Instead of so doing, some of them are much too addicted to giving the greatest publicity to the results of laboratory-research, with the result that the public is thrown into an unhealthy state of constantly dreading infection.

We must as carefully guard against any exaggeration where psycho-therapeutics is concerned as in the case of any other therapeutic measures. Finot thinks we ought to be able to prolong life; it is auto-suggestion produced by constantly thinking of death that causes people to die earlier than they should. He mentions Spitzka's observation that many people die after starving for two or three days, although investigation of the cases of fasting men like Succi and Tanner has shown that it is possible to live without food much longer than that.

Cases have, indeed, been cited in which people are said to have died because they feared that they were going to be killed. In those cases in which people quickly succumb to starvation, Finot ascribes the early death of the subjects to auto-suggestion and fear. But we should be very careful in drawing such conclusions, and it is always a great mistake to generalize from isolated observations. Experience has shown that even when the conditions are very unfavourable, as in cases of shipwreck or of explosions in mines, where the fear of death puts everything else in the background, life may be maintained for a very long time even without food. But although these facts prove that the mental influences in question have no such general tendency to shorten life as people are inclined to assume from the reports they have read of isolated cases, we ought not to fall into the error of seeing perchance in auto-suggestion an essential means of prolonging life. And further, our antagonism to exaggeration and capricious fancies should never lead us to disregard the therapeutic importance of mental influence.

It is, of course, impossible to mention all the details of psycho-therapeutics in a single chapter, and out of the question to attempt to give instruction in them. The space at our command would not suffice for the former purpose, and the latter can never be fully accomplished. But it must be said that the personality of the practitioner plays an essential part, and the characteristics that go to make a good psycho-therapeutist are partly innate, partly acquired. They may be developed later on, but cannot be created. It is upon such characteristics - patience, quickness of perception, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature, power of individualizing - that much of the success obtained by laymen depends. There are personal characteristics that make a man a born psycho-therapeutist. This is not merely a question of the suggestive force that emanates from them, but of the far-reaching nature of the influence they exert. This is often as impossible to analyze as many other reciprocal human relations. Certainly, suggestive influence begotten of confidence plays a great part here: but we are not always able to trace the origin of the confidence.

It often happens that the confidence of new patients is due to the doctor's scientific reputation having preceded him; in others, to his successes being known. But confidence need not be due to success. A doctor often gains a great reputation for skill without bis knowing the reason. He is often told, to his astonishment, that cases he has considered failures were successes, or that little impression has been produced by what he considered a brilliant result Patients' minds, and more especially their logic, are often the most enigmatical things a doctor has to deal with. I remember a patient whom I tried to cure of a nervous gastro-enteritic trouble, not only by means of all kinds of physical and chemical remedies but also by mental treatment I considered the case a complete failure, and yet shortly afterwards a number of people came to me from the district in which that patient lived and begged I would help them as I had helped their neighbour. They said my treatment had cured him of neuralgia. But the man had never complained to me of neuralgia.

Whether he really suffered from neuralgia in the first instance, or, as is easily conceived, imagined so later on, through some misconception, I cannot tell.

The wider a doctor's knowledge of human nature the greater his presence of mind and the better he is able to individualize - the latter is an art that is also given to but few - the greater will his psycho-therapeutic successes be. Things that apparently have no great significance become important remedies in the hands of an able doctor. Many a patient - a man, for example, suffering from the fixed idea that he is going out of his mind - requires to be told frequently by the doctor that the whole thing is merely an utterly groundless fixed idea; whilst in another case the constant repetition may prove injurious and only weaken the impression intended to be made. An occasional visit to the doctor should be insisted on in the case of many patients merely to report progress, and not for the purpose of securing fresh advice. I have thus found it a very salutary measure in many cases of alcoholism to insist on the patients paying me a regular visit on a stated day, every quarter or half-year, in order to let me know how they had been going on in the interval. The value of this procedure may also be observed in cases of sexual perversion.

The sense of moral responsibility awakened in the patient by the doctor's display of confidence may act in these cases as a strong preventive against temptation. I am told that in one establishment for inebriates the patients, on obtaining their discharge, receive a small ribbon, which they pledge their word of honour to return directly they relapse into their former drunken habits. Even such an apparently unimportant matter as wearing a bit of ribbon may exert a very great influence. The relative importance of verbal and written instruction should also be carefully borne in mind. It may at times be desirable that medical advice should be imparted in the form of a written communication. If, for instance, one wishes to induce the patient to engage in serious work, a much better result will be obtained by a letter to that effect than by any verbal instructions given in the consulting-room. Similarly, experience teaches that written instructions as to diet are carried out more implicitly than mere verbal advice on that question. In other cases, instruction by word of mouth proves more effectual. Even here, things that are apparently of no moment are really of the greatest importance.

To tell one of the people who accompany the patient what the latter should do often creates a greater impression than addressing the patient himself. In short, things that appear insignificant from the standpoint of physiology and physics are often of fundamental import to the psychologist. This is the reason why every attempt hitherto made to give a physiological explanation of mental processes was foredoomed to failure. I refer the reader to what I said on this point on page 278. The more medicine takes this to heart, the better able will it be to perfect psycho-therapeutics, and this is an absolute necessity. Even if it be not possible to teach all the details of the system, every doctor should be as well acquainted with its fundamental principles as with those of other methods of treatment. When these facts come to be fully recognized, we shall achieve results utterly unattainable at a time when the medical profession neglected psychology and psycho-therapeutics.