DIVISION SECOND. 



XXTH CENTURY HEALING. 



SUGGESTIVE HYPNOTISM, PALMISTRY, MIND CURE 

 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, ETC. 



BY DB. L. F. JORDAN. 



MENTAL THERAPEUTICS. 



The phenomena of animal magnetism, mesmerism or hypnotism 

 were discovered by a doctor of Vienna, Austria, named Mesmer about 

 the year 1770. He employed the natural powers given him in the 

 healing of disease, and for many years practiced with great success 

 at Paris, France, where he became very popular. After his death, 

 however, ihe whole matter was abandoned, largely because a commit- 

 tee of special scientists, who had investigated the phenomena, re- 

 ported that there was nothing wonderful about the things done, and 

 that they could all be produced in the patients by " suggestion." 

 The public, who had looked upon it as a supernatural power, were 

 disappointed and refused to entertain what was now considered a 

 fraud, while the doctors abandoned it because the then newly dis- 

 covered anesthetic, chloroform, took up all their attention. 



It was only in recent years that the subject was again investi- 

 gated, and the Academie Royale de Medecine, at Paris, declared that 

 a new field was opened to physiological science. A committee of the 

 Royal Society testified that they had seen persons who, while in the 

 hypnotic sleep, could unerringly diagnose medical and surgical cases 

 that baffled the best physicians, and correctly foretell the result of the 

 disease. 



In 1842, at the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, 

 the account was read of a patient who had suffered for five years 

 with a disease of the left knee, so that the slightest motion of the 

 joint caused extreme pain. He was mesmerized or hypnotized by Mr. 

 W. Topham and operated upon by W. Squire Ward, surgeon, who 

 performed an amputation of the thigh. During the operation, which 

 lasted twenty minutes, the patient looked on calmly, showing abso- 

 lutely no evidence of pain, although perfectly conscious. He recov- 

 ered perfectly and no bad symptoms whatever, followed. 



In 1898, Willie McCabe, 4 years old, of 532 East 76th street, New 

 York, having received a bicycle, spent an entire day in struggling to 

 ride it, meeting with numerous falls. At night he went to bed 

 feverish, and next morning had violent convulsions. After medi- 



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