 of the most vulgar kind, the imposition of royal hands for the cure of the 

 "evil," the pawings and strokings of Valentine Greatrakes, the manipula- 

 tions practiced with the " metallic tractors," ' the invocations of Prince 

 Hohenlohe, et hoc genus omne, not omitting the globulistk' administrations 

 of the Infinitesimal doctors, and the manipulations of the Mesmerists, of our 



c his important Memoir on Hypnotic Therapeutics, in Edinb. Monthly Jour- 

 nal, July, lsr>3. ()f the reality of this last result, the Author has had an opportu- 

 nity, through Mr. Braid's kindness, of personally satisfying himself. 



2 l)i'. IIiiyi^:irtli, of Hath (in conjunction with Mr. Richard Smith, of Bristol) 

 tested the value of Perkins's metallic tractors, by substituting two pieces of wood 

 painted in imitation of them, or even a pair of tcnpenny nails disguised with yealin^- 

 wax, or a couple of slate pencils ; which they found to possess all the virtues that were 

 claimed for the real instruments. 



