SUGGESTION IN THERAPEUTICS. 351 



Among the most extraordinary and best autlienticated cases 

 of suggested modification of the metabolic processes are those in 

 which burns have been so produced. The first of these was, I be- 

 lieve, produced by M. Focachon, an apothecary of Charmes, in 



France, on a patient named Elisa F He succeeded in doing 



it several times, and the details can be found in Prof. Beaunis's Le 

 Somnamhulisme provoque, pages 72-84. I will describe one or 

 two. On the 12th of May, 1885, at 11 a. m., she was hypnotized, 

 and eight postage stamps were placed on her left shoulder, with 

 the suggestion that a blister was being applied. She was then 

 watched and kept asleep. At 8.15 a. m. next day, she was exam- 

 ined in the presence of MM. Bernheim, Li^geois, Lidbeault, Beau- 

 nis, and others, and the bandages were removed. All were satis- 

 fied that they had not been disturbed. " Within an area of about 

 four by five centimetres the epidermis was found thickened and 

 deadened, of a yellowish color, but it was not raised and had not 

 formed blisters. It was thickened, a little wrinkled, and in a word 

 presented the appearance of the period which immediately pre- 

 cedes true blistering, with the formation of fluid. This region 

 was surrounded by a zone of intense redness, with swelling about 

 half a centimetre in extent." A year later M. Focachon succeeded 

 in neutralizing the effect of a Spanish fly blister on the same pa- 

 tient.* One piece was put on the left forearm and the other on 

 the corresponding region of the other arm. She was hypnotized 

 and told that the one on the left arm would not burn her. She 

 was then watched nine hours and a half and examined. The left 

 arm was almost absolutely unaffected ; on the right a blister was 

 forming. The bandages were replaced for forty-five minutes and 

 then examined again. On the right arm was a blister from which 

 a serous fluid was got ; the left was intact. 



Another such case was reported by Dr. J. Rybalkin, of the 

 Hopital Marie in St. Petersburg.! The patient, a house painter, 

 sixteen years of age, was hypnotized at 8.30 a. m., and was told he 

 would burn himself on the arm by touching a stove — in which, 

 by the way, there was no fire. He uttered a cry of pain when he 

 touched it, and within a few minutes a red, painful mark ap- 

 peared on the arm. The physicians then watched this develop 

 into a complete burn. By 10 a. m. next day blisters had developed, 

 these formed a scab, and the wound healed as an ordinary burn 

 would have done. 



With such extensive control of the metabolic processes of the 

 skin experimentally demonstrated, it is not surprising to meet 

 with remarkable cures of skin diseases. Thus Dr. Hamilton Os- 



* Liegeois, De la Suggestion, § 278. 



f Cf. Eevue do I'Hypnotisme, iv, 361, and Myers, op. cii., 338. 



