MENTAL THERAPEUTICS. 29 



cal examination he was taken in an ambulance to Bellevue Hos- 

 pital. The doctor gave the suffering lad morphine, but the drug had 

 no effect. Dr. Carey, the chief of the medical staff, decided to try 

 hypnotism. 



"Willie! Willie!" he shouted, "now watch my fingers." The 

 doctor kept him looking at the fingers, held close to the boy's face, for 

 five minutes. Then the doctor lowered his fingers and said: " Now? 

 Willie, all your pain is gone and you will be able in a moment to 

 ride your bicycle." 



The effect of the suggestion was marvelous. The tense muscles 

 began to relax, the boy straightened out while a smile broke over his 

 face that had before been drawn as if with torture. 



" Now, Willie," said the doctor, " it is time to go to sleep." In a 

 few moments the boy was sound asleep. In ten minutes he had been 

 cured of convulsions, which, by any other means, would have kept him 

 ill and in pain for weeks. Scores of similar and some much more re- 

 markable cases could be given. 



One of the most marvelous evidences of the control over the body, 

 and especially the muscular system, is shown in the experiments on 

 rigidity, i. e., making the body rigid. Prof, de Laurence states that 



by simply making passes along the arms and limbs of Miss , a 



slender and tall young lady of small physical power, while she was 

 standing erect, by merely suggesting to her that she was now 

 perfectly rigid, like a stone image, caused her to become so stiff that 

 when, at the professor's request, she was placed with her head on one 

 chair and her feet upon another, three young ladies, whose combined 

 weight was over 400 pounds, stood upright upon her prostrate form 

 without so much as bending it in the least. When conscious, it would 

 have been utterly impossible for her to have supported the weight of 

 even one person. This same experiment has been many times per- 

 formed with different people, and with equal success. Of course, this 

 rigid state cannot be produced in every person, simply because there 

 is a limit to the hypnotiser's power over others, but it has been done 

 often enough to prove beyond doubt that the power exists. It goes 

 to prove also that through hypnotic suggestion, the organs of the body 

 can be made to do things otherwise impossible. In other words, the 

 ill -adjusted and the sickly can thus both be healed. 



Hypnotism. The term hypnotism, from a greek word signifying 

 sleep, was first introduced by Dr. Braid of Manchester, England, who 

 discovered that by placing a bright object before the eyes of a person 

 and causing him to gaze intently upon it for some time, he could be 

 thrown into an apparent sleep during which he would act out what- 

 ever suggestion was made to him by the doctor's mind. 



The truly wonderful antics of persons while in this hypnotic 

 state, and the marvelous powers often shown by them, have been so 

 many times exhibited, both publicly and privately, that they are more 

 or less familiar to everybody, and no intelligent scientific student in 

 the .world to-day will deny +he extraordinary human powers demon- 



