

SUGGESTION IN THERAPEUTICS. 343 



van Eeden, Lie'beault, Bernheim, Janet, Bdrillon, Pitres, de Jong, 

 Bramwell, Lloyd Tuckey, Hamilton Osgood, and others, but I 

 can say a few words as to the troubles in relieving which sugges- 

 tion has been found useful. 



In the first place, it will sometimes overcome insomnia. In 

 the second, it has been used to restore to hysterical patients their 

 lost sensations, but the restoration is usually but temporary. In 

 the third, it may be used to destroy all sorts of disagreeable 

 symptoms, especially neuralgic pains and headaches. It is pos- 

 sible to produce complete ansesthesia for surgical purposes in 

 this way ; but, as ether, chloroform, and cocaine are much more 

 reliable, suggestion is seldom used. Dr. Wetter strand, however, 

 usually hypnotizes slightly before administering an anaesthetic ; 

 he has found that he can in this way get along with a much 

 smaller amount of the drug, and also avoid the "violent" 

 tage. 



In the fourth place, suggestion is sometimes efficacious in 

 cases of disordered ideation and morbid impulses. Mild melan- 

 cholia, horror of food and of open spaces, insane doubt, homicidal 

 and suicidal impulses, sexual perversion and inversion, dipso- 

 mania, morphinomania, fear of death, and others of the kind have 

 been successfully treated by suggestion. But upon the more seri- 

 ous forms of mental disease it seldom has any effect. 



In the fifth place, it is often of aid in motor disorders not 

 dependent upon organic disease of the nervous system. Such 

 are hysterical contractures, paralyses and convulsions, nervous- 

 ness, chorea, sudden loss of voice, stammering, twitching of mus- 

 cles, etc. 



These are the troubles in which suggestion has been found 

 most useful, but of course no one claims that it is a specific for 

 them all. It often does good and never does harm ; but some- 

 times it does no good, and at other times the improvement is but 

 temporary. There is nothing very surprising in the fact that 

 such troubles have sometimes been found amenable to suggestion. 

 Although the effect ascribed to the mental state may be greater 

 than we usually suppose such a state could produce, the differ- 

 ence is one of degree and not of kind. But I must now turn 

 to a group of phenomena which seem at first glance to differ 

 in kind as well as degree from anything with which we are 

 familiar. 



We usually conceive that the processes grouped under the 

 word metabolism depend upon purely mechanical and chemical 

 conditions, modified in some way, to be sure, by the fact that the 

 body is alive and not dead, but still essentially physical and 

 chemical. The word metabolism comes from a Greek word (juera- 

 $o\i)) which means " exchange," and it designates the fact that 



