1891.] MICEOSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 79 



sciousness, or, finally, complete suspension of consciousness when the 

 subject is a mere machine in the hands of an operator. In the last case 

 the hypnotic, on return to consciousness, retains no recollection of his 

 acts during the hypnotic trance. 



Thus far the older writers, and the writers of to-day, run along par- 

 allel tracks. 



The latest developments in hypnotism, and those which seem likely 

 to make it of value to medical science and practice, are in the depart- 

 ment of " post-hypnotic " suggestion. This term refers to the state of 

 those cases where the hypnotizer impresses upon a subject that a certain 

 action is to be performed or omitted at some future time — an impression 

 which has ruling force when that time arrives. Thus an inebriate is 

 hypnotized and then told that he can only drink liquors with his meal, 

 and finds that this suggestion rules action in that department even after 

 the recovery from the hypnotic trance. Post-hypnotic suggestion can 

 thus be used to apply to a single form of action, and the general mental 

 life left untouched. 



Dr. Moll explains such cases upon the action of the law of associa- 

 tion, and thinks that the subject, when hypnotized, has the image of the 

 future time and the motor-image of the act so strongly associated that 

 later on, when the one arises, or the arrival of the time, the motor-im-" 

 age is drawn up by it, and leads to action. 



It being well known that mental expectancy has vastly important 

 eftect in even such bodily conditions as vasomotor phenomena, and per- 

 haps secretion, to say nothing of the more definitely controllable phe- 

 nomena of cerebral and muscular activity, it is evident that a physician 

 who can by suggestion guide the mind of his patient so as to remove 

 from him the expectation of a fatal termination of disease and replace 

 it with hope of recovery has a valuable remedy in his reach which is 

 perhaps in some cases not inferior to drugs or surgical means. The 

 man who can, without interfering with normal mental life, touch the 

 abnormal mental state of the kleptomaniac or the drunkard and heal it, 

 will do for that sufferer from mental malady as much as the physician 

 strives to do for the physical frame of man. Hypnotism may peiliaps 

 be used in relations which have a legal aspect, for a hypnotized person 

 could be made unconsciously to execute a legal document, or perhaps 

 even to perpetrate a crime. 



The neurological aspects of cases of hypnotism are not as yet at all 

 clearly elucidated. The suggestion has come from Prof. Haidenheim 

 (cf. Encyc. Britt., vol. xv, p. 283) that hypnotism is a phenomenon 

 of inhibition wherein the motor areas of the cerebral cortex are thrown 

 " out of gear," and actions then are performed automatically we may 

 say, or under the dominance of images which came in through the 

 senses and without the operation of judgment. This view implies that 

 the conscious centres and the centres of motor action are identical, and 

 this has by no means been proven. The physiology of hypnotism can 

 not be said to have yet received much exact study, but it is now begin- 

 ning to receive much serious attention. We can hardly doubt but that 

 the time has now arrived when it will rank as a department of the study 

 of human biology. 



Hamline, Minn., Dec. 26, '90. 



