526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hypnotism is good for anything as a curative agent, its sphere is 

 limited, by Charcot, Fe're', Babinski, and all the most trustworthy 

 medical observers of Paris, to the relief of functional disorder and 

 symptoms in hysterical patients. The Nancy school put their 

 pretensions higher ; but any one who will analyze for himself, or 

 who will study Babinski's able analysis of the Nancy reputed 

 cases of cure, will easily satisfy himself that such claims are not 

 valid. As to the use of " suggestion " as an anaesthetic substitute 

 of chloroform for operation purposes, that " sugges ion " dates 

 back now beyond the ages of Esdaile and of Elliotson. It has 

 been given up and fallen into disuse because of its unreliability 

 and limited application. It is now sagely proposed to use hyp- 

 notism for " tooth-drawing/ 7 for the treatment of drunkards and 

 a-\f school children. The proposition is self-condemned. To enable 

 is, by \tist to draw a tooth painlessly, the average man or woman 

 automatoisries of sittings, to be reduced to the state of a trained 

 The criminal but happily only a very small proportion can be. 

 to the " suggestairts have seen enough of hypnotic dentists. As 

 ment of backward! " cure of drunkards or the " suggestion " treat- 

 gent suggestion is w. or naughty children, systematic and intelli- 

 schoolmaster tries to &at every clergyman, every doctor, and every 

 cessfully and in a bett&rry out in such cases and often does suc- 

 notism. Moreover, for druiform than the degrading shape of hyp- 

 go, a failure. ^ess it is, so far as my inquiries 



If a striking effect is to be produced 



powerfully to affect the imagination, the faY. an apparatus destined 

 has this advantage over the endormeur of tiite curer f tne grotto 

 hospital. He does not intrude his own personalitp^ a ^ orrn or ^ ne 

 patient to subject his mental ego to that of his " opei, an( ^ train his 

 "mesmerizer " seeks to dominate his subject ; he weakei ator -" The 

 power, which it is desirable to strengthen. He aims at bl s the wil1 

 the master of a slave. I do not need to emphasize the danp comin g 

 this practice. I need not even relate them. I have briefly q5 ers of 

 the warnings of one of its apostles, or at least so much of then loted 

 it is seemly here to relate. Cy i as 



The faith-curer of the grotto strengthens the weaker indivic 

 uality. He plays upon the spring of self-suggestion. The patient^' 

 is told to believe that he will be cured, to wish it fervently, and ^ 

 he shall be cured. So far as he is cured, he returns perhaps a 

 better and a stronger man, and his cure is quite as real and likely 

 to be quite as lasting as if he had become the puppet of a hyp- 

 notizer. The experiments of the Salpetriere have served to en- 

 able us to analyze more clearly the nature of faith-cures gen- 

 erally, and they have thrown a ray of light on a series of phe- 

 nomena of human automatism never before studied so clearly or 



