766 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



modes of treatment, merely from the fact tbat suggestion has been 

 employed at the same time. This remark also applies to massage, etc., 

 under analogous circumstances. 



We are particularly anxious to call attention to the effect of moral 

 treatment, and to the part taken in it by suggestion. This is no new 

 thing ; when the so-called fulminating pills are administered, sugges- 

 tion is employed in the pilular form, and when pure water is injected 

 under the skin, suggestion takes a hypodermic form. This medicine 

 for the imagination is particularly to be recommended in that category 

 of diseases which are of definite psychical origin. 



This is not the place for insisting on the special indications of sug- 

 gestion in therapeutics. The study just made is enough to show to 

 what extent it may act on motor, sensory, or psychical phenomena, 

 and consequently how it may be usefully employed in the treatment 

 of the dynamic disturbances which are due to the influence of a psychi- 

 cal action, of a moral shock, or even of a peripheral excitement. Its 

 effect can not any longer be disputed. It is, however, still difficult to 

 give a rigorously scientific account of the results obtained, since few 

 observations have as yet been published, and in some of these it is im- 

 possible to find an objective characteristic of hypnosis. Others, again, 

 are incomplete, or published by incompetent persons, whose descrip- 

 tions do not carry with them a conviction of the reality of the morbid 

 state in question. Finally, precisely on account of the nature of its 

 action, which is exclusively exerted on diseases in which there is no 

 definite material lesion, and which are, therefore, purely dynamic, sug- 

 gestion only cures affections which are capable of spontaneous modi- 

 fication, or which are influenced by various external agents. At pres- 

 ent, therefore, it is difficult to establish the real value of this mode of 

 treatment, although less difficult than in the case of many remedies in 

 general use. It can only be said that it is founded on accurate notions 

 of mental physiology, and consequently on a rational basis. 



Since the possibility of curing a certain number of nervous diseases 

 by means of hypnotism is established, it can not be disputed that phy- 

 sicians are justified in making use of it, under the same reservation as 

 any other methods of therapeutics. The physician's responsibility is 

 diminished if he has to treat an affection which would not yield to 

 other measures ; if he has obtained the consent of his patient and the 

 concurrence of the patient's friends ; and, finally, if he can show that 

 he has acted prudently, with due consideration of the danger incurred 

 by the patient, and with proper precautions against these risks. 



Since the past history of hypnotism verged upon the marvelous, it 

 had the privilege of exciting the curiosity, not only of learned men 

 but of people in general. Exhibitions with which science had nothing 

 to do made the public acquainted with a certain number of phenomena 

 of which a criminal use might be made, and hypnotic sleep and sug- 

 gestion have })layod a part in several judicial dramas. "NVc think it 



