402 HEALTH. 



handles the organism as the will handles the muscles, and, if we 

 may use the expression, converts and Christianizes the body, that is 

 to say, heals it. The virtue of hypnotism, where it succeeds, is 

 just this, that for the moment it unweeds the human soil so com- 

 pletely, that whatever faith is impressed, can work and grow. It 

 surely points to human agency all through disease, when we find 

 that monomanias can be given, or removed, in a moment, by the 

 suggestion of another from without j it points to a scientific theory 

 of the influx of ideas from other men, visible and invisible, as an 

 account of the outward supplies of life. 



We regard hypnotism as the most intellectual phenomenon 

 which has yet been produced by the phrenopathists, as suggestive of 

 a new personnel in the bearing of the physician. It seems to show 

 that there is scarcely a case in which the latter should not do some- 

 thing actual besides the administration of drugs ; for the sick organ- 

 ism expects to be handled. It also proclaims to us what an artistry 

 should be cultivated by those who practice medicine ) what tact 

 should electrify their fingers, what resolve should vertebrate their 

 words, what cordials should drop from their mouths, what airs of 

 reassurance should surround them, and how ease and cheerfulness 

 should radiate from their presence, as they move from bed to bed. 

 To simplify all this to them, they must verily believe that medicine 

 is the daughter of heaven, and that they live to be inspired, and to 

 inspire. 



We do not mean that the character of the good physician should 

 be the corollary of any juggle, however useful for a time, or that he 



ination, as a body and a structure, is capable of being influenced by it, and of 

 operating its own lordly removals and avaunts upon the warts : for in imagina- 

 tion, what you seem to have, you have ; and the body is, among other things, full 

 of imagination. Nevertheless, where the two faiths coincide, the effect will be 

 more rapid; and they are always tending to coincide, either by the conversion 

 of the mind to the catholicity of the body, or of the body to the principles of the 

 mind. A good instance of this is seen in Nicolai's ghost-case, where, in spite of 

 seeing and hearing, Nicolai, being a considerable philosopher, discredited his 

 ghosts, and cured them by the application of leeches : his body became as philo- 

 sophical as his mind, as much bent upon seeing nothing, and was emptied of its 

 spiritual instincts. In this case Balaam and his beast were both orthodoxly one- 

 sighted, and trudged the common high-road of the bookselling business, each as 

 wise as the other. 



