Throughout the whole of the nineteenth century, and down to the present day when the study of hypnotism has directed general attention to psycho-therapeutics, there have always been able individual investigators who have pursued their own course without regard to the teachings of scholastic medicine or the opinions held by the general body of medical men. To make an arbitrary selection from the middle of the nineteenth century, I may mention Wilde, who in 1830 recommended a little wholesome dissipation as medical treatment; Brigham, who wrote on the influence on bodily health of intellectual culture and the exercise of the mental faculties; Traiber with a dissertation, De Cura- psychica; Domrich, who wrote a treatise entitled Die psychischen Zustande, ihre organ-ische Vermittlung und ihre Wirkung in Erzeugung korper-licher Krankheiten. I further mention Moore's book, The Potver of the Soul over the Body; Sadler on The Power of a Doctor's Personality in Alleviating and Curing Disease; Padio-leau's excellent little work, De la Midicine morale, 1864; and finally that profound and exhaustive work, The Influence of Mind on Body, by the English alienist, the late Hack Tuke.

Although there were from time immemorial individual investigators who recognized the value of mental influence, no organic connection between psycho-therapeutics and medicine was thereby created. It was the study of hypnotism, which since the rise and progress of the Nancy school had shown the value of suggestion either with or without hypnosis, that first called general attention to other remedies of a mental nature. No matter how much one may be opposed to hypnotism itself, the fact that it has led up to modern psycho-therapeutics and caused the latter to be incorporated in medicine cannot be denied. We are compelled to arrive at this conclusion even when we admit that other authors have developed their views of psycho-therapeutics independently of hypnotism, for they, also, were not recognized until the importance of mental impressions had been demonstrated by means of hypnotism. Before that, they were ignored by official science, because they had strayed from the beaten track; and their works were more frequently considered curiosities than scientific productions.

I need here only recall the case of Rosenbach, who endeavoured to develop therapeutic views to a great extent in opposition to the theory of suggestion, but who nevertheless admitted that the incentive to his studies came from hypnotism. At all events, it is almost entirely due to the general interest in psycho-therapeutics aroused by hypnotism that the psycho-therapeutic works of Rosenbach and others were recognized. This is shown by the numerous works that have appeared on the influence of the emotions on the body - for instance, those of Mosso and Lehmann, and more recently, Paul Cohn and H. Berger. It was already known how much menstruation is influenced by excitement and fear. Many of the effects produced by the imagination were also known, such, for instance, as imaginary pregnancy. But there was nothing systematic in all this; the occasional observations made were disparaged and contemptuously referred to cases of hysteria. It was too much the custom to look on a case as merely interesting and rare, not as a clear indication of the existence of a great branch of therapeutics.

A comparison between modern works on nervous diseases, hysteria, and neurasthenia, and those that appeared five-and-twenty years ago at once shows how the value of psychotherapeutics has risen in medical estimation. Let any one who thinks that hypnotism has opened up no new paths just take up one of the medical text-books of those days, and he will find as far as hysteria is concerned, to say nothing of other diseases, all kinds of therapeutic measures thoroughly discussed, but that the most important - viz., mental treatment, though not entirely ignored, receives but cursory mention. He will find exact instructions for the application of leeches to the portio vaginalis, what waters are to be drunk, what bathed in, and what form of electricity is indicated. But that all such matters are of insignificant importance in comparison to mental treatment was unknown, although the importance of mental remedies was occasionally admitted, as in the case of hysteria. As far as diseases are concerned - I make no mention of mental maladies, which only received a place in psychotherapeutics at the commencement of the nineteenth century - psycho-therapeutic influence was almost totally ignored.

It must also be admitted that many new branches of psychotherapeutics are not directly linked to hypnotism, though they have been indirectly influenced by it; to such belongs, for instance, attendance on and care of the weak, which is a psycho-therapeutic factor of the first order. But admitting even this, it cannot be denied that hypnotism has exerted a found to be continually on the increase. Such timorous persons should, if necessary, be referred to works presenting the opposite view - for instance, to the works of Jenny Koller, who has proved that there is more likelihood of inherited taint existing in the case of healthy people than is generally assumed, that the regenerative factor is sometimes extraordinarily strong, and that many diseases supposed to carry an hereditary taint are of no importance whatever in that respect. A recent work of Wagner's may also be referred to, as its author has arrived at similar conclusions. In other cases - when, for instance, a patient thinks he is suffering from lung trouble because of pains in the chest - it should be pointed out that jt is the muscles and not the lungs that are affected, and proof of this should be given by showing that the muscles are painfully sensitive to even the slightest touch.

Many a person who imagines that he is suffering from serious stomach trouble and that he cannot digest anything, can be easily freed from apprehension by washing out his stomach and thereby proving that his digestion is normal. Rosenbach pointed this out long ago. Of course it is relatively easy to give this satisfaction when the patient is a doctor, but even in the case of a layman it is sometimes possible to demonstrate the error by comparing the contents of his stomach with those of a healthy man. It occasionally requires an educational process to induce a patient to submit to treatment. Many people erroneously consider their malady incurable, and refuse treatment on that account. Berillon and Jennings have pointed out that many morphinists refuse to submit to treatment because they are convinced that their affliction is incurable. It is sometimes even necessary to explain the theory of his disease to a patient, so that he may help to bring about its cure. Many cases of sexual perversion can be cured, and some prevented, by giving the necessary explanation. This, of course, refers particularly to the time when the sexual impulse is still undifferentiated.