A gentleman from Iowa, Mr. John T. Boyer, a few years ago called upon me for the medical treatment of his wife, which necessitated their remaining in the city for several weeks. He was an inveterate chewer of tobacco and expressed the most ardent desire to overcome the habit. He had made many vain attempts to do so and had fruitlessly used various anti-tobacco preparations. In the course of a conversation with him upon the subject of hypnotism I made the emphatic assertion that through the hypnotic method I could completely cure him of his habit before his wife should be able to return home. He agreed to remain with her and submit to my hypnotic influence.

For some reason Mr. Boyer was hard to hypnotize, my first and second attempts exhausted me without inducing hypnosis in him, but the third attempt was successful. After first getting him into the profound stage, I gave him a piece of plug tobacco to chew, informing him that it was a special brand from Cuba. He relished it immensely. Soon I informed him that, although it was such a superior tobacco it possessed the peculiarity that he could not get it out of his mouth. This startled him for awhile and then with a broad grin on his face he chewed furiously. In a short time I said:

Producing hypnosis by passes.

The hypnotist has impressed it upon the subject with the broom that he is Col. Roosevelt hunting mountain lions. The other subject thinks he is Col. Bryan out fishing.

"Well, you can't get that out of your mouth, that's eertain, and you can't stop chewing it; but you've made an awful mistake - the tobacco is nothing but cat filth."

The scene that followed was ludicrous. He contorted his face frightfully, turned up his nose, gagged himself, twisted his body, walked back and forth, threw himself on the floor, and finally reached a state of agony, when I suddenly exclaimed:

"Now you can stop chewing; now you can spit it out of your mouth. Here, wash out your mouth with this water."

He lost no time, and eagerly cleansed his mouth with the imaginary water which I pretended to hand to him in a glass. After he had quieted down I emphatically stated, in slow, monotonous tones:

"Every piece of tobacco that you may try to chew will have cat filth in it. It will make you deathly sick; leave it alone."

Then, by the customary method, I awakened him. The next time I placed him under the influence I offered him imaginary chewing gum, and then told him that he could not stop chewing and that it was tobacco and not chewing gum, and finally that the tobacco contained' cat filth. This plan I adopted in all my work upon him. Altogether, I hypnotized him twelve times in four weeks. Before he left the city he was entirely cured of the tobacco habit, although he had no recollection of his experience while in the hypnotic state. It was very gratifying, as well as amusing, to watch him when offered a piece of tobacco. He would look at it in such a peculiarly suspicious manner and sniff its odor with evident disgust, and then hand it back with the remark:

"I really don't care for it; it seems to me it would make me sick if I should try to chew it."

Mr. Boyer's aversion to tobacco has remained with him ever since, and my success in his case has aided me in overcoming the habit in others.